Chapter 33
Chapter Text
It was a beautiful day in Brockton Bay. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the streets were full of the working throngs of people and the purse snatchers were running with a spring in their step.
The three thieves ran pell-mell down Main Street, shoving people aside and leaving a trail of shouting angry people behind. They'd gotten a good haul; the first one had been pickpocketing a wallet when the irate owner had noticed. At which point his two partners loafing nearby had each purse-snatched the nearest available target, throwing the scene in confusion and letting the wallet thief bolt. All three were now running pell-mell down the street, headed for the nearest alleyway where they could disappear.
Just as they reached the intersection, something large, green and disgruntled stepped out of a doorway and into their path. Two of them ran neck first into Lok'tara's outstretched arms, so violently their feet left the ground. In one fluid move she slammed them into the sidewalk. When the stars cleared they found themselves pinned to the pavement, one powerful hand around each of their necks, a tusked green woman and an impossibly large dog snarling into their faces, and God's own guess which looked more terrifying.
Their partner in crime, who had been tailing behind with the wallet still in his hand, had managed to dodge around them and was now running on down the street like the Devil himself were on his heels.
A small furry figure in a huntsman's hood stepped around the green girl. "You're letting him get away," he remarked idly, pointing at the fleeing perp.
"I've got my hands full!" the orc girl snarled. "You want him, get him yourself!"
"Fine, fine." The vulperan raised his bow and lazily fired a shot into the air. Time held its breath as a glowing blue arrow arced across the sky and plummeted down-- to pierce the sidewalk at the runner's heels. Several pedestrians who had paused to watch the action actually groaned aloud at the near miss. But before the guy could take five more steps a glowing blue tether snapped taut between his ankle and the embedded arrow. He came to a halt like a dog hitting the end of its chain and measured his full length out on the concrete.
A moment later two abnormally large ferrets piled onto him. One seized a pantsleg in its jaws, the other a jacket sleeve; they pinned the yelling crook down, growling and play-worrying the panicking thief so he couldn't get to his feet. Everyone on the street hooted and cheered and laughed, applauding as the vulpine archer sauntered lazily over and proceeded to zip-tie the crook's wrists and ankles together before taking a sweeping bow. "Ah, me public," he gloated.
Normally Brocktonites would have beaten a hasty retreat or even glared resentfully at the cape shenanigans going on. But it was spring, the Slaughterhouse Nine had been wiped from the earth, and one of the Endbringers had been thrashed; an uncommon air of hope and optimism had settled over the city, making the world-weary citizens practically giddy. The onlookers actually laughed and cheered as the two rogue heroes tied up their respective prisoners.
Fennek stiffened and looked up the street, ears pricking. "Sirens," he said. "Sounds like PRT. You call them?" he said to Lok'tara. She shrugged. a quick visual survey of the street confirmed that the only phones out were being held up to film the two heroes' actions. "They're here awful fast," he muttered as the distinctive sirens dopplered closer. In fact, it should be the cops, not the PRT.... these guys weren't capes, just common baseline crooks....
Fennek, formerly Alec, formerly Jean-Paul Vasil, hadn't been the son of the supervillain Heartbreaker for nothing. He may have not gotten much of a school education, he may have been physically, emotionally and mentally scarred, but he could smell trouble coming the way other people could smell gasoline. "Get your hearthstone, this could be bad," he said over his shoulder. He pulled a smooth riverstone carved with faintly glowing runes from his pocket as PRT transport, sirens and lights going, pulled in to block off either end of the street.
As he, Lok'tara and the pets watched warily, faceless helmeted PRT troopers poured out of the vehicles. They moment their boots hit the street their weapons were out and leveled at the two rogue heroes, handguns, rifles and three restraining foam sprayers aimed and ready. "Something the matter, officers?" He drawled loudly.
The good citizens of Brockton Bay were no slouches at sensing trouble, either. The street had cleared of bystanders within seconds of the sirens growing loud enough for non-Vulperan ears to hear. People had vanished hastily into open shop doors, closing them behind themselves. He started to feel that feeling again, that hated stress and alarm he was still so unused to after his long years with deadened emotional nerves. Widget and Gidget could sense his rising alarm and took positions on either side, arching their backs like angry, furry slinkies as they hissed at the troopers. He heard Truck, or maybe Lok'tara, growling behind him, a low rumble deep in the throat.
The speaker mounted on the front rollbar of the nearer vehicle crackled to life. The words that came out sent ice through Fennek's veins. "FENNEK AND LOKTARA, ALSO KNOWN AS JEAN-PAUL VASIL AND RACHEL LINDT, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!"
