Chapter 77
A Darker Path
Part Seventy-Seven: Meet the Wards
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Relevant Side Story: Badaboom by Masterweaver
"In more recent news, it seems a new hero has hit the streets! Here's Bryan for the on-the-scene report."
"Thank you Julie. I'm here at Cornell University, where infamous supervillains Fenja and Menja staged an attack to 're-establish the Empire' before being neutralized and captured by a new heroine. The PRT has cordoned off the site of the battle while conducting their investigations, but we do have one of their agents here to give us an update. Sir, what is your insight on the cape the public is calling Badaboom?"
"Well, firstly I'd like to remind everyone that the internet is not an officially sanctioned source for cape names, and the PRT will be releasing a more cohesive statement and name later. That said, I have to give a tip of my hat to the woman-she came in at just the right time to help us turn the tide of the battle. Honestly, without her, the two villains might have gotten away."
"A brave woman, I see. Do you have any insight on how the Protectorate is planning to handle the situation regarding her?"
"Well, if it were me I'd shake her hand for a job well done and point out the tinkering budget that Protectorate members are granted. But I'm just a pair of boots on the ground. I'm sure the heroes will give her everything she deserves though."
"And there you have it, folks, the Protectorate just might be getting a new tinker-and a heroic one at that! And I'm sure the students of Cornell will be very satisfied to hear that. Back to you, Julie."
"Thank you, Bryan. Cornell university staff have stated that they plan to reopen at the beginning of next week, although the damages will take a month or two to repair. In other news, a local grocery story was the site of a minor riot..."
We return you to your regularly scheduled surprise mayhem ...
PRT New York, Sunday Morning, March 6
Director Emily Piggot
The intercom at Emily's elbow buzzed. "Deputy Director Henderson is here, ma'am. Are you clear to see him?"
She frowned. Is this how Wilkins operated? "Send him in. And make a note: Henderson gets access to me, all hours. Other names to be added to that list, at my discretion."
"Ma'am." There was no inflection to the voice to show whether her personal gatekeeper was pleased or irritated with the idea, but Emily didn't give a damn either way. Clear and prompt communication was essential to managing an organisation like the PRT, especially the department of it tasked with overseeing New York.
She'd already made a good start with ripping out the weeds left behind after her predecessor's ignominious departure, but she suspected there would be more to come. The .22 popgun stashed in the footwell had been replaced by her venerable SIG 220, and that was the least of the changes she intended to make around here. By the time she handed over the office to whoever was due to take charge on the first of July, she intended to have the New York PRT ticking over like a goddamn Swiss watch, no matter how many brand-new assholes she had to ream out in the doing of it.
New York boasted (if that was the word) a larger selection of villains than Brockton Bay had had, she freely admitted that. However, she couldn't help noticing while she'd been familiarising herself with their various dossiers that they were softer and fluffier on the whole than their departed counterparts. No neo-Nazi hate groups, no rage dragons, no snake-in-the-grass Coils, no Merchant-equivalents devoted entirely to dealing drugs.
This wasn't to say that they were good, or even 'misunderstood' (she hated that word with the passion of a thousand burning suns), just that they were a lot less vicious than the usual for Brockton Bay. Of course, it helped that the Teeth had been irresistibly drawn to Brockton Bay by Atropos' warning, and been wiped out to a man. Barrow was another casualty of overconfidence, currently (as far as she knew) dealing with having both his kneecaps blown out by Atropos in one of her rare nonlethal takedowns.
Emily hadn't lost a moment of sleep over either one of those.
The Elite were still in town, but since Bastard Son's demise, they'd become a lot more circumspect in their dealings, and the New York branch had never been heavy on crime anyway. Likewise, the Adepts kept things low-key, and were careful not to risk killing anyone. Their most annoying trait seemed to be their habit of attempting to poach any Wards or Protectorate members whose powers could be mistaken for magic (and the fact that they'd succeeded at least once that she knew of).
Which raised a point: the latest 'recruit' into the ranks of the New York Wards happened to be one Tammi Reynolds, AKA Scribe, previously known as Rune, whose powers could absolutely be described as looking like magic. Also (and this was important), she was an ex-member of the extremely defunct Empire Eighty-Eight and had been, by all accounts, chugging down the racist Kool-Aid on the regular before Kaiser took a sword through the brain.
In Emily's personal opinion, Scribe was a high-risk cape, likely to defect to the enemy given the slightest opportunity. Someone who should've been slam-dunked straight back into the juvenile detention system instead of being fast-tracked into a probationary Wards position.
