I folded my arms. ”Meet me halfway.”
“Twelve minutes,” Defiant said. ”This isn’t the time to be hard-nosed. You don’t want this fight any more than we do. If this happens, your team will be at a very real risk of death or arrest. Three of the A.I. models, Dragon’s, mine, the Brockton Bay heroes and no less than ten visiting heroes.”
“This is exactly the time to be hard-nosed. The Undersiders get left alone. Those are my terms. Figure it the fuck out.”
There was a pause, an exchange of looks between Defiant and Dragon.
“We’re talking to Chevalier and the Chief Director,” Defiant said.
“Good,” I answered him.
A few seconds passed. I glanced at the sun, dipping beneath the mountains to the west.
“Miss Militia will fill in as an interim PRT director,” a male voice sounded from the speaker at Dragon’s shoulder. Chevalier. ”I’ll arrange it. We have leverage, with the current state of emergency and the issues that are liable to come up with the announcement that we can make use of the portal.“
“And I’ll remain hands off, unless I’m replaced or I have no other choice?” Miss Militia said.
“We’ll keep you in position for as long as we can, postpone any changes or replacements until people get more comfortable with the idea. With luck, we can segue into keeping you in position on a permanent basis. Failing that, we tap someone sympathetic to our aims.“
“Damn it,” Miss Militia muttered. ”I feel like my lifespan just got cut short. Double the work, too.”
“We’ll figure out a way to make it work,” Defiant said. He looked at me. ”Satisfactory?”
“Yes. Phone?”
Miss Militia tapped out a password, then handed me hers.
I dialed Tattletale’s number.
When Tattletale didn’t pick up on the first ring, I felt my heart jump into my throat. She’d never done that.
“‘Lo,” Tattletale said. I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. She continued, “Call display says PRT Phone server. Who am I talking to?“
“It’s me,” I said.
“You! You wouldn’t believe how worried I’ve been. Or the headache I have. You know they gave you bad info?“
“I know,” I said.
“The stuff you were writing, it didn’t match up. Tried to tell you, but you couldn’t understand me.“
“I know,” I said. ”Just tell me… everyone’s safe?”
“Everyone’s accounted for. Shit, what did they do?“
“Tattletale-”
“They tried something. What happened?”
“Tattletale,” I said, raising my voice a notch. ”Time’s short. Call off the hounds, literal or otherwise. Delay.”
“Delay?”
“They’re making temporary offers,” I said, eyeing the heroes, “We can make some temporary concessions.”
“Okay. But I can’t hold back some of the bastards we put into play. I can stop them, but that’s it. They’ll leave, and we’re that much weaker.“
“That’s fine,” I told her. ”These guys are at a bit of a disadvantage too.”
“Okay… let’s see… alright. Holding off for… half an hour? Adding fifteen minutes to the clock?” Tattletale asked.
“Longer?” I asked.
“Any longer and more mercenaries start walking away, deciding to take the half we paid up front.“
“That’ll do, then, I guess.” I said, giving the heroes a thumbs up.
“You said they’re weaker, huh? So it’s true. I didn’t want to use my power to verify… but the rumor mill is right? Alexandria bit it?“
“Yes. I-” I stopped.
“You? You did it?” Tattletale asked. ”Guys-“
Her voice faded as she turned away from the phone.
“Don’t tell them,” I said, once I realized what she was saying.
It was too late. I could hear jeers and whooping from Regent and Imp in the background. I couldn’t make out everything Grue was saying, but I caught something along the lines of ‘Jesus H. Fucking Christ.‘
“It’s too late to matter, honey bear,” Tattletale said. ”I don’t have much juice powerwise, but I don’t need any to know this much. Word’s already out about Alexandria.“
“Word’s out about Alexandria,” I said, for the benefit of the heroes.
Defiant folded his arms.
“Anything else I can do?” she asked.
“Stay near a phone. Thank you,” I said. And keep the jailbreak specialists on hand, I thought. Not that I could say that with the Protectorate members around me.