Loktara and Truck's growls rose into snarls. Fennek stood still, his triangular ears laid flat against his skull. He'd had dreams like this. Nightmares where he was walking down the street and suddenly he was back in his old body, surrounded by people--- cops, soldiers, his father's slaves, his father's victims--- shouting and pointing weapons and shouting that name. He could feel the start of a far-too-familiar panic attack rising and furiously struggled to tamp it down. Not now, he could have one of these damned breakdowns later in the privacy of his own room in the Workshop, but not now.
"How did they know??" he could hear Lok'tara saying faintly through the growing ringing in his ears. He ignored it and ran his thumb over the grooves in the hearthstone like Adrian had shown them. The warbling hum and tingling in his fingers soothed him immensely.
"Doesn't matter, hearthstone!" he managed to say. He heard a second warble behind him; good, she'd followed his cue. He wrapped his arms around Widget and Gidget and held on.
Every rifle snapped up. "BY ORDER OF THE PRT STAND DOWN!" Someone shouted.
"Sorry fellas," Fennek shouted back as the grass-green light swirled up around them. "Afraid we have to run!" Theree was a brilliant emerald flash and the street disappeared.
And not a second too soon, the teenage Vulperan thought, his pulse racing in his ears even as the portal room of their secret base formed around him. It was getting crowded, too; there were what looked like a dozen people crowding the air-hangar sized underground chamber. Not all of them were members of the Alliance. Many looked frightened or confused, others looked resolved... or outright pissed. The air reeked of agitation to his sensitive nose.
The resident blonde elf came running up. "It's going nuts out there, what's happening?"
Fennek didn't know if it was an answer but he said it anyway. "They KNEW," he blurted out, as the panic attack he'd been holding off closed in. He was struggling to breathe, and the room was going dark. "They KNEW THAT NAME. HOW DID THEY KNOW THAT NAME??"
***
Shaena Wilkins sat behind her desk with her coffee and her bagged Fugly Eggburger, ready for the start of another workday. As she started sorting through the paperwork in the inbox, she reflected for the hundredth time that she had to be the luckiest dang thirty-something office worker in the state.... between the state of the economy in Brockton Bay, and the racist bastards running loose in the streets, for a middle-aged black woman to snag a full time office job in this city was a damn miracle. For one as high-paying, in a clean, comfortable, and most of all secure office building and working for a wildly successful company like Azeroth LTD, was outright divine providence. The clerical and secretarial work was straightforward, the workload was steady but not overwhelming, and even though it was little more than a storefront office with only one or two other employees, even including the security, the atmosphere was always casually professional.
The front door buzzed. She checked the security camera on her computer monitor, then hit the button under the desktop, buzzing them in. "Good Morning, Miss Wilkins," a smooth baritone voice said behind her. "Any news?"
She turned in her office chair to face the speaker, a genuine smile on her face. "Good morning, Mr. Laborn," she said. The young man smiled back at her. It didn't hurt that her new boss was easy on the eyes, she added mentally. As always he was dressed in a sharp suit-- not overly ostentatious but more than enough to be quietly professional, and his hair was done in neat cornrows. He was tall, with dark cocoa skin and strong-jawed features. He what she was sure were gorgeous eyes behind dark glasses, but he had an equally gorgeous and easy smile.
She added a sigh to her musings. If she were only a few years younger... "The west coast sales reports are in," she said, snapping herself out of her musings. "And the Dockworker's Association sent word that another shipment of units is about ready to go out."
"Oh, good news, then," Laborn said. "We'll probably be getting a visit from the union's head of hiring, Danny Hebert," he said. He headed for his office and looked back. "Let me know when he...gets here...." he paused, a frown crossing his face. Shaena turned around to see what he was looking at. Out the front pane window she could see a pair of ominous looking SUVs pull up to the curb. As she watched several armed PRT agents, led by two humorless looking men in suits-- the sort of suits you saw on cops or government agents trying to look like professionals-- stepped out and headed for the door.
The front door buzzed, then again without a pause. "Not good," she heard Mr. Laborn mutter. He was looking at something on his phone; whatever the message was it was not making him happy. Before she could ask whether to let them in, he reached across the desk and thumbed another button next to the door release. There was a resounding CHUNK CHUNK as motorized bolts locked the steel front door in place. This was followed by the rattle of security gates coming down over the windows. To her considerable alarm several of the armored goons actually stepped forward and tried to hold the flexible metal gates up. This effort was aborted by the swish-CLUNK of solid steel shutters dropping over the front windows, inside and out. They came down so swiftly and suddenly that she saw the PRT agents actually jump back on the monitor.