Just like we should've done with Shadow Stalker, only more so. Stalker, at least, had never tried to switch sides. At least, not officially.
She suspected Wilkins had had a hand in this, looking to boost her numbers and look good to the higher-ups. And now, ironically, not only was Emily being tapped to solve the problems Wilkins had caused, but two adversaries from Brockton Bay had ended up technically on the same side in a whole new city. Not that Emily intended to trust the little shit any further than she could caber-toss the Empire State Building, or tolerate Rune's presence in the Wards for one second longer than it took to get her shitcanned right back to where she belonged.
The office door opened, and Henderson entered. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but—"
Emily cut him off right there. "Deputy Director Henderson. You are the PRT second in command in this city, so let's get something straight. If there's something I need to know, you bring it to my attention. Likewise, if you come in here to see me about something, I'm going to assume that I need to know about it. Therefore, when you walk into my office, the first words I want to hear from you are not an apology for wasting my time. What I want is for you to tell me what I need to know about whatever's going on. Is that perfectly understood?"
Henderson blinked. "Uh … yes, ma'am. Loud and clear, ma'am. So, I'm here to let you know that the Wards are assembled downstairs for you to address them, ma'am."
She nodded firmly. Dealing with Wards wasn't her favourite part of the job—if there was any part of it that she could call favourite—but at least they weren't being housed in the PRT building and overseen by the Deputy Director, like in Brockton Bay. Whoever's idea it had been to put the Brockton Bay Protectorate base in the middle of the actual bay had a lot to answer for, in her opinion.
"Thank you, Mr Henderson." She stood up from her chair and started around the desk. On impulse, she took the Nilbog claw that she was currently using as a letter opener and slid it into her pocket. "And you don't have to call me 'ma'am' with every sentence; just occasionally will do. I know Director Wilkins probably did a lot of things differently to me, but she's also facing Federal charges, so I see no need to emulate her every habit." She stepped up to him. "Also, I will be requiring you to make judgement calls on occasion. I may ask you to explain your reasoning after the fact, but I'd prefer a subordinate who can make a decision over one who lets a bad situation get worse because they froze. If this is not to your liking, then you may submit your resignation at any time. Is that also understood?"
"Crystal clear, ma'am." He seemed to be trying to process what she was saying, or maybe he was just constipated. She didn't care which one it was; he'd either get with the program or she'd have to bring in another Deputy Director to train up.
"Good to hear." She paused with her hand on the door handle, and looked back at him. "And one more thing. I've read all the available briefing notes, but only a complete fool would assume that's all there is to know about this duty posting, and I'd like to think I'm not a complete fool. So if I happen to give an order out of ignorance that's likely to have problematic consequences, get my attention and fill me in in private. Think you can do that?"
This time, his response was more positive, as he nodded sharply. "Yes, ma'am."
"Excellent." She opened the door and left the office. In time, it would probably feel like 'her' office, but that time wasn't yet.
He followed along behind her. "May I ask a semi-personal question?"
"Certainly. Don't set your heart on getting an answer, though."
"Understood." He hesitated for a second. "What was it like, being in the same city as Atropos all the time?"
She glanced back at him. "Broadly speaking? Irritating and illuminating. I do not, and never will, approve of vigilante justice. The PRT and courts exist for a reason. We do not want or need armed civilians, or even armed capes, simply murdering people willy-nilly." She huffed a sigh. "The irritating part is that she made it work. The illuminating aspect is that she had a deeper plan behind it all, over and above 'kill villains in excruciating ways'."
"The Betterment Committee," he said, proving that he was paying attention.
"Precisely. The bounty from the Nine barely started the ball rolling, then she pulled in two billion for the Simurgh, and there's going to be more again once we announce the demise of the other Endbringers in July. And of course, there are the quarantine areas that she so kindly cleared out for us, freeing up immense amounts of our funding and manpower for other purposes, and incidentally providing the Committee with a solid revenue stream for the next ten years."
Henderson didn't bring up the fact that Emily was the one who'd started the trend of commissioning Atropos to clear the quarantine areas; it was something they both already knew. Instead, he asked a question which she had also been pondering the answer to. "So, now that she's Ended all the major threats to the well-being of Brockton Bay, as well as an interdimensional one, what do you think she'll do now, ma'am?"
