Chapitre 1774: 69
Chapter 69
A Darker Path
Part Sixty-Nine: Facets and Aspects
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
11:40 AM
Taylor
I pretended not to watch the clock as Mr Gladly swung into the finale of his lesson. "So, as you can see, while the rise of the Three Blasphemies did cause a certain amount of disruption in and around the nascent European Union, it also caused them to work much more closely together in the interests of mutual security. Are there any questions?"
He beamed, no doubt because he'd managed to work the word 'nascent' into his lesson. I was pretty sure he'd found it in a thesaurus and had made a note to use it somewhere. The amusing thing, it wasn't even for our benefit, but for that of the impassive auditor sitting at the back of the classroom, taking notes on his teaching style and how well we appeared to be absorbing the knowledge he was dishing out.
The upside of the presence of the auditor was that Gladly no longer favoured the 'popular' students over everyone else. This hadn't been a problem for me since I'd Ended any tendency for people to try to bully me, but it was nice to see that he could be a good teacher if he actually put some damn effort into it.
"Uh, yeah." Predictably, that was Sparky. "What's 'nascent' mean?"
I watched Gladly's expression just crumble as his attempt at sounding polished and erudite (another word Sparky would probably get wrong) fell flatter than a pancake with Behemoth tap-dancing on it. "It means new, emerging," he said after a few seconds of awkward silence.
"Oh." A few other people around the classroom got the same oh expression on their faces, but they hadn't said anything then and they didn't now. It looked like they were happy for him to ask the question and look stupid while they got the answer along with him.
Kids could be assholes. News at eleven.
"So, homework for tomorrow." Gladly scrambled to try to recover some of the poise he'd been working with before. "Pick a single attack or incident by the Three Blasphemies, and then show the results of it, good and bad."
If he'd meant to say more, it would've been drowned out by the sound of people starting to pack up. Unlike me, they weren't even pretending not to watch the clock. I did the same, though not being nearly as loud as the others.
The bell rang then, and we all got up out of our desks. Gladly had conceded defeat and was cleaning off the chalkboard; I wondered idly if we would get whiteboards when the school was upgraded. It would be nice.
As I was waiting for the tide of students going out the door to slacken somewhat, I overheard a few of them talking, probably not meant for my ears.
"Hey, how long do you think Atropos would take to gank the Blasphemies?"
"I dunno, there's three of 'em."
"Yeah, but this is Atropos, man."
"True dat."
They moved out of earshot before I had the chance to find out what they thought my minimum time was (I was pretty sure I could beat it, whatever it was), but I was heartened anyway. The fact that they were able to discuss Atropos in a positive fashion while I was potentially within hearing distance meant that I could maybe walk through the school without everyone freezing up, while maintaining the do-not-fuck-with reputation. Also, the tone of the discussion had been good feedback, in and of itself.
It would be easier to do my thing going forward if people didn't get in the way. The short-term solution was to make them fear me, and I was doing that, but fear when left unchecked sooner or later morphed into resentment and hatred. Turning it into respect was harder; that generally required allowing just enough give and take that they understood they could work with me without controlling my every move. Making myself predictable, as I'd explained to Jack Slash.
Making myself palatable.
Talking about palatable; I went to the cafeteria and grabbed lunch. While I was heading to an unoccupied table, I spotted Cherie just lining up. She caught my eye, and I nodded.
We didn't normally sit together, because I didn't want to paint a target on her back as being Atropos' friend, but once in a while I figured it couldn't hurt. Besides, she was still working on building a social circle without using her powers or ending up with a boyfriend, and the fact that she was eighteen among a bunch of fourteen through seventeen-year-olds didn't help overly much. So I sat down, and she came over and took a seat opposite me.
"Hey," I said lightly. "How's things?" I picked up my wrap and took a bite out of it. Not fantastic, but definitely edible.
"Learning more every day." She smirked, lowering her voice. "Half the class is talking about the quarantine zones, and trying to figure out how you're going to do it. The other half thinks they've already figured it out."
She knew, of course. I'd filled her in on Charlotte's little impersonation stunt, and exactly how long Charlotte had spent practicing in front of the mirror to mimic my mannerisms. Her voice acting was less polished, but I had a workaround for that.
I nodded and stuck the straw in my juice popper to take a drink. "That's half the fun of all this. Keeping them guessing, then doing something they never expected. Showing off, being fancy, is underrated."
