32
Chapter 32
I, Panacea
Part Thirty-Two: Tattletale Saves the World (Part Two)
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: This chapter was so big I chopped it in half. Now for the grand finale.]
[A/N 3: In case it wasn't clear, the Zion scene was adapted using a certain amount of dialogue from canon.]
A Few Days Later, in a PRT Sub-Basement
Skitter
Taylor looked at the row of sleeping clones. Each one dressed in a hospital gown, they were so alike it was creepy as fuck, like looking at a series of first-aid dummies; albeit, each one wearing a headset with a cable that led back to where Cranial was setting up her apparatus. "They do look a little bit like him, don't they?"
Riley, walking between Lisa and Amy, nodded. "Little bit, yeah. But younger. We decided to decant them at effective age sixteen."
"Because you didn't want to look an adult version in the face?" snarked Alec. Like Taylor and Brian, he'd opted to come along in case things went wrong. And Taylor had to admit, dealing with a whole bunch of Jack Slash clones was the textbook example of a situation where things could go very badly wrong indeed.
"Well, that was one aspect," Riley admitted. "But also, teenagers are right in the middle of the skewed risk-reward phase of brain development. They'll do anything to fuck up someone or something they don't like, even if they don't get anything out of it. The spite levels are amazing."
Taylor shuddered, thinking of Emma and Sophia. "Yeah, I can totally confirm that. If you think they need pointers, I've got a bunch of truly nasty emails we can give them to read."
"Well, first we'd need to teach them to read," Lisa observed accurately. "But I'll definitely keep that in mind." She raised her voice, addressing Cranial. "So, how's it looking?"
"I managed to put together the memory set that Panacea described," Cranial answered. Now that she was 'on the job', as it were, she was wearing her costume and goggles, featuring brain-scan graph lines. "Locked away, betrayed by parents, discovery that the world wasn't what he'd expected. But I'm still not sure it'll be enough to trigger them."
"Let me see," Riley said, breaking away from Amy and Lisa and heading over to where the apparatus was taking shape. "You need certain brain conditions, otherwise the whole thing flops."
Taylor lowered her voice as she spoke to Brian. "I'm truly, honestly glad that I'm on this side of this setup and not the other side."
"Mm-hmm." He nodded in agreement, looking at the whole arrangement. "I keep thinking this looks like some Aleph idea of how mad-scientist Tinkers work, and then I realise that we're working with one ex-mad scientist and one reasonably sane one. And it's the sane one who's going to be implanting memories and personalities into these guys."
"Actually, that's another thing I was wondering about," she murmured. "What happens after this? To the clones, I mean? In science fiction, they usually conveniently break down into mush or something after they're no longer needed in the plot, but if these are living, breathing human beings … what do we do with them?"
"That's definitely a good question," Lisa said from right beside her. "What do you do with the person—or people—who were strong enough to beat the Big Bad and save the world, after the world doesn't need saving anymore? What if they're seen as a threat? Do you shoot them in the back of the head, or let them go live a fulfilling life elsewhere?"
Brian and Taylor looked at her. After a few moments, Taylor ventured, "Uh … I don't know?"
"Nor do I." Lisa gestured at the row of clones. "But that's not the question we need to be asking right now. It's one we won't even have to face unless we're successful. Right now, we need to be focusing on the important aspect. That is, making sure what we're doing here works."
"What?" Cranial's voice was raised, though she was talking to Riley rather than responding to Lisa's statement. "Why would you change the settings that way?"
"Because that's how we get what we want." Riley had certainly come a long way since Taylor first met her. Between Amy's careful fostering of a stable mental state—something absolutely to be desired in someone with Riley's gifts—and Lisa's snarky but equally thoughtful treatment of her, the younger girl was nowhere near as uncertain of herself as she'd once been. "See, if you do this and this, you make them much more likely to trigger. The brain's primed for it."
"I guess, but … geez …" Cranial ran her fingers through her hair. "I always calibrate my gear to minimise stress on the subject. Allows for better memory retention if they don't have all that adrenaline bouncing around in their system. And yeah, I know we need stress for this, but it feels so much like we're deliberately doing a bad job."
"If you didn't want them to trigger, yeah, this would be a terrible job." Riley sounded almost cheerful. Amy was already headed in that direction, but it looked like she wasn't needed this time. "But that's what we need, so this is how we have to do it."
"Of course, once we're done here, we're going to need you to wipe those settings off your system," Amy said as she got to them. "I don't know about you, but I don't think the PRT would appreciate it if you started deliberately triggering people with powers."
"Serious question here: can they actually ban me from doing it?" Cranial gestured at where Riley was still fine-tuning the adjustments. "If someone specifically pays me to help them trigger with powers and I'm able to give them what they want, is it illegal?"
"I'd have to check with Brandish on that one," Amy admitted. "However, it's not the legal side you should be thinking about. I have it on very good authority that triggers are going to become more unstable in the near future. Do you want to cause someone to trigger with a power that causes them to burst uncontrollably into flame, incinerating you and all your gear? Because that's a distinct possibility with unstable triggers."
Cranial paused. "… ah. That is definitely something to think about. Thanks for the heads-up. No causing trauma with implanted memories. Got it."
Amy smiled dryly. "Thank you. We appreciate your discretion in the matter."
A PRT Interview Room
Tattletale
Lisa eyed the clone, who looked back at her curiously. "Hi," she said. "Can you understand me?"
"Sure, I can understand you." His voice held a Midwestern accent, but otherwise seemed normal enough. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans, and looked in all ways like a perfectly average teenage version of Jack Slash. "Who are you?"
"I'm Lisa. You're Jacob One, am I right?" She reached out her hand; he shook it without squeezing too hard. Good; she implanted basic common courtesies, at least.
"That's what the lady called me. We've all got numbers because we're all clones of someone called Jacob, right?"