Brian swore under his breath. Miss Wilkins looked at him, alarm clear on her face. "Miss Wilkins, I am so sorry," he said. "It seems that things have gone off the rails." There was a loud bang from the front door, followed by the muffled sound of someone yelling something authoritarian. Laborne shot a look at the door. His jaw tightened and his fist clenched at his side; black, ink-like wisps curled around his fist.
At the sight of the black smoke, her veins chilled. The expression on her face turned from shock to dismayed acceptance. "Oh Lord, you're a Villain, aren't you," she said in disappointment. "It figures, this job was too good to be true, and now here I am working for a supervillain..."
To her surprise Laborn grinned. "Well that's a matter up for interpretation," he said. "I promise you, everything we've done here is absolutely legit. You were doing just what it looked like; you were doing paperwork for a company that makes budget housing." There were sounds of a commotion outside; a scowl creased his face. "Though some people take exception to that."
The door to the back office opened and the security guard came through. He was, as Miss Wilkins understood, a loaner from the Dockworker's Union. Fitting; He was a big strapping barrel of a fellow who looked like he spent his days heaving shipping crates around, two to a hand. He looked seriously unsettled. "Sir,I thought you should know-- some PRT suits just tried to buffalo me into letting them in through the back entrance. I put it in lockdown, but--"
"But they don't look like the kind of people to take 'no' for an answer, right," Laborne said. "Charlie, take Miss Wilkins out the emergency exit--"
"Wait, the emergency exit, or the EMERGENCY exit?" Charlie said, confusing Shaena further.
"The EMERGENCY emergency exit," Laborne confirmed. "Set it for number seven--- you did say you were planning on seeing Miami, didn't you Miss Wilkins? See some relatives?" Shaena nodded mutely; Charlie nodded and ducked back into the storeroom.
Once he was gone Laborne retreated to his office and returned with, of all things, a bulky leather messenger bag over one shoulder. "Time to close up shop," he muttered, and opened the flap. There was a whooshing noise and to her astonishment the contents of the room-- the computer, the filing cabinets, the furniture and even the potted plants-- swirled through the air and disappeared into the bag. He patted it with one hand. "Beats cardboard boxes and duct tape," he said simply. "Follow me, Miss Wilkins..."
He took her by the arm and led her to the back storeroom. She'd only looked in there once or twice (in Brockton Bay it was only smart to check and make sure your new employer didn't have something far more insidious than extra stationery stored in back.) It wasn't used much; there was the usual post-refurbishing bric-a-brac fron when the office opened, leftover bits of junk from the previous tenants thrown in with leftovers from the carpenters and electricians and painters and what not, leaning against the bare brick walls. Charlie was in the back, standing in front of a freestanding archway of stone and brickwork. Shaena had seen it before and dismissed it as a leftover, a doorway left standing when they knocked out an interior wall. She might not have dismissed it so casually back then if, like now, the grooves in the brick had been glowing....
Charlie had his hand pressed over one of the glowing spots (odd, alien symbols, she could make them out clearly now that they were glowing). He looked over his shoulder. "We're ready to go, i think," he said, as a shimmering image, like a day-lit view seen through a film of water, filled the doorway.
"Miss Wilkins," Laborne went on. "I'm sorry to say I'm afraid this office is closing down operations. You've been an excellent employee, I'd write you a recommendation in a minute--" there was a loud rhythmic thumping at the front door. He grinned ruefully. "But, I ah, don't think it would do you much good coming from us." he handed her a large manila envelope. "It's not much of a severance package, but this should get you through the next few months." He had three duffel bags hanging from one shoulder; he slid one down to his free hand and held it out to her. "You almost forgot your bugout bag, ma'am."
She thanked him and meekly accepted it. In the age of Endbringers, bugout bags--- backpacks or suitcases filled with two or three days' worth of the essentials-- were as ubiquitous as cellphones, purses or wallets. Even schoolchildren routinely carried a few emergency odds and ends in the bottoms of their book bags (which made the Trio's routine destruction of Taylor's book bag and its contents all the more insidious---author).
"Charlie, let your boss know what's up," Laborn was saying. "If the PRT's got ants in its pants over us, they'll be showing up on the Dockworker's front porch next-- if they haven't already.") Charlie nodded. There was a boom and thump out front. Brian glared in the direction of the front door, his face a rictus of fury. Then his face suddenly went slack. "Aw sh..." he stifled an oath as he looked over the gateway.
"What's wrong, boss?" Charlie asked in a tone that suggested he didn't like what he thought was the answer.