"I'll say." She started eating her own lunch, talking between the bites. "I thought I knew a bit about presentation when I came here. You kinda schooled me on that one."
"Mwahahaha," I said, deadpan. "Fear my fearsome fearsomeness."
She wrinkled her nose at me, then grinned. "You are such a dork."
We chatted a little longer until I finished my meal, then I got up from the table. "Gotta run. Places to go, functions to attend."
She waved her plastic fork in my general direction. "See you after school."
Slinging my pack over my shoulder, I headed out of the cafeteria, in the general direction of the nearest girls' washroom. Nobody paid any particular attention to me as I slipped in through the door and locked myself into a cubicle. I didn't even bother sitting down as I pulled up my sleeve, flipped open the access panel of the teleporter, and hit the go button to open a pre-calculated portal.
One short step later put me in my bedroom, where my Atropos costume was already laid out on the bed. I changed into it with swift, efficient movements, leaving my pack and school clothing in its place. Then I tapped the teleporter for a quick jump that placed me downstairs, in front of the fridge.
There was another bottle of champagne there, prettied up with nonspecific wrapping paper and a couple of decorative ribbons. I was pretty sure Dad had earmarked one or two of the others for the end-of-month meeting of the Betterment Committee, but I didn't care. Better use would be made of them than by Vista's parents, that was for sure.
Taking the bottle out, I closed the fridge door and spent thirty seconds or so programming in the next few jumps I needed to do. The longer I could manage to hide the nature of the teleporter from everyone around me, the longer I'd be able to capitalise on the mystique it gave me. Timers set, I closed the access panel and pulled my sleeve down.
Three … two … one … go.
I went.
PRT Building Function Room
Director Emily Piggot
God, I wish I was anywhere but here.
Emily would much rather have simply climbed on board the chopper on Friday afternoon and gone to New York with a minimum of fanfare. It wasn't that she didn't have any respect or regard for the people she'd be leaving behind (though New York and Boston would have oversight on the ENE facility, just in case) but that she wasn't entirely sure they had all that much for her.
She was the hardass, the headkicker. Everyone knew she disliked capes on principle, and she'd had occasion from time to time to express this distaste. It wasn't exactly one way; she'd heard about the nicknames. 'Miss Piggy' was perhaps the least uncomplimentary one.
Still, they'd spotted her now. It was too late to run. She walked into the function room wearing her best suit, with her medal ribbons pinned in a perfect row because she'd fucking earned them, and maybe the troops needed one last reminder that she wasn't just some random desk weenie.
Assault was the first to greet her, with Battery close behind. He held out his hand, an unusually thoughtful expression on his face. "Director. It's been a good run, hasn't it?"
"It has." She shook his hand, his grip firm. "We've had our differences, but I'm pleased to say you outpaced all my expectations and worries." She'd been opposed to the whole concept of having a rebranded villain in her city, but the Chief Director had backed up Legend on the matter … and he had turned out to be far less of a clusterfuck than she'd feared.
"Why, Director." The smartass grin she'd expected to see was back, creasing one corner of his mouth. "A compliment? Do we need to call master-stranger protocols?"
While Emily was half-considering that very thing—it would get her out of this gathering, for one thing—Battery murmured something about 'sleeping on the couch' to Assault, then stepped up. "Please ignore him. He hasn't punched a Nazi in weeks, and when he gets bored, he gets snarky."
"Not my doing, I'm afraid." Emily smiled politely at Battery—she was one of the more responsible capes in the local Protectorate—and unleashed some of her own snark. "If he wishes to complain, I hear Atropos can be easily reached on PHO." Some small part of her mind braced for what just might happen next.
"Ha ha ha, nope." Assault shook his head fervently. "I can be accused of being many things, but I'll never be so stupid or tired of life as to say something even remotely negative about her."
"That's probably wise of you." Atropos stepped out of the shadowy portal that had formed just behind him, carrying a brightly wrapped object.
"Jesus!" Assault jumped at least four feet sideways, ending up on the far side of Battery.
"No, Atropos." The black-clad cape sounded mildly amused. "There's a difference."
Pausing to catch his breath, Assault glared at her. "That was not funny!"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Emily found her first genuine smile of the day. "I'd ask you what you're doing here, Atropos, but I'm pretty sure the answer would be 'whatever I feel like'. Or is there something I need to know about, right now?"