Well, Jack Slash hadn't been stupid, just overconfident. "Correct. Do you have any questions?"
"Just a few." He glanced down at himself, then at his hands, before looking back up at her. "Are there other Lisas, or are you the only one?"
"The one and only," Lisa replied, girding herself for what was coming next.
"Then why are we clones? What's different between you and us? What happened to Jacob Zero?"
"That's a series of questions with some difficult answers," she admitted. "There's a great danger overshadowing the world, and we specifically needed a particular super-power to defeat it. You possess that super-power. As for what happened to your progenitor …" There was no way to sugar-coat this, especially as he would be intuitively aware of any deception. "… he was a bad man, who would've caused the world to burn for his own amusement. He would never have surrendered, and he'd murdered many people, so he was executed." She paused. "You do know what the world is, yes?" The last thing she wanted was to make fatally wrong assumptions at this point.
"Yes." He nodded. "It's very large and has a lot of people. There are many nations, and we live in the United States of America. We are supposed to protect it. I don't know many details past that."
"Well, that's a start." She gave him a smile. "Did you have any more questions?"
"Just one." He squared his shoulders. "What is the danger facing the world, and how are we supposed to defeat it?"
She took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. "The danger is a creature calling itself Zion. It looks like a golden man, and it has all the powers that it can possibly have. Its one weakness is its emotional state. Simply put, it can't handle being made to feel bad. That's where you come in. Once we introduce you to it, it will think it has to listen to you. That's when you and your brothers all start undermining its confidence. It will be able to hear you when you want it to." She leaned forward. "You have to make it want to die. That's the only way we can beat it."
For the first time, Jacob One smiled. It was a light, easy smile, but it reminded Lisa so much of images she'd seen of Jack Slash that she shuddered.
"Oh," he said. "I think we can manage that."
Panacea
Amy and Riley watched as, on the screen, Jacob One rejoined his brothers in the recreation lounge that had been sequestered for their use. The door opened behind them, and Lisa slipped into the room.
"Hey," said Amy. "How'd it go?"
"Just a little scary, actually." Lisa sounded shaken. "He's extremely switched on for someone with his minimal knowledge of the world. Asked all the right questions. And when I told him the game plan, he was almost terrifyingly enthusiastic."
Now why doesn't that surprise me? asked Mike. They're basically attack dogs, and you've waved red meat in front—oh, hey. Now that's interesting.
What? Amy stared at the screen, wondering what she'd missed. "Mike says something interesting is happening."
Lisa didn't look happy at that. "With the Jacobs, 'interesting' is not a good thing. Let me see." She leaned in between Amy and Riley to peer at the screen.
"I don't get it," Riley complained. "What's supposed to be happening? What did he see?"
"Motherfucker," whispered Lisa. "Can you see it?"
Amy peered at the milling group on the screen. Jacob One was moving around the room, and quite clearly conversing with them; there were occasional nods as people grasped what he was saying. But then she realised what Mike had noticed and Lisa had picked up on. Despite the sound pickup being active, Jacob One's voice wasn't audible.
At least, not to them.
"Broadcast is making them effectively telepathic," Amy whispered, as if to not be heard by the clones on the screen. "We just created a hivemind."
"Well, not totally, but close enough," Lisa agreed. "With practice, there's a good chance that they'll get to the point where communication will be near-instantaneous between them. I'm already seeing signs of it right now."
"A bunch of high functioning telepathic sociopaths who can gang up on any cape they decide they don't like and basically influence them into suicide? And who can't be picked off one by one without alerting the rest?" Riley looked troubled. "I'm not so sure this is such a good idea after all."
"Oh, it's totally not a good idea," Lisa said soberly. "However, it's still better than the alternative."
Amy nodded grimly. "Every alternative."
Blasto's Base
Muttering to himself, Rey took the last bit of the genetic sample out of the storage chiller.
He'd separated it out early on, when growing the first clone, and stored it away separately. Not that he'd had any particular intention of doing something specific with it; it was just something that he did. Every new sample was a good sample, and if the PRT thought it had all been used up, then that was their bad luck.
But after his treatment by Tattletale and that little know-it-all shit, he'd gotten pissed off. And that was when the stunning amount of money the PRT had been willing to pay for him to grow them twenty clones had started to tweak his curiosity. Who had the sample come from that they wanted twenty clones of him?
It had occurred to him that if he grew a clone of his own, he could figure out what they were up to, or at least make an educated guess. From there, while it was probably a bad idea to directly blackmail the PRT (he'd never heard of anyone succeeding), there was a better than average chance that someone out there in the villain cape community would be interested in paying for the information. And if it happened to be the clone itself that was special, then he'd have that too.
Putting the sample into the cloning tank along with one of his seeds, he started the process running. Rather than stop it when the clone was a teenager, he decided to push it all the way to adulthood and figure out what was going on from there.
One way or the other, he'd get some satisfaction out of this.
Treat me like your little bitch, will you?
Director Emily Piggot, PRT
"What do you mean, they're a hive mind?" Emily stared at Tattletale, horrified. "They can Master any cape just by talking to them, and they're a telepathic hive mind? What the hell were you thinking?"
Panacea cleared her throat firmly. "We were thinking, Director, that we needed a weapon that Scion can't dodge or suborn. A weapon that hits him in his weakest point. And the Jacobs are that weapon. Whatever else they can do, they can't murder millions in just a few seconds."
"They're still cloned from Jack Slash's tissues!" Emily had been read in on this, as an essential part of the project being based in the PRT ENE building. This wasn't to say she was in any way happy about it. "And now you've got twenty of them! Why do you need twenty?"
"I don't know that we need twenty," Tattletale admitted. "But as it would apparently have only taken Jack Slash about one minute to talk Scion into murdering every human being in every universe everywhere, I'm going with overkill here. We need to beat him, and this is our best shot."