“One disaster averted,” Miss Militia said.
“Held at bay,” Defiant said. ”The word’s spreading. It’s starting to pop up on isolated channels.”
“We’ll need to get our official word out first,” Miss Militia said.
“What do you even say?” I asked. ”She’s dead.”
“And that will make a lot of people lose hope,” Miss Militia said. ”We have other ideas, but we need something bigger, more concrete.”
“But she’s dead,” I said. ”The only way to change the reaction is to convince everyone we have a winning game plan anyways. That the PRT isn’t fucked, which it is.”
“The A.I. craft,” Defiant said, turning to look at the Pendragon. ”Expendable, versatile, devastating in their own right, and there’s image attached to them. They’ll get the public’s imagination fired up.”
Miss Militia shook her head. ”There’ll be doubts, it’s not enough. Behemoth can generate electromagnetic waves that wipe out electronics. Even many reinforced electronics, if he’s close enough. The Simurgh can scramble coding. We don’t just have to convince the public. We need to convince the heroes, and they know these things.”
“And they know what the difference is going to be, without Alexandria on the front lines,” Defiant said. He sighed audibly. ”Four times now, she’s been the deciding factor in beating the Simurgh back early. Once with Leviathan, when I was new to the Protectorate.”
“We can reduce the impact of the loss with careful word choice and a good speech,” Miss Militia said. ”If Skitter is willing to call off her other dogs.”
I glanced at the phone in my hand. ”Okay.”
“No demands this time?”
“Believe it or not, I want to fix things,” I said, as I dialed Mr. Calle’s number. ”We’re on the same side here. The difference is I consider my friends to be a part of a workable scenario. I have my issues with you guys, but I’m extending the benefit of a doubt again, and I’m hoping it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Again.”
The phone rang. Mr. Calle answered. ”Quinn Calle speaking.“
“It’s Taylor Hebert.”
“Ah, excellent. I’d feared they’d executed you or sent you to be incarcerated.“
“I’m sorry for, um, that,” I said.
“They had one of your good friends in a body bag, or they led you to believe they did. You reacted as many would, with anger and pain. You were simply, how to put it… better equipped than the rest of us mere mortals to express that anger and pain.“
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left.”
“Rest assured, Ms. Hebert, I’ve dealt with worse.“
“Okay,” I said. ”I need you to back off on whatever threats you’re directing at the PRT.”
“No can do, I’m afraid.“
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, right at this moment, you’re in the custody of the heroes. They’ve given you a phone, no doubt, and they’ve caught you at an emotionally vulnerable moment. For your benefit, I can’t assume you’re of sound mind or that you aren’t being coerced.“
“How do we change your mind?”
“I wouldn’t mind an invitation to the discussion.“
“We’re sending a vehicle your way,” I said. ”Where are you?”
“The lovely little shop with the donuts I visited this morning.“
/> “Okay,” I said, putting my hand over the mouthpiece, “He says-”
I stopped. The armored suit Miss Militia had left was already moving, heading directly for my territory. She’d been listening in.
“Never mind.”
“Let’s talk about our game plan,” Miss Militia said. ”We’ve got the peripheral stuff in the works. You’re bringing the suits in?”
“Yes,” Defiant said. ”She is. Chevalier is on the way as well, and we’ve contacted the media.”
Miss Militia nodded. ”The two major crises are being held at bay, thanks to Skitter’s cooperation. We can’t keep the word from spreading through other channels, so let’s cover every base we can. We only get one shot at this.”
“Key points being Skitter’s role in this, and addressing how we deal with Alexandria’s demise,” Defiant said.
“My role?” I asked. ”I thought you wanted me to call off the attack?”
“No,” Miss Militia said. ”There’s more.”
I narrowed my eyes, very conscious of the fact that there were three rather powerful capes and one mechanized suit in my immediate vicinity. ”What more?”