Emily chuckled darkly. "Mr Henderson, I stopped trying to anticipate her next move a long time ago. I'm sure we'll find out if and when it happens."
"Copy that, ma'am."
Hebert Household Basement
Taylor
I hummed to myself as I stirred the mixture in the plastic tub, the improvised paddle poking through a hole in the garbage bag I'd tied over the lot to keep the fumes from getting out. It had been even easier than I'd expected to obtain the ingredients in the proportions and quantity I needed. Now I just had to make sure the two disparate elements were well and truly mixed together, while preventing any stray sparks from inviting themselves to the party before I was ready.
The basement door opened, and Cherie descended the steps. "Hey, Taylor. What're you doing now?"
I turned and gave her my most innocent look, without interrupting the stirring. "What makes you think I'm doing something?"
She retaliated with a don't-bullshit-me look of amused exasperation; perfectly justified, given that I was indeed doing something. "I swear, you're like a four-year-old. Whenever you vanish down here and I can hear you humming along contentedly, I know for a fact that disaster is soon to follow. The only difference is that the disaster is going to happen to some thoroughly deserving asshole, and it's always highly entertaining to watch."
A grin twitched my lips. "As much as I feel I should be insulted somehow by the comparison to a kid doing something it knows it shouldn't, I can kinda see where you're coming from. I do come down here to prep for a lot of my mayhem."
"Which brings us back to my original question." She leaned back against the workbench near me, propping herself on her elbows. "What are you doing, who are you going to be doing it to, and why do I smell diesel?"
My grin widened. "Well, the answer to that needs a little backtracking. I probably mentioned that I didn't want the Empire remnants to be getting any more assistance from overseas, so I've been dropping anonymous tips about Gesellschaft leadership to Interpol, right?"
"Right." Cherie nodded. "If they're tied up with that, they can't project power into the US."
"That's the general idea, yeah." I stirred the tub again. "So, it turns out that Gesellschaft, among other European terror groups, have been bankrolling the Three Blasphemies, and getting a return by way of picking their assassination targets. Reshaping the political landscape by proxy."
"The Blasphemies?" Cherie's eyebrows shot up. "Those bitches are seriously bad news. I heard they even fought Eidolon and survived. But I thought they only operated in Europe?"
"That's true," I acknowledged. "And they are pretty damn good at what they do. But they just hit my radar anyway, because Gesellschaft is directing them to hit Interpol personnel … and in about half an hour, Interpol is going to contact me over PHO with an offer of a hundred million US to remove them from the board. It appears that taking out a chief of station in his own house, in front of his kids, crosses a line. Who knew?"
Cherie smirked. "And of course you know how to kill them. In a way that somehow involves diesel."
I nodded, giving the tub of ANFO one last stir. "When have I not?"
She nodded wisely. "Good point."
Director Piggot
Emily stepped up onto the dais, in front of the assembled Wards. There were more than she'd been used to dealing with in Brockton Bay, though they were arranged in teams according to capabilities. While a few gave the impression of having been at the sharp edge once or twice, most seemed less battle-hardened than the Brockton Bay Wards; in point of fact, they reminded her of recruits fresh out of boot. The skills were technically there, but they'd never been tested in real combat.
Flechette was one of those Emily suspected of having faced serious opposition, almost certainly against March. She wasn't sure what March's obsession with Flechette was all about, but the teen villain's persecution of the young hero had more than earned her the beating she'd received at Atropos' hands. March had recovered from the mild concussion, and the light stab wounds were healing nicely, but her knee would never work properly again if she didn't receive corrective surgery. It turned out that the PRT was remarkably stingy about springing for that sort of thing when it wasn't a life-threatening situation.
Flechette herself was one of the more famous Wards in the system, having accompanied Atropos to Canberra on that famous occasion. Quite apart from the other times she'd associated with Atropos, she had also volunteered to attend the Brockton General fundraiser, earning her a note of commendation in her file from Legend. Emily approved of that sort of initiative, so when she'd seen Flechette's request for three days off to visit Brockton Bay for 'personal reasons', she'd signed off on it.
Unfortunately, she hadn't actually seen it until Saturday afternoon, but Flechette would get priority placing on next Friday's afternoon transport, and wouldn't be required back until Tuesday morning. Her school would be notified of her upcoming absence on Monday, and the appropriate excuses given. Judging by the original date on the leave request, Wilkins had been kicking the can down the road on that one for the last month. Emily didn't know exactly why the ex-Director had been blocking it, though she could make an educated guess. Whatever; Flechette's earned that leave and she's damn well going to get it.