Emily could feel the conversation getting out of her control. "At least tell me you coded in a kill-switch. Brain bombs like Bakuda had with the ABB. A genetic virus. Something that lets us press a button and end them if it ever becomes necessary." By 'us' she meant 'me', and by 'if it ever becomes necessary' she meant 'as soon as possible after Scion dies'.
Tattletale shook her head. "Sorry. We literally couldn't. Remember his power. He can read any cape like a book. If we'd done that, every time we interacted with him while knowing this had been done, he would've picked it up. Right now, he's on our side. We do not want him turning against us, for whatever reason, viable or otherwise. Just remember: Jack Slash took over the Slaughterhouse Nine when he was four years younger than the Jacobs are right now."
Emily pursed her lips, seeing the loophole. "As capes, you can't make plans against them. But I'm not a cape, and neither are any of my troopers …"
Panacea facepalmed. Emily paused, wondering if she'd just misread the situation somehow.
"No!" snapped Tattletale. "Do not go there! Whatever you're planning, drop it right the fuck now. All it'll serve to do is turn them against us."
"What?" Emily glared at her. "What are you talking about? You all but told me that my troopers and I were the only ones who could plan anything against them!"
"Uggghhhhh." Tattletale dragged her hands over her face, then took a moment to compose herself. "Yes, but so long as you said and did nothing to make us think you going to act on that information, we could've walked out of here with no awareness of your intentions. But now that we've heard it, we're going to know about it, and the moment we meet the Jacobs they're going to figure out that something's up. Unless you can convince me, here and now, that you're not going to go through with it."
Shit. Once it was pointed out, Emily saw the trap that she'd just stepped into. Panacea's odd passenger could theoretically shield her from the Jacobs and their power … but still, they'd know she was hiding something. And there was no way Emily could conceal her intentions from Tattletale's power.
There was only one thing for it. "Very well, I'm standing down from any such plans. I won't attack the Jacobs, I won't order anyone to attack them, and I won't participate in any plans to do so." It was the truth; it had to be, to pass the world's ultimate lie detector.
The irritating part was, she couldn't even blame Tattletale for setting the trap. The information had been there all along; she'd just neglected to consider that one tiny aspect. Every cape in the building, in the city, is an unwitting mole for them. She just thanked her lucky stars that they couldn't read non-capes the way they could capes.
Tattletale peered at her, then nodded. "Thank you. I've known people who couldn't do that." She turned to Panacea. "Let's go. She's telling the truth."
Emily made herself sit calmly until the door shut behind the two girls, then carefully counted another twenty seconds before she stood up and punched the desk. Nursing her stinging knuckles, she sat down again, then hit the intercom. "Renick, could you come in here a moment, please? There's some information I need to fill you in on."
The Streets of York, United Kingdom
Jacob One
Jacob thought the strange doorway was very interesting. It hadn't been there earlier, and when he stepped through with Lisa, it felt as though his connection with his brothers had been greatly stretched out. "How does this work?" he asked, once they were on the other side.
"It's a power thing," Lisa explained. The explanation didn't actually tell him much, but he also got the impression that she wasn't going to tell him any more than that. This was fine. It was more fun to figure out things for himself, anyway.
There were things Lisa and Amy and Riley were hiding from him, he knew. Some of these things were no doubt innocuous; merely attempts to not confuse or overwhelm him with the complexity of the world. But there were other things they weren't telling him that he felt he really should know.
He didn't have enough experience of the world yet to be sure, but he suspected that there were people he couldn't listen to or speak to with his power. After all, he could occasionally feel the vaguest hints of other minds he could communicate with in the building, but they were far too few to be everyone who lived or worked in a building so large. What decided him was how he was sure Amy and Lisa were too young to be in charge of the building, yet neither he nor his brothers had ever been introduced to an older authority figure.
It followed logically that if these non-communication people knew of him, they would be scared of him. After all, no matter how they tried to hide it, Lisa and Amy were definitely scared of him. Riley wasn't, but she didn't like him much either. When she looked at him, it was like she was seeing someone else. He suspected that she had known Jacob Zero, and knew how bad he'd been.
The people his power could affect weren't a real danger to him. Despite their fear, they never gave so much as a hint of ill intent toward him. Even if they had, their plans would've been easy to anticipate.
Those his power couldn't hear or speak to, on the other hand, were a very real potential danger to him, because he could neither anticipate their decisions nor suggest a less dangerous course of action. He and his brothers had already discussed this, and everyone knew that when and if the time came, they would have to be ready to act.
Until that time, of course, they still had a job to do.
Standing on the street, looking around at the odd sights, Jacob One began to accept that the world was indeed a much larger and stranger place than he'd first surmised. The few movies they'd been given to watch had given them this impression, but this verified it beyond all doubt.
For one thing, it was raining. He had seen rain in movies, but this was his first time in person. Water just falling from the sky seemed counter-intuitive, but still, it seemed to happen. While the water was cold, and his clothes were getting wet, it didn't bother him overly much. He knew that if he caught cold, Amy would heal him.
Looking around, he also verified that there were people whose intentions he couldn't hear, and whose actions he couldn't influence, hurrying here and there to get out of the rain. "Who are those people?" he asked, as if discovering them for the first time.
Lisa glanced at him; he didn't need her dry expression to know she was aware of his small deception. However, she said nothing about it.
"Those are just normal people," Amy said. "Non-capes. They don't have powers like we do."
"Ah, I see." That filled in a gap in his understanding.
The only ones he could communicate with were capes, but it seemed there were many more non-capes than capes. Unless he was severely misunderstanding the matter, non-capes made up the majority of the people in the world. People he needed to save by killing Zion.
Which made the situation a little more problematic. If non-capes feared and hated him and his brothers, how was he supposed to save them?