"The failsafe isn't set up. Sparky didn't get to it.... the blasting caps are set, but we can't trip the detonator from the other side. One of us is going to have to stay behind and destroy the gate from this side." He looked grim. "Looks like I get to stay behind and teach those jackasses the consequences of kicking my front door in," Laborn growled. He pulled his sunglasses off; Shaena got her first look at his burning yellow eyes as he began to change, to shift partway into a boiling cloud of darkness--
Charlie shook his head and grabbed him by his one still-solid shoulder. "Uh uh," the Dockworker-turned-security said. "Orders from YOUR boss was that I was to get you and everyone else out if things went crazy. You'll have to get your licks in later--"
It clicked for her finally. "You're Grue, aren't you," she said. Laborne's shadowy head turned to her. "You're with the Alliance." Laborne... Grue... said nothing, so she took that as a yes. "You better get out of here, Mister Hero. Like he said, you'll get your licks in later." He looked like he was about to protest, but she held up a finger. "Mister Laborne, I'm no fool. I can see what this all is. You and your crazy friends took out the ABB, the Merchants, the Teeth, the Slaughterhouse Nine-- and you've just about kicked the slats in on the Empire Eighty Eight. You've done more for this city in one YEAR than those government flunkies out there--" she nodded in the direction of the front door--"have done in a DECADE, if EVER. You made them look like the fools they are, and it's clear they don't like that.
"You've saved the day for all of us. Let the little people do a little saving this time around."
The roiling darkness folded itself back down into the shape of a handsome young black man. Brian's face wreathed in a smile. He took her hand and held it up, kissing the knuckles. Her heart actually fluttered. Down girl, he's half your age if that!-- "Ma'am, if I'd known the thank yous were going to be so sweet, I'd have gone Hero a whole lot sooner." She huffed and waved him off, but he only smiled wider. "Go on, through the gate, I promise I'll be the next one through--" he led her by the hand as she stepped over the threshold....
...and in one tottering step, she found herself standing in a sun-drenched airport terminal. A moment's confusion, a few announcements over the intercoms and the sight of a palm tree through a nearby picture window and she'd confirmed it: she was in Miami International Airport.
She stood frozen for a minute. Then two. Neither of the men followed her; with a pang of regret she suspected neither one would. She tottered over to a chair and sat down. Nobody particularly took note of her; she was just another dazed-looking person wandering the airport between connecting flights, she supposed.
She opened the manila envelope and looked inside. Only a lifetime of playing card games with a cheating kid sister kept her face placid; there was a mix of neatly bundled cash, traveler's checks and Lord help her what looked to be gold and silver coins, flat packed in plastic sleeves like coin collectors used. It was a cash version of a bugout bag, she realized; funds she could spend or reimburse just about anywhere she might end up. And severance package her butt, if she didn't read those denomination wrong there was enough for her to live comfortably, if not lavishly, for several years. What kind of people were that paranoid, or crazy-prepared, and what did they go through to get that way?
She sat back and reflected. "How on earth am I gonna put THIS on my resume?" she wondered aloud.
Back in the now defunct office, by the time the PRT agents managed to get clearance to hack (at first digitally, then literally) through the over-armored entryway, all they had to find was an empty office, stripped to the walls, and a lone security guard fiddling with his cell phone standing watch over a pile of crumbled stone rubble...
****
Danny Hebert silenced his vibrating phone and read the text message. A plus for effort, Charlie, he thought grimly, closing the phone out, but just a little too late. He tucked his phone away in his trenchcoat pocket and turned to face the PRT agents who were crowding his office. He'd found them waiting for him when he arrived; he hadn't even had time to take his coat off. "Let me get this straight," he said to the nattily dressed man who seemed to be in charge. "You're slapping us with a Cease and Desist? On what grounds?"
The man in charge was a skinny twentysomething man with thin bony features and a bearing that just screamed "bean counter." He was dressed in a three-piece suit that was just a half a size too large for him, making him look like a teenager dressing up in his daddy's worksuit, and he had the insufferable bearing of a complete wanker who'd just been given the opportunity to throw his weight around. The three suited agents backing him up, so identical they looked like he'd picked off a rack at a retail store, just underlined his obvious wankerdom. "Oh, we're doing far more than that, Mr. Hebert," he said smugly, shoving a fistful of manila envelopes into Danny's chest. "We're shutting you down and performing a complete audit of your activities for the past twelve months. You, your union and you in particular, are in a great deal of trouble."
Time to put on the poker face, Danny decided. "Well, Agent--"
"Fokker."
Danny cocked an eyebrow. "---You would be. Anyway, Agent...er, Fokker....our only real contracts have been with Azeroth LTD. I assure you that every contract we've taken has been above board and perfectly legal. Our lawyers assure us of that."