The other main contender for 'teen veteran of the streets' was Scribe, who was making only a moderate attempt to appear heroic and attentive. Emily wasn't sure how much of her expression was a reaction to being a probationary Ward, and how much was her natural sneer. Either way, she'd ditched the red and black robes for blue and gold in the same pattern, along with a pointed, wide-brimmed hat. She was leaning back in her seat with her arms folded, and Emily could barely see her eyes under the hat's brim.
Just for a moment, Emily was tempted to order her to remove the hat, but refrained when she noted the number of Wards in the room who would be unmasked if they were required to remove their helmets and other headgear. And she knew damn well Scribe would insist on it happening, and kick up a stink if the others weren't given equal treatment. The last thing she wanted was for the Youth Guard to come sniffing around when she hadn't even been in charge for a week yet.
The other notable Ward in the room was probationary in a whole different way. At nineteen, Badaboom would normally have got straight into the Protectorate, but it wasn't unusual for new capes in their late teens to spend a few months in the Wards before moving up in the ranks. Theoretically, this gave them an opportunity to find their feet within the organisation before facing off against the real threats. And in New York, Emily supposed, that might even work.
Ironically, the bomb Tinker's recruitment into the Wards had also technically been due to Atropos. On February the twenty-second, the giantess twins Fenja and Menja had chosen to attack Cornell University in some misguided bid to attract like-minded people to their cause. It had not been going well for the beleaguered campus security (and the heroes were still a few minutes out) when one of the students had taken a hand.
Wearing a makeshift costume and screaming defiance, Badaboom (real name Alice Takawara) had bombarded the Nazi terrorist capes with her Tinkertech bombs. Shifts in local gravity had put them on the back foot and 'super stunner' bombs had left them staggering, but the stars of the show were the bombs that respectively turned Fenja intensely magnetic, and inflicted Menja with the equivalent of acute gastroenteritis. When the capes showed up, Menja was in the unpleasant process of purging her system of everything she'd eaten in the last two days, and Fenja was unconscious under a pile of cars.
Ironically, the news story about it had been almost totally buried under the revelation of the Simurgh's demise. Ms Takawara had tentatively accepted the recruitment offer, and was currently using the name the news crews had saddled her with until Image could figure out a better one for her. Even now, she had a wide-eyed 'how the hell did I end up here' expression on her face.
Emily found she could sympathise.
"Good morning," she said into the microphone. "I'm Director Emily Piggot, replacing Ms Wilkins. You may address me as Director, ma'am, or Ms Piggot."
She paused to let that sink in, looking around at the assembled teenage heroes to gather her impressions of what they thought of her opening lines. The team captains seemed to be paying close attention to her words, while the rest were nose-diving into boredom. Not Flechette, though, or Badaboom, or Scribe for that matter. Where the first two were also listening carefully, the latter was allowing her sneer to show more and more openly.
What the hell, she decided. I'm only in this posting for another four months. She'd never been the type to play to the crowd, but there was no percentage in setting up the Wards to push back against her initiatives for the next four months. What don't they want to hear?
She wasn't a teenager, but she judged that in their place, she wouldn't want to hear more empty platitudes. We're all in this together, you have my support, blah blah blah. She cleared her throat. "Okay, you know what? You've heard the rest of this speech dozens of times before, so let's just take it as said and move along. I've blocked out half an hour for this. If you've got questions or something to say, let's hear it."
Shelter, down at the front, raised his hand. She nodded toward him. "Uh, ma'am, is it true you were at Ellisburg?"
"It is." She recalled the claw in her pocket, and took it out. Stepping down from the podium, she held it up. "Over a hundred of us went in. Two came out." She recalled again how the capes had cut and run, but restrained her automatic reaction. Some capes do what they say they're going to do. Atropos had taught her that. "The day before Atropos went in and killed every last goblin in Ellisburg, she collected this and later gave it to me as something to remember the place by. Careful, it's sharp."
She handed over the claw to Shelter, who looked it over with something approaching awe, then passed it on to Jouster. Gradually, it began to make its way around the room. Emily kept an eye on where it was, while appearing not to: a trick she'd learned long ago as an officer. She had their attention now. Good.
Someone down the back, whose name she hadn't memorised yet, put their hand up. "How did you survive, ma'am?"