"You're going to need to lock your thoughts down hard," Lisa warned him in an undertone. "When we meet Zion, if he gets any impression of what you're actually here for, he's likely to shred us all where we stand. From me and Amy, all he hears is our voices. But he can hear your thoughts, just like you and your brothers can hear each other. Do not give this away if you can possibly help it."
"I'll be careful," he assured her. He could scarcely contain his excitement; in just a little while, he was going to be seeing their target for the first time. His brothers would share what he was seeing, of course, if he tuned the transmission just to them.
He felt a strong urge to make some subtle joke, foreshadowing Zion's eventual doom, but repressed it. Lisa had explained how powerful the golden entity was, how any kind of physical confrontation would end in defeat and death, so he knew to be careful. Screwing up now would kill us all. And I'm not ready to die just yet.
As they walked down the street, splashing through the occasional puddle, he tried hard not to be overwhelmed by everything. He'd watched the movies as avidly as his brothers had, but the action had distracted him from the everyday background. Here, he was in the background. The sidewalks were made of concrete, cracked and grimy with tiny weeds growing through here and there. What few cars he saw weren't slick and glitzy, but tired looking with faded paint. The people weren't … pretty, was his best word for it. They looked drab, uninterested. And wet, but that was due to the rain.
They turned a corner, and Lisa pointed. "There he is."
Jacob followed her pointing finger, and saw an older man with a neatly trimmed beard and clean clothing, with a scruffy-looking dog on a leash. Apparently more prepared for the rain than anyone else around, he was holding an umbrella. He saw them at the same time and started forward, the dog trotting in his wake. If Jacob recalled correctly, this was Kevin Norton, the man who spoke to Zion.
"We meet again," Lisa said by way of greeting. "You're looking well."
"I am well," Norton said, spreading his free arm wide and chuckling. "Thanks to Panacea, of course. And your largesse." He came closer. "I can't possibly thank you enough. You've given both Duke and me a new lease on life." He spoke oddly, with accents on different words than Jacob was used to. It was yet another reminder that the world was bigger and stranger than he'd ever imagined.
Lisa smiled. "Well, that's good to hear. Are you ready to carry out your end of the deal?"
"Of course." He beamed at them through the falling raindrops. "And this young man is to take up my burden?"
Jacob nodded. "I am. My name is Jacob."
"A good, strong name." Norton frowned a little, looking at him. "But are you sure you want this? It's a terrible responsibility. If you misspeak and say something wrong, he may not stay long enough for you to correct yourself."
"I know what to say." Jacob had found his joke. "He will hear what he needs to from me."
"Well, alright then." Norton looked at Lisa and Amy. "I think I'll be going back to London after this. After being the most powerful man in the world, I think I need to bring myself back down to earth." He chuckled at his own joke as he led the way through increasingly disreputable back streets, until he reached a small stream, spanned by a quaint stone bridge. The stream was starting to swell from the water running into it, but Jacob didn't think it would get too deep or wide. "It was raining when I first saw him here, too."
"What happened?" asked Amy softly.
Norton approached the bridge and ran his hand over the wet stones, as though recalling the events by touch. "Time was, the golden man spent his time wandering, floating here and there, observing but never doing anything. In a daze. Naked as the day he was born. Everyone had different ideas on who he was. Some thought he might be an angel, others thought he was a fallen angel, and still more thought there were scientific explanations. Only thing they ever agreed on was that he looked sad."
Jacob didn't care that Zion was sad. It would just make the task easier.
"But he's not, is he?" Lisa guessed.
"No," Norton said. "He doesn't look anything. That expression never changes. But whatever's underneath, that's what's giving you that feeling. He looks sad because he is sad. Except you take out the 'looks' part of it."
That made sense, Jacob decided. He knew when any of his brothers, or other capes, were sad, without ever seeing their faces.
Norton hadn't finished his story. "I was sleeping under that bridge just there, or trying to, when he stopped near here. I was still feeling so sorry for myself I couldn't look anyone in the eyes. When I realised he was the same golden man I'd seen on the news, I ran up to him and hit him and yelled at him. Swore at him. I was so angry that he had all that power and still dared to be more miserable than me. Somewhere in the yelling—that was as much at myself as at him—I told him to go help people, and he did."
"Huh." Lisa's eyes were raised to the sky, water drops running off her face, and it took Jacob a moment to realise she wasn't commenting on the story. He looked up as well, and saw Zion descending soundlessly, smoothly from the cloud cover above.
Norton looked up as well. "Hello, old friend."
Zion didn't answer, or react visibly, but Jacob felt some of his attention shift to Norton.
"Wondered if I would see you here," Norton continued. "Been a long time. I'd nearly convinced myself I'd imagined you. This old dog here, he wasn't even born when I left, and he's had a good long run. Twelve years old."
Zion continued to hover just over the streambed. The water was six inches below his feet, but occasional splashes touched them. However, like the raindrops themselves, the stream water sublimated off his white bodysuit, as though pushed by pressure from within.
"The only person he listens to is me. He'd come when I was alone, when the weather was bad or in the dead of night, and however he comes, nobody ever followed him here."
"That's probably because he can't be tracked by satellite or cameras," Lisa observed. "Word of mouth only."
"Huh. That could be it." Norton sighed. "I should've told him to help more people, sooner. One time I saw a clip showing that first Endbringer, the Behemoth, and in the background, he was flying past, coming to visit me. So, I told him to fight them. Maybe I should've told him to kill them."
"Trust me," Amy said, "hindsight is always twenty-twenty. You do what you can with what you've got." She reached up and pushed her wet hair back off her face.
Norton shook his head. "Golden man!"
That got a lot more of Zion's attention; he floated around to face Norton square-on.
"I've screwed up, waiting so long to talk to you. But I'm here now and there's something we got to discuss."
There was no response, only the motionless stare. However, Jacob could feel the vague curiosity behind it.