"You should have looked closer," Fokker sneered. "We've found evidence that Azeroth LTD. is tied hip and thigh with several metahuman--"
"What, this is about NEPEA?" Danny cut in, feigning amusement. He sat on the edge of his desk and flipped through the armload of folders. "We knew that Azeroth LTD might have metahumans in their shareholders. What, you think that mass-produced mobile homes are Tinkertech or something?"
"You don't need to be selling Tinkertech be in violation of NEPEA, Mr. Hebert, as well you are aware," Fokker said. "Just having a Thinker on the board of directors will do. But NEPEA's the least of it. You're being called out in violation of title 18."
"The anti-terrorism bill?" Danny frowned. "The one where they send you up the river if you do business with--"
"Any organization recognized as a terrorist front. A definition which was expanded several years ago to include known villains or villain organizations," Fokker said. "Through Azeroth LTD and no few personal dealings on your part, you have ties with the villain team known as the Undersiders-- and through them to the supervillain Coil, the Nazi villain organization known as the Empire 88, and the Canadian supervillain Heartbreaker, who has been recognized by international law as Hostis humani generis, an Enemy of all Mankind."
Danny froze. Not only had the Undersiders formerly been in Coil's employ, Fennek was Heartbreaker's son, and Lei Ling had once been Rune, a member of the Empire 88. The ties were tenuous, and preposterous on the face of it; they were tied to Heartbreaker, Coil and the Empire in the sense that a ward full of burn victims was tied to an arsonist. They were all kids who'd been to one degree or another shanghaied by the villains in question. But by the time that inconvenient tidbit came to the surface they, Azeroth LTD., and the Dockworker's Union would be tangled up in legal red tape that could take YEARS to unravel.
But there was a much more urgent question. How could the PRT possibly know any of this....? Deep in the back of his mind, alarm bells started ringing.
There was a commotion outside. The door burst open and one of the foreman came barging in, followed by a couple of helmeted troopers. Behind him in the foyer were a large number of dockworkers, all of them looking rather agitated. "Danny, tell me this is BS," the foreman said, waving a piece of paper. "These PRT flatheads are out there, waving guns and papers around and telling us we gotta shut down!"
"They claim they've got proof we're working for supervillains," Danny snorted, putting as much deliberate derision in the remark as he could.
The foreman stared. "You gotta be shittin' me," he said bluntly. "For REAL? Since when the hell do supervillains make budget housing for the homeless?"
Fokker, displeased at not having the spotlight on himself, interjected. "We've found proof Azeroth LTD. has close financial ties to several criminal and supervillain organizations," he said, his voice raising and cracking. "As well as evidence indicating fraud, falsification of government files, tax evasion--"
"Tax evasion?? Are you PRT bozos on CRACK or something?"
Voices came in through the open door. "What is he talking about?"
"Is he shutting us down??"
"I need this job!"
"This is the first good contract we've had in years!"
"Supervillains? My MOM bought one of these trailers!"
"We still got twenty units waiting to go out! What are we supposed to do?"
"Just because some cape owns the company?"
"This is bull!"
Voices were raised, along with several fists. Some of them were still clutching tools from the workshop floor. A particularly angry dockworker made as if to lunge at Fokker; one of the troopers who'd crowded in hastily put him in an arm bar. That was enough to light the fuse. Fists flew; The three PRT agents and their troopers found out that badges and truncheons were no match for angry dockworkers armed with wrenches and crowbars.
Danny tumbled behind his desk, shoved there by the press of bodies pushing their way into the room. This was it, the balloon had gone up for sure. He dug in his coat pocket and pulled out his Hearthstone, cool and smooth to the touch. It lit up with swirling green light.
That was a mistake. One of Fokker's fellow suits had pulled his service revolver from under his coat. The flair of weird green light caught the corner of his eye and, on instinct honed by years of paranoia about capes and powers and deadly tinkertech toys, he turned, leveled his gun in Danny's direction, and fired.
****
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the PRT building, Thomas Calvert sat in an isolation cell, turning a piece of paper over and over in his hand. It had fallen from the ceiling through a tiny rectangle of light, during a brief moment when the power in the base had caused the lights to flicker-- and one presumed, the security cameras in his cell to go blank with static. Even as he watched the chemically treated slip reacted with the sweat on his fingers and dissolved into nothing. But the words that had been on it were etched on his mind.
Account Settled
Followed by a tiny symbol that could have been an inverted Omega. Or a letter "C" lying on its side. Or a cauldron.
Thomas Calvert, aka Coil, chuckled long and loud.