"I nearly didn't," she replied candidly. "Every one of my men died. I ran through all my ammo, and emptied my pistol. They were chewing on my legs and ripping up my kidneys when a chopper dropped in, killed the critters on me, and got me the hell out of there." She took a deep breath. "Take that as a lesson. Sometimes you'll be doing everything by the numbers, acting on the intel you've been given, and the intel will be wrong. Sometimes it's just not your fault when things go ti—uh, belly-up."
"What do you do then?" asked Flechette.
"Well, what you don't do is whine about how it's not fair. Life's not fair. Deal with it." Emily paused to allow the brief laughter to pass, then got serious, making eye contact with as many of them as she could. "You dig deep and find just how hard you can fight. And if at all possible, you survive so you can tell someone what happened, and what went wrong. If not?" She shrugged. "You take as many of the bastards down with you that you can."
The claw was halfway around the room by now. She gestured, inviting another question.
"Is Brockton Bay as bad as we've heard?" asked a kid with a striped red-and-white costume. "I mean, really?"
"Before or after Atropos showed up?" asked Emily dryly. She held up her hand. "Right off the bat, every member of the Brockton Bay Wards has been in combat against one or another of the villain gangs in the city, directly fighting supervillains. I didn't order it and I didn't approve of it, but it happened. Sometimes they got hurt. Yes, it was bad. That was before Atropos."
"What about after Atropos?" That was Badaboom, looking surprised at herself. "Did she really kill all those villains?"
"Yeah," called out someone else in the back row. "What's Atropos like? Flechette won't give us deets!"
"Hey!" retorted Flechette. "I'm not gonna gossip about her! She's my friend!"
Emily cleared her throat firmly and waited until the room had quieted down. "Things were starting to ramp up again after the Christmas dip. Yes, we have that there too, but it's less obvious. The gangs were doing their usual posturing. And then Oni Lee turned up dead. That actually staggered a lot of us. Many people had tried; Atropos did it with one bullet, dead centre between the eyes, using his own gun."
Scribe actually managed to dial up her sneer a notch. "And not before time."
Amidst the general murmur of chuckles, Emily nodded. "Be that as it may, that particular sentiment wasn't just shared by the opposing villain gangs. Off the record, of course. We're not supposed to condone murder." This actually seemed to be working. Most of her interactions with the Wards had ended in disinterest at best, but here they were listening to her. "At the time, we thought it was a fluke."
"But … didn't she say on PHO exactly what she was doing?" That was Jouster.
"Anyone can say anything on PHO." Emily was a little surprised that more people didn't recognise this. "Actions, as they say, speak louder than words."
Shelter snorted. "Gotta say, her actions are pretty damn loud."
"Very true, but two months ago, she was only just starting." Emily took a breath. "Brockton Bay was a powderkeg, and we were stretched to the limit fending off idiots with matches. Then, over the course of four days, four of the major players on the villain side were eliminated. Think about that for a second. Imagine the Elite and the Adepts being taken out overnight by a totally unknown player." She looked around at the Wards, giving her words time to sink in. "All we could conclude that it was an escalation of the previous chaos, someone trying to move in and establish themselves as a new power in the criminal underworld."
"Well, she definitely did that." Flechette sounded amused, and most of the Wards chuckled along with her.
"She did," agreed Emily. "And after the villains fled Brockton Bay, she kept on destroying new threats as fast as they popped up. Then things got … easier." She thought about what she'd just said, and shook her head. "Things don't get easier in this job. That's not even rule number one; it's rule number zero. Nothing gets easier. But Atropos broke that rule, just like she breaks all the other rules. And now, thanks to a teenage girl with the edgiest name and costume of all time killing a whole lot of very bad people, Brockton Bay is actually getting to be a tolerable place to live." She looked around at the assembled Wards. "Next question?"
"Yeah. Have you actually met her? I mean, face to face?"
Emily didn't see who'd asked that question, but she answered it anyway. The incidents were vivid in her mind. "Three times. Once in my office, at my invitation, once outside Ellisburg, and once on Thursday evening, at my sendoff." Emily held up her hand. "Enough questions about Atropos. Does anyone have anything else they want to ask about?"
"Yeah," snarked Scribe. "Is it true they called you Miss Piggy behind your back, in Brockton Bay?"
"It's true," Emily acknowledged, ignoring the murmured chuckles and the surreptitious shove that Jouster gave Scribe. "Keep in mind, the person who started that chose the name Clockblocker, so it wasn't as though he could throw any stones." She turned to face Scribe. "Also, you know what they say about glass houses and stones … Sabrina."