She glanced at Defiant, then back to me. ”We’d like you to be there for the conference with the media. Dragon’s going over footage, and so long as your lawyer doesn’t release the unedited content, we can hide the worst of the details from the media. Shape the narrative.”
“You’re lying,” I said.
“We’re revising the truth,” she said. She paused. ”Yes. We’re lying.”
“And you want me to participate in that?”
“Yes. Your presence will lend a degree of legitimacy to what we’re saying. We’re on opposite sides, in the public eye, making it all the more meaningful if we agree on what happened.”
“Are you fighting to keep the PRT going, or are you working to rebuild it?” I asked.
“Rebuild it,” she said. No hesitation.
“And you’re doing it by starting with a lie. Just like they did.”
“Yes,” she said. Again, there was no hesitation. ”There’s no pretty, perfect answers, and concessions have to be made. Questions and issues on a greater scale mean more repercussions for failure, and they call for bigger concessions if we want to ensure success.”
“And this is a big event, a lot of power,” I said. ”Big concessions?”
“Yes,” she said. She looked ten times as tired as she said it.
I folded my arms. I couldn’t disagree. I didn’t like it. But I’d been a leader. I’d made shady calls. I’d hurt people. Had lied, cheated, stolen, killed.
The sun was gone, hidden by the mountains, and the clouds were changing from purple to black. How long until the new deadline? Twenty minutes?
I could see Defiant, saw him conversing with Dragon and Miss Militia.
I saw how he folded his arms, still holding his spear, so it rested against his shoulder. How he planted his feet further apart. A warrior’s stance.
It inspired a memory, of my first night out in costume. The bad guy lying defeated on the street below, the city quiet around us, the dark sky overhead, with only meager light illuminating us. Framing the situation, talking about options and priorities.
Not so different from the scene here. The villain wasn’t here. Alexandria had fallen a distance away. But the city was quiet, the area still blockaded, the sky was dark, and the topic of discussion…
I thought of something, one moment in that night’s discussion when I’d thought that maybe Armsmaster could live up to the reputation, that he could really truly be someone who I could look up to.
“Hey,” I said.
Heads turned my way.
“As far as Alexandria goes, what if we turn it around?”
“Turn it around?”
“Way back, when I first started out in costume, I had a talk with Armsmaster. He told me that I should be happy I was mistaken for a villain, because it meant I didn’t have to fight the Undersiders. This was before I joined them. It reminded me of how I’d been trying to deal with the shit I was going through back then, turning negatives into positives. I think we can do that here.”
“How?” Miss Militia asked. She glanced at Dragon’s craft, just now arriving to bring my lawyer to us.
“So long as we’re lying,” I said, “Let’s go wholesale. We present Alexandria as the villain she was.”
“That’ll make the situation worse,” Miss Militia said.
“It depends on how we present the idea,” I said.
Dragon’s suit once again came to a stop at the edge of the roof, as it had when it had delivered Miss Militia. It turned sideways, and the body opened, revealing my lawyer, looking more stressed than I’d seen him, in the midst of a rather compact cockpit.
Mr. Calle accepted Miss Militia’s offered hand in stepping down to the rooftop, and seemed to relax the instant his feet touched solid ground.
“Whoo,” he said. ”Never let it be said that my job isn’t an adventure. You’re well, Ms. Hebert?”
“I am.”
“You haven’t made any deals?”
“Nothing permanent.”
“Good.”
Dragon touched my shoulder. When I turned her way, she set her fingers in my hand, pulling me after her with the light contact of two of her fingertips. Gentle, easy to avoid, but clear enough.
I followed as she led me to her hovering Dragon-craft, Mr. Calle a step behind me. Mr. Calle had longer legs than I did, but he was the one who hesitated at the gap before stepping into the open cockpit.
Once I was on board, Dragon reached over to the wall and opened a shallow drawer, no more than three inches deep. The drawer opened with a noise like something from a science fiction movie.
