Abjuration 4.6
"We did so much good! Even the mayor came to congratulate us!" Taylor said excitedly with a grin after plopping down on the main couch.
"It's not unusual for the mayor to show up at Protectorate fundraisers and parties. He hosts them too. But I don't think I've seen Congressman Rodney at any of them before. He must have been really impressed," said Amelia with a smile of her own. She sat down beside Taylor.
"And the people! They love us! I can't believe so many people showed up already," said Taylor, watching the screens.
"Not just in Brockton Bay either. We're getting national media attention," I said, bringing a few glasses of water and putting them on the coffee table. "We're in the big leagues now."
"Thanks," they said before taking the water.
"Do you think the Protectorate and Wards are jealous?" Amelia asked with a smirk. "Didn't we invite them to the party too? I don't see them anywhere."
"They must be. Two out of four gangs in Brockton Bay were taken down and they had nothing to do with it," Taylor said, still grinning.
"It's nice to see you so happy, Taylor. I don't think I've seen you smile so much the whole week I've known you," said Amelia.
Taylor looked embarrassed but kept smiling. "I can't help it. It's just, this is what I've dreamed of since I was a kid. I never thought it would happen so soon after deciding to become a hero. I thought it'd be months at least, before I'd get any big wins, and we've taken out two whole gangs! Besides, aren't you the same? I didn't see you smiling much either, but look at you now."
"Yeah, I guess. I am pretty happy," said Amelia. "It is pretty crazy, isn't it? It's only been a week but it feels like it's been so much longer. Like we've been through so much together." She turned earnestly towards me as she said that.
"We have been through a lot," I said, meeting her gaze. "Life and death situations. We've come out of it mostly unscathed because of your healing Amelia—"
'And me!' said Agate.
'And your vigilant monitoring, of course.'
"—but we've had a number of pretty close calls that otherwise would have put us out of action."
"Yeah…"
There was a moment of silence while we all recalled the events of the last week. Or at least, I assumed that's what they were doing too while nobody said or did anything. Amelia kept staring at me while Taylor glanced back and forth between the two of us.
No who was I kidding. If Amelia kept up that stare Taylor would start misunderstanding things due to being unaware of the context.
I looked away from her eyes to Taylor.
"That said, it's not just the three of us anymore. What do you think of the mercs that agreed to work for us, now that you've met them all?"
"I am a little worried about it. You said you got rid of all the really bad ones, right?" Taylor asked.
"That's right. Coil had files on all of them, and some of the better captains helped me identify who wouldn't fit in with CRUCIBLE."
"But even the ones that are left were still criminals before. Can we really trust them? I mean, you took them over by pretending to be Coil's secret boss, right? They agreed to work for CRUCIBLE on your orders, but what if after a while they decide they'd rather stay criminals?"
"It's possible. Truth is, I don't particularly trust them, especially the grunts. The Majors, Jones—that's the Coil body double—and the three captains, I'm fairly confident in, because I've spent more time vetting them and so did Coil, before giving them leadership positions. They agreed to let me use a contract spell on them. It's pretty weak, but will make them uncomfortable if they think about betraying me, while letting me paralyze them if they try anything where I can see. I'm relying on these guys to keep the rest in line. The other non-combat employees aren't so bad. They're just regular people, really."
"Wait, you can do that? A contract spell?"
"Yeah, I just finished creating it a few days ago. They have to be willing though. It needs both parties to consent."
"Can't you just do that on the rest? On Bakuda and Coil too?" Taylor asked eagerly.
"Well, like I said, it's pretty weak. I could do it, if we could get their consent. Not forced consent, or pretend consent while planning to break the contract. Real consent. But I don't think it's worth it, because it doesn't stop them from planning and doing anything against the contract where I can't see. On someone like Coil especially, that's a recipe for disaster."
Her expression fell, disappointed.
"It's more of a fear-based deterrence than a real magical contract."
"I have an idea." said Amelia. "We could make really small bug parasites to monitor them? Would you be able to keep track of all of them, Taylor?"
"I'm not sure…It'd be pretty hard listening and watching thirty guys at once. I can barely listen to three different conversations at once right now."
"That's because the bugs you're using aren't made for listening and understanding human speech. So you're using your own brain to figure out the bug signals they send you. Have you tried doing it with Atlas?"
Taylor looked surprised for a moment, then her eyes lit up. "Oh! You're right! It's easy to listen with Atlas. If it's with more bugs like Atlas, I might be able to do ten or more."
"Exactly. I wouldn't be able to put a brain big enough in the parasite bugs for this, but I can make bigger network relay bugs to share the processing burden with your brain, and the parasite bugs would still have more specialized sensory organs."
"Do you think I'm ready for relay bugs?" Taylor asked me.
