“That concludes my report, ma’am,” Piggot said, irritation slipping through her otherwise rigid tone.
Rebecca gave a small nod. She had to give the woman some slack. Only long familiarity, sharpened by her own Thinker-enhanced read of body language, let her see past the professional mask Piggot wore so carefully.
She glanced down at her notes and nodded again. It was a pity the Terminus project had been brought to such an abrupt end, but there was no undoing that now. They would adapt. They always did. She shuffled the papers, her gaze lingering on the results. Interesting, to say the least, especially regarding their newest prospect.
“Will we be getting any support?” Piggot asked. “The power vacuum will draw villains like moths to a flame.”
“There will be,” Rebecca replied evenly. “I will not allow this to devolve into chaos. I’ll request Legend to conduct a sweep over Brockton shortly, along with a few transfers to help you stay ahead of things.”
Surprise flickered across Piggot’s face. She clearly had not expected agreement. Rebecca noted it silently. She had rebuffed Piggot’s requests for years, always with carefully worded excuses or inflated manpower issues, all in service of preserving Terminus.
“And why now, after years?” Piggot asked, irritation no longer fully masked.
“Thinker support,” Rebecca said simply, her eyes still on the papers in front of her.
Piggot stared, waiting. The silence stretched. Rebecca did not look up. The implication was clear enough. The rest was below Piggot’s clearance.
That, it seemed, was answer enough.
Piggot exhaled through her nose, reining in her irritation. Rebecca could respect the professionalism in that. “I see. Then, is there anything else, Chief Director?”
“No. I will forward you a list of available transfers. You may select at your discretion. Legend will contact you to coordinate within the next few days.”
“I see. Then I’ll leave you to your business, ma’am.”
The call ended on that curt note. Rebecca did not mind. The bitterness of having a final plea answered so late, and for reasons so opaque, would grate on anyone, especially someone who so deeply disliked parahumans.
She checked the clock and reviewed her schedule. The call had run long. Reaching over, she pressed another button.
“Cheryl, inform my seven-thirty appointment that I will be slightly delayed.”
“Of course, ma’am,” came the reply from the speaker.
Rebecca gathered the documents outlining the most recent developments for the next Cauldron meeting and slid them into a folder.
“Door to Doctor Mother’s office.”
Space rippled to her left as a portal opened. She stepped through without hesitation.
The white, sterile, almost stale professionalism of Doctor Mother’s office greeted her on the other side.
“Hello, Rebecca,” a voice said, acidic and sharp.
She froze.
Keith sat in a chair across the room. He looked like he had not slept at all. His wavy brown hair was a mess, and dark circles were carved deep beneath his eyes. He stared at her with undisguised disgust.
Rebecca’s mind raced as she took in his posture, his clenched jaw, the tension coiled through his shoulders. He made no effort to hide it.
Anger. Self-loathing. Despair.
“You were read in,” Rebecca said quietly.
“Yes,” Keith replied, his mouth twisting into a sharp, humorless curl. “Better late than never.”
“Keith.”
“If I hear the words greater good come out of your mouth, Rebecca,” he snapped, “I might genuinely try to kill you.”
He would not. She could see that plainly enough. The threat was empty, born of exhaustion and rage rather than true murderous intent. Keith was a good person at heart.
Still, the weight of it landed hard. Guilt, old and familiar, long suppressed, stirred despite her best efforts to keep it buried.
She opened her mouth to respond.
“Nemesis. Case Fifty-Threes,” he continued, his voice rising, rough with disbelief. “Dear God. The Nine.”
He stopped.
Looked at her.
The silence that followed was worse than the shouting. Words withered before they could form. That look, raw and scathing and full of betrayal, cut deeper than any accusation. It hurt more than she expected, especially coming from one of the very few people she might have called a friend.
She said nothing.
Keith continued, the vitriol spilling out unchecked. There was no calming him, no phrasing that could soften this. So she let him speak. Let him burn himself out. When he finally stopped, it felt like hours had passed.
He slumped back in his chair, eyes hollow, heavy with loathing both for her and himself. Keith was always too kind for the choices they needed to make.
She had endured collapsing buildings. Tank shells. Impacts that would have flattened anyone else.
It was almost ironic that a look hurt more than all of that.
Rebecca inhaled slowly, forcing the tension back under control. When she spoke again, her voice was directed past Keith, toward the others in the room. “I assume there were reasons for this, then?”
Doctor Mother and Contessa had not moved throughout the entire outburst. They sat calmly, silently, as if none of it had happened. Keith glanced at them, disgust flickering briefly across his face, but he said nothing. Whatever vitriol he had left for them had likely already been spent.
Rebecca did not doubt a Path had been used to ease him into acceptance and cooperation with Cauldron.
Contessa nodded once. “I was eliminating potential issues that could be leveraged against us. Based on recent testing, I pathed the approach that best maintains Cauldron’s stability in the near future.”
Keith let out a tired laugh and waved a hand dismissively. “And telling me all of this somehow accomplishes that?”
“The new cape,” Rebecca guessed.
“Yes,” Doctor Mother replied. “Contessa cannot directly path him. However, we have analyzed his recent behavior patterns. We believe he possesses some form of foreknowledge as well.”
“He knew too much about Coil,” Contessa added. “My power could not properly path him, but fragments could still be parsed by using Coil as an intermediary. Information I could not risk pathing directly.”