"Nothing immediate springs to mind." Atropos offered her the object, which appeared to be the size and shape of a bottle of wine. "I just wanted to give you this as a token of my respect, and wish you all the best in your new posting."
"Well, thank you." Emily accepted the bottle, which felt chilled to the touch. "Not to sound ungrateful, but you are aware that I can't drink this, yes?" If Atropos didn't know about her ruined kidneys, Emily would eat her best dress shoes. As she'd said to Armsmaster not so long ago, I'm just going to assume from here on out that if there's something she wants to know, she knows it.
Atropos tilted her head slightly to the side. "True, but you are aware that Miss Medic could clone you a brand-new set of kidneys and install them, zero Tinkertech required, in less than a week, yes? Otherwise, that champagne is just going to have to go to waste." She let out a melodramatic sigh, even going so far as to put the back of her hand to her forehead. "Oh, the horror. The humanity."
Emily blinked. The overblown acting was definitely Atropos' style, but the other part was actually an aspect she hadn't considered. "… I'll have to think about that," she prevaricated.
The main reason she hadn't quite trusted any cape to heal her kidneys and calf muscles was because if they didn't know how their powers worked, she damn well wasn't going to trust them to mess with her vital organs. Also because when things got tough, capes folded, and she had zero desire to be the subject of a cautionary tale about a failed attempt to grow kidneys from scratch. Tinkertech kidneys were also a huge no-no because they would need regular maintenance.
But cloned kidneys, created from her own cells, could be examined independently and even implanted by non-cape doctors. Zero chance of rejection. She could finally be free of the damned hemodialysis.
She really was going to have to think about that.
Ignoring the spreading pool of silence that had fallen on the room since people started noticing Atropos standing there, she frowned. "Tell me one thing. Why?"
Why are you so concerned about my health, she meant. Atropos, for all the undeniable good she'd done, was a killer at heart. In her own words, she Ended things, sometimes quite dramatically. Rarely, if ever, did she do something for the good of just one person.
"You're going to be the Director of PRT New York for the next four months." Atropos' tone was quite matter of fact. "Wilkins' legacy probably lingers here and there, so you're going to have your work cut out for you. No PRT Department can do its job properly unless it's on top of its form, including its Director. Especially its Director."
Emily didn't even bother asking how Atropos knew about her upcoming retirement. Over and above that, however, she had her answer. Atropos wanted the PRT and police to be able to do their jobs properly, so she didn't have to do their jobs for them.
It was still surreal as fuck to have a blatant criminal working to improve the PRT and police departments.
"Understood." Still, she held back from making a definitive promise. This was her decision, and she refused to be stampeded into it. However, she was reminded of something else. "I received a communication today, from Director Armstrong in Boston. He said Damsel of Distress boarded a bus coming here this morning and was concerned about her well-being, especially considering her reception the last time she showed up here." She was reasonably sure all was well, considering the report and the footage from Tenebrae's bodycam, but it was always good to check.
"Ms Stillons is fine." Atropos may as well have been discussing the weather. "This time, she was invited. As you know, her power issues have been Ended, and she's accepted my offer to work for the Betterment Committee as a demolitions specialist."
Emily nodded. As little as she enjoyed having a powerful, mentally unstable cape coming into her city, knowing Atropos had matters under control made her feel somewhat better. And of course, by Friday evening she would be in New York, and the craziness of Brockton Bay would no longer be her direct responsibility.
"Thank you for confirming that. And …" She hesitated, wishing she knew if there were any microphones trained on her. Then she mentally snorted. Fuck it. What can they do, force me to retire early? "… thank you for what you've done for Brockton Bay. I can't condone the methods—it's my job not to condone the methods—but I do appreciate the results. Also, thank you for not targeting my people, even when they were trying to arrest you."
"You're welcome." If Atropos was being sarcastic, Emily couldn't tell. "Kick ass, take names, and don't let the bastards wear you down." She touched the brim of her hat with two fingers in an ironic salute. "Toodles." Then she stepped backward into the shadowy portal that formed behind her. It vanished a couple of seconds later, leaving the bottle of wine in Emily's hand as the only trace that she'd even been there.
"Goddamn smartass …" muttered Assault, shaking his head. It seemed he was more rattled by Atropos appearing behind him than he was willing to admit.
"You're just irritated that she can showboat harder than you." Battery put her hand under his elbow. "Come on, let's go sit down for a minute."