"I nearly waited too long. I was dying, but now I'm well again. No idea how or why you picked me to listen to, but you can do better than me. I want you to keep doing what you were doing. Help people. Try to communicate with the good guys more. I told you to do that before and you didn't listen, but you should. And if there's a problem, if you need someone to listen to, someone to visit from time to time, look for this young man here, Jacob. He's willing to pick up where I'm leaving off. He's probably smarter than me, knows more about the world."
The golden man hovered in place, so still it looked like he was frozen in time, standing in the air. Part of his attention moved to Jacob, questioning, querying. Jacob debated letting Zion see his power, but chose to keep it down. He even cut off his connection with his brothers, in case Zion could detect that.
"I hope you're listening to me, because it'll break my heart if I found out you came looking for me in the wrong place. If you ever need guidance, someone to tell you what to do, you come see Jacob here. You understand me? I'm out of the game. I'm leaving. Talk to Jacob."
Slowly, Jacob took a step forward. "Hello," he said, using his voice only. When he spoke, he felt Zion's attention intensify on him. Fortunately, it was not a hostile scrutiny; merely a full-body scan.
At no time did Zion actually look toward him, but the golden man didn't have to. While his eyes worked, they were in no way a major aspect of his sensorium.
"And you, Jacob, you think about it, figure out what you need to, decide what he needs to be told." Norton's expression was intense. "Don't wait too long. There'll never be a right time, a good time. Just do it."
Jacob nodded sincerely, feeling the pressure from the golden man's not-gaze. He could tell Zion was listening to his words. "I will. I'll do it."
Norton shrugged. "Don't know why he picked me to listen to, but he did. I could've reminded him of someone he used to know. Or he just up and decided we were friends, maybe. With luck, he can be your friend too." He sighed. "You two got it? You're partners now."
There was a long pause. Jacob didn't know what to say, and Zion had made a career of being silent. The powered scrutiny went on for a few moments longer, then it cut off. A second later, Zion took off vertically again, almost faster than the eye could follow.
Norton shaded his eyes, looking skyward, but Zion would've already been out of sight in the clouds. "Well, that's done," he said, sounding a little sad. "I hope he listened. Come on, Duke. We've got a train to catch."
"What are you going to do in London?" asked Amy.
"Enjoy not being the most powerful man in the world, I imagine." Norton nodded to Jacob. "Bear the burden lightly, young man. It'll be heavier than you can believe, in time." Turning, he made his way back up the road. They stood there by the stream and watched him go, the umbrella keeping himself and his dog dry.
"Do you think he suspected?" Amy spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the gurgling stream and rain hitting rooftops, even though he was too far away to overhear.
"I doubt it." Lisa shook her head. "He's too relieved that he got back one last time."
"I feel sorry for him." Amy found a bench and sat down, ignoring the fact that she was sitting in a puddle. "He spent years being scared to go back, and then when he does, he turns over responsibility for what he thinks is a hero to … well, us." She went silent and introspective then, almost as though she were listening to an inner voice.
"There's no doubt that he saved lives when he told Zion to actually be a hero rather than just float around aimlessly." Lisa shrugged. "He deserves what peace he can get. But Zion needs to go."
Amy shook her head. "I just can't get it out of my head that Kevin will be watching the news, soon, and he'll see that Zion is dead, and he'll feel responsible. He'll blame himself for not staying here and keeping on as the Zion whisperer."
Lisa raised her eyebrows. "Unfortunately, when you need to make a Zion-scale omelette, eggs do get broken. And Kevin Norton's happiness is something I'm willing to sacrifice, at least temporarily."
Jacob had been silent while they spoke, mulling over what he'd learned during the encounter with the golden man. Kevin Norton had been correct about one thing; Zion was deeply sad, almost irretrievably broken. He needed direction, or he'd start drifting again. Or he might just decide to blow up the world, starting with where Kevin Norton lived. Jacob could tell he was that sort of asshole.
He understood Amy's concern over Norton's happiness (or lack thereof) but he also agreed with Lisa. When it came to saving the world, one man's happiness just didn't measure up, especially if that happiness was based on a lie.
"I guess," Amy conceded. "So, Jacob. Do you think it worked?"
Jacob smiled as he reopened the connection to his brothers and shared all he had learned. "Yes."
Blasto's Base
"Okay, let's see what we've got here." After making sure that all the exits were securely locked, Rey ducked into the back room, pulled the tarp off the cloning tank, and peered through the viewing window to observe the occupant.
It was a healthy adult male Caucasian, he could tell at first glance. Average height, a little on the lean side, with a fuzz of dark hair on the scalp. Nothing spectacular or abnormal.
He frowned, aggravated. So it wasn't the genetic structure, but the person himself. Someone with a particular talent, perhaps? Maybe an actor or a singer?
"Okay," he said to the clone. "Who are you that the PRT needed twenty copies of you?"
The clone didn't answer, but neither had he expected it to. Nor did anybody come to mind.
Getting more frustrated, he sat down at his laptop and began a search for all celebrities who had died in the last few months. Nobody of note popped; it had apparently been a slow period, vis-à-vis celebrity mortality.
Going further afield, he checked up on anyone special who had died in the most recent Endbringer attack. Still nobody. Okay, fine. How about the Nine?
The Nine, he belatedly realised, had been wiped out comprehensively after themselves depopulating a small town. There had been nobody in the town worthy of notice, or of cloning … but the images of the members of the Nine themselves came up on his screen, and Jack Slash's face grabbed his attention.
Jumping up, he darted back to the cloning tank. The clone still drifted there, dreaming clone dreams. But its face, even in repose, bore a more than striking resemblance to the notorious leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine. And when he held up his fingers to simulate Slash's beard, the likeness became eerie.
"Fuuck," he muttered, standing up straight and running his fingers through his already-disarranged hair. "The PRT has twenty goddamn clones of Jack Slash running around out there. What the hell did they want that for?"