"Nobody called me that!" Scribe had apparently never been pulled up on any of her disrespectful behaviour until now. Emily had to wonder exactly how much Wilkins had been soft-pedalling her treatment of the ex-villain in order to look good in front of the Chief Director. It reminded her of the aftermath of Shadow Stalker's demise, and the sheer amount of misbehaviour that the little twit's PRT handler had been sweeping under the rug. Well, that's not happening here.
"Oh, I dunno," Flechette said. "I spent time talking to some of the Wards when I went up for the fundraiser, and they mentioned a certain 'teenage Nazi' a couple of times."
"The fuck?" yelped Scribe, jumping to her feet and swinging around toward Flechette. "I never said anything about you!"
"Sit down, Scribe." Emily was grateful for Flechette's interjection, though she couldn't say so out loud. "This is why we should avoid all insulting nicknames going forward. Now, does anyone have any relevant questions?"
Atropos
"So, what's the skinny on the Blasphemies, anyway?" Cherie helped steady the mass of explosive material as I settled the metal cone down into it, point-first. The cone itself had originally been a tin can I'd salvaged from the trash, but with a little work and soldering, it would now serve a higher purpose, as would the burner phone and single pistol bullet I'd stripped down to its primer. "I mean, they fought the Triumvirate. They can fly, and make force fields, and teleport, and move at superspeed, and turn invisible. And whenever anyone's killed one, she's come back. How are you gonna make it stick, this time?"
"The first thing to understand about the Blasphemies," I said as I began to insert the wired-up primer (itself buried in a zip-loc bag containing the leftover propellant from the cartridges I'd butchered in preparation to take down Goddess) into the mass of explosive material, "is that they're robots. Artificial intelligences. That's actually known, but not by the general public."
"What the fuck?" Cherie frowned. "How many's that make now? Dragon, the Machine Army … who else is a robot around here?"
"That's about it, to be honest." I shrugged. "To make a self-sustaining AI, you need to have a power that really wants to make it happen, or it degrades and self-immolates in hours or days."
"Oh. Well, that kind of sucks. So, are you going to do the same trick you used to take out the Machine Army? Literally talk them to death? Or the Shotgun Shells of Exploding Doom?"
"Neither one, mainly because there's three of them." I held up that many fingers. "They're in constant communication, and they back up their memories and personalities with each other on the regular. Any damage I did by infecting one with a virus would get caught by another one, via their error-checking software. Even if I killed one that way, the other two would be free and clear to go to one of their caches of spare parts, construct a new body, and re-upload a clean copy of the personality. It would be back up and running within the day."
"They can do that?" Cherie frowned. "What's stopping them from just building more until they've got an army?"
"Their programming. And the fact that they're not Tinkers. They can just fake it in this one instance." I carefully taped the burner phone to the side of the gallon bottle that had come from the same place the tin can had, then started swathing the whole thing in plastic. "The other trick they can pull is swapping out their masks and changing their mannerisms. See, each of them has a set of powers that gives each of them Mover, Brute and Stranger capabilities, just different ones. That way, you never know which one you're fighting. By doing this, they can fool people into thinking they've all got all the powers. Also, they're really good at retreating if they have to. As soon as one dies, the others disengage."
Cherie's mouth opened, her jaw dropping in horrified fascination. "Huh. Holy shit. So how do you kill them?"
"Same as you beat any other adversary," I said lightly. "You target them where they're weak, and use their strengths against them."
She eyed the bomb she'd helped me make. "So … what, you're going to lure them to the same spot and blow them all up?"
"In a way, yes, but also no." I grinned at the exasperated expression on her face. "They'll be on their guard once they find out that I've been commissioned to decommission them. Which means they won't be going near each other. That way, if any of them gets destroyed, the others can resurrect them."
"Wait." Cherie held up her hand. "If Interpol contacts you directly, and you just go after the Blasphemies, how are they going to find out that you're on their case before you kill them?"
"Because I'm going to tell them." At her incredulous look, I explained further. "They're capable of being reasoned with. So, just like everyone else, they get a warning. Surrender to Interpol within twenty-four hours, or die."
"Well, shit." Cherie's eyebrows rose. "Interpol's not going to be thrilled."
I finished taping up the last of the plastic. "They're not paying me for happiness. They're paying me for results."
End of Part Seventy-Seven