Emily watched them go, then looked down at the bottle she was holding. As a gift from a serial killer to a serving PRT Director, it was possibly unique in the annals of PRT history.
She was damned if she was going to let anyone else drink it, though.
Around the Same Time
Damsel of Distress
Ashley looked around at the city as the man who'd handled her entry interview, a gangly guy called Hebert, drove the Betterment Committee vehicle with expert ease. She'd been in some pretty crappy places, and knew down-and-out when she saw it. Brockton Bay, she figured, had been verging on that in some places, but there was a sense of hope and optimism from the freshly repaired roads, the new signage, and even the way people went down the sidewalk.
Talking about the sidewalks, she noticed there was something she wasn't seeing: homeless and panhandlers. She'd once heard someone say that the true measure of a society was how they treated the people at the bottom. That didn't apply to her; she'd never be at the bottom of anything.
But she was interested in finding out how the real down-and-outers were treated. Were they hustled out of sight? Shuffled around until the bureaucracy could conveniently forget about them?
"Something I can help you with?" Hebert asked as they slowed to a stop at a set of traffic lights. "You look like you have a question or two."
"Yeah. Where are the homeless people?" Ashley gestured out the window. "City this size, there's always a few. But I'm not seeing any. Do you gather them all up and put them out of sight, out of mind to keep your nice tidy little city clean?"
"That's a good question," Hebert said seriously. "You see the induction packet I gave you back at the office? There's a card in there with your name on it. Everyone in Brockton Bay under a certain income level gets one. I've got one. Our pay goes onto it, and so do our stimulus payments. There's a couple of thousand on there right now, for incidental expenses. All our previously homeless people are living in cheap, affordable housing, with access to whatever medical care they need. A lot of them are actually working for the Betterment Committee."
"Huh." She dug into the hefty envelope and found the card. Sure enough, it had her name and picture on it. A little sticky note told her what the PIN was, and how to change it. "So, what happens if someone steals one?"
"Atropos gets it back." His tone wasn't even slightly joking. "Or tells us exactly where it is, if she's busy. If it's been destroyed, there'll be another one in your mail slot by the next day. She is invested in this project, and the last thing she wants is people walking away from it because they aren't being taken proper care of."
Having someone like Atropos as paymaster, Ashley decided, would go a long way toward making sure nobody got fucky with the money between payer and payee. Still, there were questions she needed answering before she actually signed on the dotted line. Before she could settle on the next one, however, Hebert brought the pickup to a halt outside a block of apartments.
"We bought these up and renovated them," he said as he set the parking brake and cut the engine. "Not exactly high-end, but they've got all the creature comforts and they're a good start for getting your own place." Without missing a step, he took out his card—a near-twin to the one she had found in the packet—and tapped a reader next to the door. It buzzed and clicked, allowing Hebert to push it open. "I get an override, because I'm kind of in charge," he explained half-apologetically.
Ashley was immediately suspicious. "Override to what? How far does that let you in?" He hadn't shown any signs of being a skeev, but some could hide it better than others.
His answer was prompt. "Just the lobby, so I can come and knock on someone's door and do a wellness check if they don't show up for work and don't answer their phone." He led the way inside; the lobby was relatively spartan but neat and clean with bland carpet underfoot. Ashley caught the fading smell of fresh paint.
There were stairs, but he hit the button for the elevator and it arrived promptly. Ashley raised her eyebrows. "This thing works?"
"If it doesn't, it'll get fixed." Hebert stepped in, and she followed him. "As I said, we look after our people." He tapped the button for the second floor, and the elevator rumbled upward. It arrived without much in the way of fanfare, and the doors opened smoothly. Ashley noted that the carpet was the same as in the lobby; bland, but fresh and neat. "Now, none of the apartments on this floor are taken yet, so I can do this." He went to the nearest door, which was showing a green light on the reader, and opened it.
Ashley looked the apartment over critically. It wasn't huge, but that wasn't a deal-breaker. Shower cubicle with a washer-dryer next to it. Efficiently designed kitchen and general living area. A separate bedroom (almost filled by a comfortable single bed) with built-in closets, containing pillows and other linens. She'd already discovered the towels in the bathroom cabinet, along with the generic toiletries.
As Atropos had explained to her, it was unimaginative, but it was absolutely liveable. She'd spent far too much of her life in dingy warehouses and abandoned houses; compared to those places, this was the purest lap of luxury. And it had a TV.