Keith frowned, the anger draining away and leaving something sharper, more focused.
“I believe he is aware of Cauldron,” Contessa continued, “or close enough to be dangerous. Based on our current personality models, antagonism toward us is the most likely outcome.”
“And Legend?” Rebecca asked.
“He has the highest probability of cooperation with him,” Contessa said. “I cannot path the subject perfectly. Bringing Legend in was the only viable option if he chose to reveal what he knew. Sending Legend in blind carried a significant risk of having him turn fully against us.”
Keith scowled but stayed silent.
“That’s… difficult,” Alexandria said. “Do we know how much he actually knows?”
Cauldron’s leverage was not just power or resources. It was ignorance. The carefully cultivated mystique. The fact that many indebted capes remained compliant precisely because they did not grasp the true scope of what Cauldron was, or what it could do.
“I am confident he is aware of my existence to some degree,” Contessa replied. “And he knows about Scion as well. Which, in some respects, is beneficial.”
Keith turned sharply toward her. “Why? Twenty minutes ago, you were listing dozens of reasons why no one could be allowed to know any of this. Including me.”
“Yes,” Contessa said calmly. “But the model I have built of him, limited though it is, indicates he is not a madman.”
She paused.
“He is heading toward the Nine as we speak. Not out of fear, but as a step in a plan. A goal.”
The realization struck Rebecca all at once.
“He thinks he can win.”
The thought slipped free before she could stop it. It was not one she allowed herself often. After all these years. After all the compromises, the sacrifices, the things she refused to examine too closely. Most days, it felt like screaming into the void, clinging to a final desperate gambit without ever truly knowing if victory was possible.
“The finer details of his power remain unclear,” Contessa continued, unbothered. “But if his belief proves accurate, then the outcome favors us.”
Legend’s frown deepened. “Your power doesn’t work on him at all? From what you’ve told me, he’s a unique case.”
“It’s twofold,” Contessa replied. “I can’t directly path him. There is an aspect of his ability that actively interferes with being pathed. I can work around it indirectly, build behavioral models, extrapolate likely actions.”
She shook her head slightly.
“But whatever mechanism governs when he gains power, or what form that power takes, is a complete blind spot to me. Every workaround I’ve attempted has failed.”
Alexandria leaned forward. “Nothing?”
“Nothing at all,” Contessa said. “We do, however, believe we’ve identified the trigger. Similar to agents, his power appears to be governed by conflict and rewards him for it. The rapid accumulation of abilities following the Simurgh battle and his actions against the Brockton gangs is proof enough. His power also does not appear to have a cap.”
Silence settled over the room.
“Then…” Rebecca began.
Contessa nodded once. “Arrangements will be made.”
[Rolling Gold Gacha Ticket]
[Kiriichimonji]
|Rare Item|
Akame ga Kill — A katana that inflicts wounds that refuse to heal by normal means. Healing of at least Epic rank is required to mend injuries caused by Kiriichimonji.
I slid my hand into the inventory and drew the katana free.
It was… plain. A clean, unadorned katana resting in a wooden sheath. Despite its normal appearance, I grinned. This was going to be pretty damn useful.
“Catch.”
I tossed it toward Igris.
He caught it without looking, fingers closing around the hilt. A few test swings followed. The blade hummed faintly as it cut through the air. He paused, adjusted his grip, then gave me a thumbs-up.
Good enough for me.
I leaned back against the edge of the roof and let my gaze drift upward. The sky was washed in that hazy late evening light.
Prelati was somewhere inside the building. Ridley was off playing in the ruins of the abandoned warehouse we’d taken over. After we regrouped following Coil’s death, Prelati had thrown up a bounded field to keep us hidden.
Unfortunately, Lung had slipped the noose.
According to Prelati, a portal had opened beneath him without warning. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. I scowled, already counting it as a lost ticket. Cauldron bullshit, most likely. I still didn’t have a clean read on their game. I’d been briefly switching to the Frenzied Flame now and then, to throw off any precognition aimed my way.
Whether it actually worked to deter them was another matter.
At least the pair followed my orders. No unnecessary maiming. No dead government heroes. The PRT had been left alone.
Brockton Bay still crawled with capes. The Merchants. The remnants of Empire Eighty-Eight. Freelancers. The Undersiders. Uber and Leet. Plenty of capes I can hunt down, but none of it was the priority.
Stopping the Nine came first.
There were moral reasons for that, plenty of them. God knew how many people were already suffering under their games. But beyond that, cutting off any chance of a Golden Morning starting early mattered more than all of it combined.
My phone vibrated.
I’d asked Dinah a series of roundabout questions about the Nine, careful to avoid anything that might trip Jack’s shard. Broad questions mostly focused on everyone but him.
It seemed to have paid off.
I glanced at the screen, then sat up.
“Prelati! Ridley! Time to go!”
“Oh?” Prelati, called as Ridley, hauled him up onto the roof. “Is the boring time finally done, Master?”
“It is,” I said. “The bastards we’re going after are fair game. Feel free to show them whatever madness you want.”
That earned a wide smile from the mad magi.
We climbed onto Ridley’s back, settling in as his wings shifted beneath us.
“Head south,” I said. “To Boston.”
***
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters if you wanna read ahead.