There was no good answer for that. He wavered back and forth; destroy it or keep it? Destroy it or keep it?
Whatever he did, he knew, his time had just run out in Boston, and indeed on the East Coast. He pressed a series of buttons to put the clone's development on hold, then hustled around the base, grabbing those things he couldn't do without. I've got to get out of here before anyone finds out what I've done. Once I'm far enough away, I can use this guy as leverage to leave me the fuck alone.
He had a beat-up truck at the loading bay in back. Shuffling a hand-truck under the cloning tube, he carefully disconnected the nutrient feeds—he could reconnect travel ones in the truck—and the power supply. The battery pack would keep it for quite some time.
Panting, he rumbled the hand-truck across the concrete floor and then across the gap into the back of the truck. The attachment points for the tie-down straps were fiddly, but he knew he had to make sure it wouldn't shift in transit.
The familiar voice came from behind him. "That's far enough."
Slowly turning, he looked at Alexandria, framed in the rear opening of the truck. Shit, as the saying went, had just gone sideways in a major way. "I don't suppose there's any way I can get out of this without you punching me?"
There may have been a look of pity on her face as she shook her head, but he knew it wouldn't change a damn thing. "No."
Her fist was a blur, and then the lights went out for good.
Bakuda
"Okay, so what happens now?" Alice spread her hands as far as the cuffs allowed her to, as she was escorted back to her cell. "Do I get my fair trial?"
"You do," Director Piggot confirmed, walking alongside the escorting officers. "Once Armsmaster has examined the bombs to ensure there are no hidden tricks or traps, you will be allowed to enter into a plea bargain."
"But you wish I couldn't, don't you?" Alice couldn't help the jab. "You wish you could throw me into the Birdcage, me and every other villain out there, even the ones who haven't done anything that bad."
Piggot looked as though she'd just bitten back a retort. When she spoke, her voice was harsh but controlled. "My wishes don't come into this. So long as you've done your bit, I'll do mine."
"Well, I didn't do anything stupid with the bombs." It was even true. If she'd had any kind of opportunity to, she may have, but with Panacea visiting daily to ask a series of questions that would've ferreted out any bullshit she was trying to pull, her options had been locked down tighter than a PRT trooper's sphincter with Behemoth in town.
"Good." Piggot didn't smile; Alice would've bet good money that she didn't know how. Or that she only saved it for special occasions, like the Annual Puppy Kicking Competition.
"So, do I get any kind of special consideration for doing the bombs?" Alice knew how she sounded, and didn't give a crap. For someone in her position, any concession was a good concession.
Piggot didn't give an inch. "The trial is the special consideration. Good day to you."
As they took her away to the cell, Alice reflected that it definitely could've gone worse. Supermax beat out the Birdcage any day of the year.
Though one question still nagged at her: What are they going to be using those bombs for?
Armsmaster
"So, can you use them?"
Dragon's robotic suit looked around from its examination of the bombs Bakuda had constructed. "Oh, yes. I can fit these onto missiles, or fire them from howitzer tubes just fine. And with the timers, I can do a delayed burst volley."
"Good." Colin was pleased, not least because Dragon also seemed to be happy. "How quickly can you get them retrofitted?"
"It shouldn't take me long, especially if I don't have to add smart seeker-heads onto them. I'm just wondering, though; with the sheer damage capability inherent in these devices, what are we going to be firing them at? Did we declare war on someone that I didn't get the memo about?"
"Technically, yes," he admitted. "This is going to be a first strike, because if we miss, we won't have the option for a second strike."
Her electronic avatar in his HUD widened her eyes. "Colin … what's going on? Who are we fighting?"
He hesitated; she wasn't read in on the details, but it wasn't like she was untrustworthy.
"Okay, so this is what's going on …"
The Warrior
The being self-designated as Zion for this iteration of the Cycle paused in its long flight around the planet it was currently monitoring. Over a significant period of the last planetary orbit, the amount of overall conflict had reduced instead of increasing, and showed no signs of altering that trend. There was no indication that any of the Conflict Engines were stirring; the next one should be the hydrokinetic, but it was dormant at the bottom of the ocean.
This was something that would have to be addressed sooner or later, but another matter was starting to take precedence. There were voices, never quite audible enough to be understood, as though a dozen or more similar entities had arrived on the planet and were concealing their presence from it. Their presence might have been a good thing for the Cycle, but it could sense from the tone that they were hostile to it.
While it had no way of pinpointing the location of the hostile entities immediately, it intended to narrow down the possibilities and then strike at each one as soon as it had a definite location. It was the Warrior, after all, and killing was what it did best. Coasting over the upper atmosphere of the planet, it began its search …
Tattletale
Jacob One's voice came out of the intercom. "Zion suspects something. He's looking for us."
She jabbed the button to reply. "Gotcha. Get your brothers up and ready. I'll be with you in a second."
Without waiting for his reply, she grabbed up her phone and hit the speed-dial for Director Piggot's office.
The answer came through promptly; the woman must have been waiting on her call. "You've got Piggot. Sitrep me."
"The Jacobs just told me that Scion suspects something, and that he's searching for them."
"Copy. Get them prepped for the preliminary assault. I'll alert the Chief Director."
"Got it." Lisa ended the call and hit the intercom button again. "We've got a green light. I'll come through and start spreading you out around the world."
Jacob chuckled. "Don't worry about it. I figured out your little 'doorway' trick a while ago. We can handle our own transportation. See you on the front lines."
"Shit!" Lisa jumped to her feet. "Doorway to the Jacobs' quarters!" The portal opened in front of her, and she stepped through … just in time to see the main room empty of all but Jacob One, and even he was stepping away through his own portal, on the other side of the room. He turned and gave her a lazy salute, along with the easy grin that always put shivers down her spine.