I stared at the contents.
“How?” I asked, and all of the confidence was gone from my voice. ”Wait, nevermind. You’re fu- you’re tinkers, damn it.”
Mr. Calle stepped up beside me, placing one hand on my shoulder in an uncharacteristic need for some support. He looked down. ”I take it we’ve reached something of a consensus here?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Yes,” Defiant said, from the rooftop.
“Then it seems I need to draw up some paperwork,” Mr. Calle said. ”For formality’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Do it in five minutes,” Miss Militia said, from Defiant’s side. ”We’re out of time. The media’s here.”
“Five?” Mr. Calle seemed momentarily pained. ”Paper, fast.”
Dragon handed him a sleek keyboard, pointing to a screen. He started typing.
“I’ll credit you this, Ms. Hebert,” my lawyer said, as he typed away, tabbing to different windows to draw up pages he could copy-paste from. ”You manage a great deal of grief and chaos in very short spans of time.”
■
Chevalier had arrived, and stepped into the cockpit. Gold and silver armor, his cannonblade resting against one shoulder. He briefly clasped hands with Defiant.
I stopped tidying my hair long enough to take the stylus from Dragon, scribbling my signature on the offered pad. Others were already present – Miss Militia’s and Defiant’s. The Chief Director’s signature appeared as the document was signed from a remote location.
“You’re ready?” Chevalier asked me.
I shook my head. ”No.”
“But you’re willing?”
“Yeah,” I said. I rubbed my arms, then zipped up my prison-issue sweatshirt. ”Has to be done, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not pretty,” he said. ”There’s a lot of ugliness in this. But yes. This gives us the best chance.”
I nodded. I still had Miss Militia’s phone. I dialed Tattletale.
“Yo?“
“Turn on the TV,” I said. ”And call them off. Unless something goes horribly wrong, this is it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. No, I thought.
I hung up.
All to
gether, we stepped out of the cockpit and walked around the craft.
The Wards were here. Clockblocker, Vista, Kid Win and Crucible, standing on guard.
Rounding the corner, we approached the open street where the crowd of reporters waited. Television cameras shifted to focus on the reporters announcing our arrival, or to follow us as we walked. Tripod-mounted lights cast shafts of light across the road, all converging on one point, the makeshift stage – the flat ledge of the Dragon-suit’s wing, five feet off the ground. Voices bubbled around us, a million questions, almost a singular noise.
Chevalier stepped forward, and they simultaneously drew quiet. He had a presence, a kind of nobility that garnered respect.
“Today, not two hours ago, Alexandria was killed.”
I could barely see the reporters past the massive lights that were shedding light on the stage, on us. They were solemn, focused on every single word. They didn’t even flinch at the news. They’d already known.
“Alexandria was a veteran among capes. She was one of the first capes, one who was present for almost every major catastrophe in the last twenty years. With every challenge she surmounted, she reaffirmed our belief in her, showed us how strong she was, how impervious and noble she was.”
He lowered his head. I resisted the urge to fidget. This was showing live, to homes across America.
On a rooftop nearby, capes teleported in. Other capes, flying, were touching down on top of a news car. Dovetail, with Sere beside her.
“If that was it, this would be hard enough,” he spoke. ”But she was a mythic figure in her own way. She was a living symbol, recognized across the world. She was a leader among us. She was a friend to some of us.”
I sensed rather than saw Eidolon, hovering well above the reach of the lights. Legend was close too, though less intent on hiding.
I steeled myself for what came next, willing myself to stay calm, to not give anything away.
“And she was a traitor.”
That garnered a response from the news reporters. Shouted questions pierced the silence that loomed in the wake of Chevalier’s words.
He continued. ”When Alexandria was slain, earlier today, it was done by individuals standing on this stage.”
Every word carefully chosen, so it was technically or at least partially true. Alexandria was a traitor, with her involvement with Cauldron, she had been slain at the hands of someone on the stage.
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