"Internet?" she asked. Unlike the pokiness of the place, lack of internet would totally be a dealbreaker.
"Free for low-bandwidth stuff, and we're rolling out low-cost wireless for high-bandwidth in this area of town in nine days … I think." Behind his glasses, his eyes went distant for a second. "Yes, nine days."
The question of where she was going to be living had been solved. She'd take it. But now, other questions were queuing up to be asked. "How do I get to where I'll be working?" She doubted she'd be walking, and cabs would eat up her money faster than a slot machine.
"Work bus will show up to take you where you need to go. You'll get an automatic notification twenty minutes before it's due, and a phone call five minutes after that if you don't acknowledge the text message. Roster will be texted to your phone a week ahead of time." The way Hebert was rattling off the answers, he'd clearly given them many times before.
"Who sets the roster? You?" She headed into the kitchenette and tested the hot and cold faucets. They worked, the water ran clear, and the hot water steamed impressively.
"I get directives from above for what we need to get done, and I assign people according to their specifications and qualifications." He spoke crisply, no bullshit, all business. "If you need a day off for personal matters, let us know and we can move things around. If you want more work, same deal. Stay on long-term and you will accumulate leave hours and other benefits, according to the union rules."
"Union rules?" She frowned. "I don't know anything about that." Never having been part of the workforce, she wasn't sure what 'leave hours' were either, but she didn't want to look like an idiot for asking.
"It's not a huge deal." He gestured to himself. "I'm the union rep for the Dockworkers' Association, so I made sure there was a union agreement baked into the plan we're using. It basically assures that everybody gets paid fairly and on time, and that nobody gets screwed over by management decisions. Everyone who works for the Betterment Committee is by definition a member of the union."
"So …" She tried to parse that through. "Some jerkass on the crew can't just fire me and kick me out of the city because he doesn't like my face, or because I used to be a villain?"
"No, they can't." Again, his tone was firm, with no room for misunderstanding. "If anyone has a problem with you, they bring it to me. Likewise, if you have a problem with someone, you bring it to me. I review all sides of the case, see if there isn't some way the matter can be resolved without anyone being fired, and reach the fairest conclusion for everyone concerned. Either way, you'd be assigned an advocate in the matter, who'd make sure nothing's been left out on your side. And if it turned out that someone was trying to victimise you for their own benefit …" His expression hardened. "That person would very soon have his own problems to deal with."
Ashley thought back to how she'd been driven out of Boston by the machinations of the other villains, undercut and betrayed by people she'd thought she could depend on. She'd had nobody on her side, nobody impartially reviewing the situation. They'd just decided they wanted her out, and thus she was out. This was a whole new, and thoroughly weird, take on the concept. I can tell this guy's never been a supervillain.
While she was still trying to get her head around it, she thought of something else she wanted to ask. "Where do I buy stuff? Food, clothes, shoes?"
"Ah, that's easy." His attitude had gone back to 'easy-going'. "When you walk out the front door, if you turn left there's a convenience store about three blocks down that sells basically everything you'll need for short notice groceries. It's been expanding recently, so they're getting more and more products in. For more serious shopping, there's a bus stop a block in the other direction, and the bus will take you to a strip mall about a mile away. If you can't find everything you need there, I will be sincerely astonished."
And he already said my card had a couple of grand on it … wait. "I'm gonna need an ATM, to get cash out to pay for the bus." She doubted the bus driver would be happy to make change for a twenty, and she was never in the mood to take crap from people over shitty details like that.
"Nope." He took his card out again, and pointed at a small symbol printed on it. "When you get on and off the bus, you tap the card on the reader that looks like this. It automatically deducts the fare."
"What, really?" She'd vaguely heard about something like that but had never looked too closely at it. As far as she was concerned, it sounded too much like Tinker bullshit to go anywhere.
"Absolutely. We started rolling it out shortly after we had the cards distributed. Once we get the ferry up and running again, it'll be working on the same system." He sounded quite pleased with himself.
"Okay, so how about—" She was intending to ask what the guidelines for decorating the place were—there was no way she wanted to live someplace with sterile, blank walls for any length of time—when he whipped his phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. She hadn't even heard it ring.
"Hebert." His expression was rock-solid serious now. "Yes, she's with me now. Yes, I know where that is. We're five minutes away. I'll check." Holding the phone to his chest, he turned to her. "Ms Stillons, I know we haven't signed anything yet, but your assistance is needed. Are you willing to help?"