And then the portal closed, and he was gone.
"Fuck!" She thought quickly, then sent a text to Costa-Brown's private mobile number.
Jacobs know Doorway, are going for the assault. Out of my hands.
The answer came back much faster than she'd expected.
SFGDI. No surprise. We'll deal after. RCB
The acronym gave her a brief smile. Shit Fuck God Damn It. But on the upside, the Jacobs going independent cut her loose to help elsewhere. "Doorway to Flechette."
New York Protectorate Building
Flechette
"Hey, Flechette, there's a call for you."
Lily turned at the sound of Jouster's voice. "Yeah? Who?"
"Pretty sure it's important. All the way from DC."
That definitely got her attention. Only one person in Washington DC had much in the way of professional interest in the Protectorate and Wards, and that was Chief Director Costa-Brown. More to the point, they'd told her to be ready for a ten-minute scramble alert starting a week ago; as part of this, she'd been taken off patrols and allowed to sleep and eat whenever she felt like it.
About two seconds after she stood up from the sofa, a portal opened five feet to her left and a purple-clad cape stepped through. Alarms blared, almost loud enough to be painful, and lights flashed. Lily jumped away from the intruder, hurdling the sofa and going for the nearest chair that she could easily throw. Out of the ceiling dropped foam-sprayer turrets, rotating and lining up on the girl.
"Whoa, whoa, friendly, friendly!" The girl dropped to her knees, clasping her hands to the back of her neck. "I'm Tattletale! The Chief Director knows about me! This is not an attack!"
"Don't move." Lily picked up the chair she'd been going for. "I will concuss you with this if you make me."
"I know you will." Tattletale was holding position. "I'm the reason you're on ten-minute call-out. This is the call-out."
Across the room, Jouster was on his phone, talking in a low tone. Nothing happened for a good twenty seconds, save for the sprayer turrets shifting alignment with millimetric precision. Then Jouster looked up. "I just contacted Director Wilkins, and she verified it. 'Purple costume, annoying attitude, way too smug' is what I was told. Thinker seven, acts like she's thinker twelve."
"Seven, my ass," Tattletale groused as she got up from her kneeling position. Above her, the sprayer turrets retracted into the ceiling. "Should be eight at least. I'm that good."
"Yeah, that remains to be seen." Jouster came over, looking her up and down critically. "You're her call-out contact? Aren't you a bit young for that?"
"I'm the one with the plan, I get to update it the way I see fit. Doorway to Flechette's arbalest." Another portal opened beside her and Lily could see the arbalest, just sitting there. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get it."
Wondering exactly what had happened to the brakes on this ride, Lily did as she was told. "Where are we going?"
Tattletale grinned at her, which didn't make her feel any less apprehensive. "All the way to the scene of the crime."
Jacob One
The world was very big indeed. One of the things that Jacob hadn't known was that people spoke different languages in different places, and they even looked different. More so than men and women normally looked, even.
This was something they would have to explore later, but right now they had a god to kill. He looked up as a streak of white and gold flashed overhead, then opened a channel to his brothers. The target just passed over Mexico City.
Good, Jacob Two sent back. Let's get him. One by one, his other brothers chimed in with their agreements. It was unanimous.
Jacob One, as the nominal leader, opened the ball. Directing his thoughts strongly at Zion, he assumed the most cutting, sneering voice that he could. You suck. You're a failure.
Immediately, even as he sensed Zion pulling a seventy-gee U-turn, he damped down his power to the point that he could only hear his brothers. Jacob Seven spoke next, from somewhere in Australia (which he'd said was a fun place to be). You should've died, instead of her. You should still die.
Zion swerved again, and etched a hole through the atmosphere in the direction of Australia. Jacob Twelve chimed in from England, not far from where Jacob One had met Kevin Norton. Why don't you just give up? You're weak, and an embarrassment. Fuck off and die in a hole.
Lisa had explained the concept of the game 'whack-a-mole' to Jacob One, and he'd been impressed and intrigued. While he'd never seen a mole, he could certainly understand the concept. Carefully keeping track of Zion's location and direction, they kept taunting him, digging at his weak points, working to see what had the best effect.
After a while of this, he slowed down and started turning, apparently looking for them in ways they couldn't match. Jacob Seven took the initiative. You're a fucking crybaby loser. Why don't you just crawl—
At the first few words, Zion was arrowing straight toward him, around the curve of the Earth. He was moving faster than ever before … and then he vanished, to reappear over a small town in eastern Russia. Jacob Seven had time for one startled fuck- before he vanished from their awareness.
One of their number was dead.
Jacob One flashed a message to the other eighteen. Jump jump jump! Then he envisaged a portal to downtown Los Angeles, and darted through.
This isn't working, Jacob Eighteen sent. We've got him sad, but he's also mad.
I know, Jacob One agreed. We're going to have to dogpile him.
I thought we were going to hold off on multiple taunts, to make him think we're just one person, objected Jacob Two.
Well, single taunts aren't working. We need to overwhelm him. And jump between words. Don't give him time to fix on your location.
Fuck him, Six said grimly. Seven was my brother.
He was everyone's brother. Okay, Two through Five on my mark, then Six through Ten, and so on. Let's make this motherfucker pay.
Assent came back from his brothers, and he jumped to a different location before communicating with Zion in the most insulting tone he could muster. Missed me, you evolutionary mistake.
At the same time, Two unleashed a cutting insult, as did Three, Four and Five. Zion, who had been drifting upward again, apparently looked around wildly as the sneering words lashed at him. The anger was still there, but as they attacked his choices and the fact that he'd gotten his partner killed (Amy had given them some choice details in that regard) he began to falter. Still, he was definitely trying to kill them, so they kept jumping randomly from location to location.