I didn't answer immediately, presenting a look deep in thought. I didn't want her to get relay bugs before out of concern that I could no longer hide anything from her. But she'd been okay with forcing Coil, Bakuda, and now the former Coil mercs to work for us. The only thing she didn't know about yet were my experiments on my prisoners. I still didn't feel quite comfortable with giving her that much power relative to my own personal power, but there were good reasons to do it now that I couldn't keep putting it off forever.
"We may as well give it a try, if you're up for it. There's no better time than now to expand our surveillance network. With two major gangs gone, you can bet that other gangs in other towns are going to be coming in soon. And if you can really get the monitoring parasites to work, that'd effectively deal with the mercs. It wouldn't be enough for Bakuda or Coil, since their powers make it hard to understand how they're betraying us, but for regular grunts it'd be pretty effective."
"Okay, let's do it," Taylor said eagerly, standing up.
"Don't you want to take a day off, have fun? There's a huge party downstairs and great music coming up soon," I said.
Taylor's eyes widened as if afraid of the idea.
"And damage my ears from the overly loud sounds while surrounded by sweaty screaming people? No thanks," Amelia said. "I wouldn't mind making some new bugs instead."
"Uh…I think heroing is fun. I like working on our powers," said Taylor, looking relieved that Amelia rejected my suggestion.
I shrugged. "Alright, if you're sure that's what you want to do, I won't stop you. I can't make any portals right now though, because my wand is at Canary's trial and the portal spell is too difficult for me to cast without a conduit, so you'll have to work on it on Bet."
After I revealed the existence of Agate and portals last week, I had also told them how my "sense projection" worked—it was done through my wand that could turn invisible and be controlled remotely, but at the cost of limiting my local spellcasting.
Taylor nodded. "How is that going? The trial, I mean?"
I frowned, because I wasn't supposed to be happy about Canary's plight. "It doesn't look good. Canary hasn't been allowed to even speak in her own defense. I've been listening to the jury discussions too and nobody is even remotely sympathetic to her."
Hearing that, both of them lost their good mood from earlier.
"We're going to have to break her out then? Do you have a plan yet?" Amelia asked.
I nodded. "Getting her mid transport will be very difficult with our current power set, unless we use Bakuda's bombs. That would work, but I'd prefer not to reveal us as the perpetrators so easily. Regardless of how corrupt the system is…we would be seen as aiding a criminal. Instead, I have a plan to break her out of the Birdcage. I've already located it and did some reconnaissance on its defenses. I couldn't see everything but I believe I can break her out anonymously."
We had run into some roadblocks with observing Labyrinth's power after the first two days in which we learned that the Wormvoid sensor program Agate had thought she developed was actually generating garbage data, so I sent Agate to explore the Birdcage a few nights ago while I was asleep. The first time it took most of the night just to fly to British Columbia, then after that she went there via portaling using micro-portals just big enough for herself. It didn't take much longer to find the massively warped space underneath a mountain that contained the Birdcage.
On the other hand, we had essentially given up trying to track the things Labyrinth pulled through Wormvoid. The problem was that measuring from outside Wormvoid the movement of objects through Wormvoid seemed to be impossible. Originally Agate and tried to do it through visual density and identifying the point at which they lost tangibility on Bet, but after a while she realized that the new sensor program's physics model of displacement vectors in Wormvoid stopped working once the objects were beyond the tangibility threshold, so they couldn't be tracked back to their home dimension.
"You're talking as if you plan to do it without our help," said Taylor. "But nobody's ever escaped from the Birdcage before, you really think you can do it?"
Amelia looked sharply at me then. "You better not be thinking of risking only yourself if it doesn't work. I—we need you."
"That's not it. The risk should be very low if I make use of a few of Bakuda's exotic bombs. Nobody escaped from the Birdcage before, but none of them had my help. None of them could just make a portal to another world."
Amelia didn't look impressed. "Is that really going to work? Don't you think the Birdcage would have anti-teleportation defenses?"
"I am 90% sure it will. The portals that the shadow organization uses work fine in there. I believe the anti-teleport defenses interfere with targeting due to spatial warping and pocket dimensions, neither of which can block my portals. I won't even have to go in the Birdcage myself, I will be staying on the other side of the portal the whole time. It will be perfectly safe."
"But still…we can help. Why do you want to do it alone?" Taylor asked.
I shrugged. "I don't mind you if you want to come along and watch, but it's really not necessary. Trust me, I'll be fine. I took out Coil by myself using a similar strategy, remember? This should be even easier, what with the Birdcage being a prison and not a fortress full of troops that can follow through the portal."
"What about the other prisoners?" Amelia asked.
"I'm going after Canary when she's alone in her cell. Not planning on getting anyone else this time, so the chances should be slim. The cells seal themselves off when the walls are broken because of the vacuum outside."
"If you're confident about it, then I'll trust you. You haven't been wrong yet," said Taylor. We both glanced at Amelia who still looked to be in thought.
"If it were possible…have you thought about getting anybody else from the Birdcage?" She finally asked.