This was it. This was the decision point. Now was the time when she figured out whether she was going to stay and work for the Betterment Committee or walk out and go her own way.
Her rebellious soul pushed back against being under someone else's thumb, however lightly it pressed. Nobody tells me what to do! She'd always been her own boss, been the master of her own destiny, wherever it led.
But …
Her hands had been repaired without any strings attached. She'd been invited to Brockton Bay, not ordered. The apartment was all she could've asked for, and more. When she'd asked about the take-home pay, the figure Hebert had quoted was extremely adequate. And despite being under pressure, Hebert was asking, not ordering.
She took a deep breath.
"Yes."
Danny
The accident had not yet happened.
It was going to happen, and soon. Nobody was going to die, not if he could help it, but everything was going to have to go just right.
This was a wake-up call to him that his power was neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He saw things that the group effort was about to effect, and he could alter probabilities in minor ways to stave off problems before they happened. Since getting his power, he'd been able to consistently keep things ahead of schedule and below budget, and make sure nobody got hurt.
Today, someone was going to get hurt.
As he drove with white-knuckled intensity, he concentrated part of his mind on the building that the four-man crew was just walking into. Decrepit, shoddily built with low-grade concrete, it had always been slated for demolition. If he hadn't had his power, if he hadn't been interfering right at this second, they'd be walking into a death-trap. As it was, he could adjust their footsteps and hold off the inevitable collapse until all but one were out of harm's way.
No matter how he ran the numbers, someone was going to get hurt. The only way out of it was to call them directly, but he didn't have a radio in the truck, an oversight that he intended to amend at the first opportunity. Using his phone to call someone who had a radio and patch through the warning that way was potentially possible, but people would still get hurt and his secret would be outed.
He hated no-win situations.
Maintaining the truck's performance at the very outer edge of its capabilities, manipulating the inexorable collapse of the building so that nobody was killed and only one was trapped, he drove on.
Taylor
I flushed the toilet for appearances' sake and unlocked the stall, then went across and washed my hands. Dressed once more in my school-going clothes, my plan was to go and read in the library until the bell rang for class again. Atropos wouldn't be needed until it was time to deal with the quarantine zones, after all.
Just as I pushed the washroom door open and stepped into the corridor, Dad's face popped into my mind. He was under stress, and possibly needed assistance. I paid more attention, and details flowed into my mind: a building collapse that he wasn't quite able to forestall. Someone was going to be trapped.
Got it.
As I strolled casually along toward the library, I took my phone out. Victoria Dallon had never given me her number, but that was no obstacle. I tapped it in anyway, and waited for the response.
"Hello?" Her tone was cautious, but that was only to be expected. I'd never actually called her before, after all.
"Hello, Glory Girl. A building is in the process of collapsing on the corner of Webster and Patterson. One of the work crew that was checking it out will be trapped in the rubble. If you hurry, you'll be able to get there in time to help. Look for Danny Hebert. He'll be the tall guy with the hard hat." I kept my tone calm and even. No pressure, no demands. Just the facts.
When she spoke next, she was all business. "Understood. Webster and Patterson. Tall guy with the hard hat. On it." The call ended.
I put my phone away and continued toward the library. There was nothing else I'd be able to do to help, and I was interested in where the book I'd been reading was going with the narrative.
Damsel of Distress
Ashley was strongly considering the idea that Hebert had been a professional racing driver in a former lifetime. She wasn't scared—being who and what she was, nothing scared her (apart from Atropos)—but the way he whipped the truck around corners and gunned it through lights just ahead of the red, flashing lights and an atonal siren clearing the way, she was definitely impressed. And he'd kept doing it while talking on the phone.
Not with it in his hand, of course; he'd slapped it into a holder on the dash when they tumbled into the pickup, before reaching into the back seat to grab paraphernalia for her. A hard hat, a pair of lightweight protective goggles, a high-vis vest, and a pair of work boots that were (astoundingly enough) of a size to fit even her petite feet. The phone had rung after they'd been on the road for a couple of rather hectic minutes, and he'd said, "Answer call," without taking his eyes off the road.
The person on the other end had babbled about a collapsed building, and Hebert had just said, "I know. I'm on the way with help. Do what you can to keep everything stable."