Jacob Twelve made the mistake of taking a portal into a city that Jacob Fourteen had just vacated, and he died in a firestorm that consumed three city blocks. Jacob One heard his death-shriek, and clamped his teeth together. That's two, you sonovabitch.
You killed your partner! he screamed into the ether. You had no idea what you were doing, and she died because of you! Then he jumped again, because Zion had just blazed over the horizon.
Minutes slowly became hours, as they gradually wore him down. His movements were now visibly less sure, and the anguish radiating from him was almost palpable. All over the United States, cape teams were on standby, nobody engaging Zion in case they brought his wrath down on them.
Overseas, it was a different matter. The CUI brought their vaunted Yàngbǎn into action against him after he scorched a town into ruin half a second after Jacob Nineteen left for greener pastures. Their most powerful moves barely affected him, and his retaliation shredded their entire structure. Then he flew on, seeking to end the voices that tormented him endlessly.
But he was done; that was his last surge.
Hands clasped to his head as the surviving Jacobs bellowed their contempt and hatred into his head, he came to a hover over the baked earth of central Australia and howled his despair and agony to the sky. As tiny crystals precipitated from thin air, generated by the sheer power he was radiating, Jacob One opened a portal to Lisa. "It's time."
With her was another girl in a similar-coloured costume, this one carrying a formidable-looking string-tension weapon. He wanted to call it a crossbow, but wasn't sure.
Lisa nodded to the other girl. "You're up."
Taking a deep breath, the girl ran her hand along a slender-looking arrow, then set it into the weapon. She knelt on the floor where she was, then aimed and fired in a single motion, sending the arrow through the two different portals.
In less than the blink of an eye, it crossed the intervening distance and struck Zion in the throat. His body popped like a party balloon, leaving a hole in space.
Jacob One had no idea what that was about; his entire job had been to get them to this point in time, and he'd done it.
"Doorway to Dragon," Lisa said next. Yet another portal opened, showing a courtyard with a mechanical dragon-shaped robot. "You're up!" she shouted.
The robot clomped nearer, bringing a very large weapon barrel to bear. Jacob stepped back out of the way, giving it time to take aim. The hole that Zion had left behind just hung there in mid-air, looking like an error in reality. In a way, he supposed, that was what it was.
"Clear!" bellowed the robot. Jacob One reflexively stepped into the same space as Jacob Fifteen, who was watching through a small portal from southern Argentina. They saw the launcher fire three times, generating a massive cloud of smoke, and sending the projectiles through the man-shaped hole into the space beyond.
"What are those?" asked Jacob Fifteen.
Jacob One shrugged. Zion was dead. They were off the clock. It wasn't their problem.
Tattletale
Lisa knew the bomb timers wouldn't last much longer. "Doorway to Dodge!"
The portal opened, and Dodge peered through. "I heard something was going on. Is it time?"
"Yeah, it is, unless you want Australia depopulated."
"And kill off all those cute platypuses? No way." He hefted what looked like a typical Tinker device, complete with blinking lights, a spinner, and a spark-gap. "Okay, that looks like … huh. A Type Six portal. Maybe six point five. G and P are within specs … hmm." He tapped numbers into the keyboard built into the thing.
Lisa was acutely aware of the timers counting down. "Any time now …"
"I've got it, I've got it." He hit a button. The device hummed, lights flashed, the spinner spun, the spark-gap sparked … and the hole Zion had left behind vanished, as though it had never been.
Lisa held her breath, watching her phone as the numbers ran down. They hit zero and stopped; the bombs, in Zion's pocket universe, would be going off around now. Hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of space whale, maybe millions, would be getting shredded.
Nothing else happened. The tiny crystals twinkled where they'd fallen on the dry red dirt.
Mike hadn't had much data on how long it would take Zion to reboot his fake body, but she decided to give it five minutes. At six, she took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm calling it. People, we just saved the world."
Office of Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, PRT
Panacea
"Well, apart from all the other problems facing it, yes, we can assume that you've saved the world." Chief Director Costa-Brown didn't seem thrilled about the news, but Amy suspected she didn't get thrilled about much. "Scion killed about fifty thousand people from taking pot-shots at your little homegrown clone army, so we've got to deal with the fallout from that. And Ellisburg. And Eagleton. And Sleeper. They're all still around, if you hadn't noticed. As is your little clone army."
"Oh, I noticed." Lisa seemed determined to be cheerful about it. "But that's not what the plan I made was for. It said so right there on the packet: Plan to kill Scion. Right, Amy?"
Amy nodded. "Right. The question is, how much of a problem does everything else pose?"
"Less of one, now that the Endbringers are in time-out and Scion's dead," Costa-Brown admitted reluctantly. "So yes, well done."
"Oh, good." Tattletale beamed. "Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week."
Hey, uh … Amy?
Amy blinked. Mike sounded unsure, which was totally unlike him. What?
It looks like Tattletale's plan actually did the trick. Not just Zion. Me, too. It feels like I'm going somewhere. His voice was starting to fade.
What? But I haven't had the chance to say goodbye properly!
He chuckled, faintly. Everything he said was faint now. I don't think it works that way. Take care of yourself, and say goodbye to Taylor for me …
And with that, the sensation of his presence in the back of her mind popped like a soap bubble. She sat there, stunned, while Tattletale bantered with the singularly unimpressed Chief Director.
He'd come into her life in a most unexpected fashion, and she hadn't wanted him there for the longest time. But she'd gradually become used to his presence, and his advice had helped her out on more occasions than she could count. Her life now was far better for his intrusion into it.
And he had helped her (and Tattletale) save the world.
She knew she would have to share his absence with the others he'd helped her make friends with, but for now all she wanted to do was sit and remember the good times.
She'd never met the eldritch creature who called himself Michael Allen, and she never would.
But he'd been a good friend.
She just hoped that this time, he'd made it home.
End of Part Thirty-Two
End of I, Panacea
[A/N: Thank you for reading.]
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