After that, he'd concentrated on driving, taking side-streets and back-alleys that she'd had no idea even existed before the vehicle dived into them, at speeds that had to be illegal. All she could do was hang on after pulling on the goggles and fitting the hard hat to her head. She had no idea how she looked with them on, but if anyone laughed, she was going to obliterate them.
Hebert wasn't laughing. He drove up to a pile of rubble that still had a cloud of dust drifting away from it, and skidded the vehicle to a halt. From the back seat he produced a second hard hat and vest, which he put on as soon as he exited the vehicle. "Vest and boots, please," he said, eyes searching the ruins of the building.
She put them on, if only because he'd said please, and moved on with him. Overhead, a slender figure topped by golden curls dropped out of the sky, swooping close as they began clambering over the rubble. Ashley initially ignored her, noting that the boots did a lot better job of protecting her feet than the sandals would have.
"Atropos called me," the flying girl said. "How can I help?"
"Of course she did," muttered Hebert, then raised his voice. "Thanks for coming, Glory Girl. Get us to the trapped man, then do what I say." He raised his left hand above his head, palm inward. Standing to his left, Ashley figured out what he was doing and raised her right arm in the same way.
A moment later, Glory Girl took hold of both of them at once, fingers like vice grips closing on Ashley's wrist. She grabbed Glory Girl's wrist in turn, which took some of the strain off. Hebert grunted as they were lifted off the ground and carried a few dozen feet over the mound of rubble to where three dust-covered men stood around a dark hole about two feet in diameter.
"Okay, now what?" asked Glory Girl as she let them go. She radiated a strong willingness to help. "Where's the trapped man?"
"Down there," one of the dust-covered men said, pointing into the hole. "Says there's something lying across his back, but he can still move his toes."
"I can lift some of it away," offered Glory Girl. "Clear it so you can pull him out."
"No, that'll cause this stuff up here to cave in before you can get to him." Hebert pointed at the mound of rubble that was overshadowing them all. "Ms Stillons, can you take the top ten feet of that off, please?"
Ashley looked at the heap of broken concrete, and smiled. "I thought you'd never ask." Holding up both hands, palm out, she called on the energy, the anger that had roiled inside her ever since she was forced to leave Boston. It erupted from her hands in a snarling, howling torrent of darkness, destroying the concrete that threatened to fall, concentrating where it didn't evaporate.
Back and forth across the mound she played the twin cones of devastation, bringing the rubble down to a much more manageable height. Then, just because she could, she brought her index finger to her lips and blew imaginary smoke from the tip.
"Excellent." Hebert's tone was no less sincere for being clipped and curt. "Perfect. Glory Girl, lift that slab there out of the way and hold it there. Gentlemen, clear that rubble away from on top of Alexander. Don't try to lift the beam."
As they jumped to obey, Ashley stood watching with interest. This was the sort of teamwork she'd always wanted with her minions. To be the person who knew what call to make and when to make it.
With the slab lifted and the rubble cleared, it became obvious that a heavy beam, one end broken off, was lying across Alexander's back. As far as she was concerned, he was lucky that whatever was under him had given way enough that it hadn't crushed him flat.
"I can cut that beam off, if you want."
As they looked at her, she realised with a shock that she was the one who'd spoken, who'd volunteered to help. Where did that come from?
But Hebert was nodding. "I was just about to ask. If you could, sever it so we can lever it away."
If I can, hah. You ain't seen nothing yet. She stepped up to Alexander and cupped her left hand around her right fist, with her right index finger pointing out like a gun barrel. Squinting her left eye, she sighted down her finger with her right. All of this was entirely unnecessary; she always knew where her blasts were going. But it looked all kinds of kickass.
Using the narrowest blast she'd ever generated, she sliced through the concrete beam like a laser, only much cooler. It took just a few seconds, then she stepped back and let the big strong men deal with actually getting the cut-off chunk out of the way. Alexander groaned as they tried to move him, and Hebert told them to stop.
"Glory Girl, in the back of my vehicle, there's a back-board. Do you know what one is?" She nodded, and he continued. "Good. Grab that, and the first-aid kit."
"Sure thing." She lofted into the air and zoomed out of sight.
"That was very well done," Hebert said to Ashley. "I can see you're extremely versatile. So, have you made up your mind as to whether you'll take the job or not?"
"Say yes," croaked the guy called Alexander. "You're badass as hell."
She smiled, soaking up the praise. It was only her due, of course.
"Yeah," she said. "I think I will."
End of Part Sixty-Nine
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone