Chương 2502: 85
Chapter 85: Fracture 9-2
Fracture 9.2
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Bored," Amy answered flatly. "Bored out of my fucking skull."
"No lingering pain or discomfort?"
She arched an eyebrow, unimpressed.
"You sound like one of the doctors here," she told me sourly. "Any lingering pain or discomfort? No. Any moments of confusion or depersonalization, like you're not in control of your own body or you don't know where you are? No, Doctor. Any numbness or tingling in your extremities? Signs of internal bleeding, like blood in your stool? No. So can you let me out of this fucking bed?"
She gestured angrily at the hospital bed she was propped up in, where she had spent the last two days following the attack on the PRT HQ. She was surrounded by an array of monitors and devices, the majority of which I only vaguely understood the purpose of, when I understood it at all. They'd said they wanted to keep her here for observation, to make sure she'd been fully, properly healed by my spell — not what they'd actually said, but what I'd inferred from what they had said.
Some part of me had been rightly offended on Medea's behalf, because she didn't halfass things and when it came to my friends, I definitely wouldn't, either. If I'd thought Amy wasn't healed all the way, I would've stayed in that operating room with her and kept casting until I was sure. Another part of me, the anxious part that operated more on emotion than logic and worried no matter what I told myself in my head or how I reasoned it all out, was glad they were making sure she was really, truly okay.
The rest of me sympathized, because I'd been basically confined to a hospital bed for an entire week after my trigger, and that had left me bored out of my skull, too.
"Have they said anything about discharging you?"
"They want to keep me for another day or two," Amy said, lips twisted into a scowl. "It might not be so bad if the food didn't suck and there was something besides trashy soap operas on the tv or, hey, you know, if they let me actually get out of this fucking bed and walk around!"
The last bit was said with venom and directed towards the door, and if looks could kill, the knob would have already been melted into slag, but there was no one there to be the target of her anger except for me.
I didn't know if she'd had visits from her family. Glory Girl might have stopped in once or twice — or so I thought, but if it happened, it happened while I wasn't here, and that was probably for the better — but if the Pelhams or her parents had come at any point in the last two days, I had no idea.
Hell, they might not even have heard that she was injured. As far as they might know, she was still at the PRT HQ, resolutely avoiding the argument about healing Brandish that had started her stint there in the first place.
I doubted it, of course. I wasn't an expert on hospital procedure, but notifying next of kin was almost certainly part of it, so there was no way they didn't know she was here. Whether they'd visited was another story. I wasn't sure I wanted to ask, either.
"Technically, I can sign myself out whenever I want to," she added bitterly. "But when they said that, they gave me the distinct impression that my next stop is Master-Stranger quarantine if I try."
"The PRT is keeping you here?" I asked. "Why?"
She arched her eyebrow again. "Your healing is untested. Why do you think?"
My eyes rolled skyward.
"I healed Vista and she came out fine," I said, annoyed. "And it's not like I used two vastly different methods between the two of you — it was Medea both times. You'd think that'd be enough to say there was nothing to worry about."
What, were they going to distrust everything I did with any of my heroes that had a direct effect on another person until they dragged me into power testing to make sure they didn't have a secret Master component to them? We'd be at it for fucking weeks.
"They made me go through that kind of shit when I first started healing, too," she told me. "Had me heal someone, then ran every fucking test they could think of to make sure I wasn't turning them into something like one of Teacher's pets or Heartbreaker's thralls or anything. It was a whole month before they let me even step foot inside the fucking hospital."
My lips pursed. That was the kind of thing I could expect if I wanted to use my powers for healing, huh? Dicking around for a month while the PRT tried to find a secret Master power that didn't exist.
It made me kind of glad I'd never tried. If there was something that would have driven me out onto the streets faster than I'd been prepared for, that anxious feeling of needing to do something but not being allowed to was it.
A bit ironic that I'd managed to avoid that during the beginning all those weeks ago and yet found myself experiencing it now after killing an Endbringer.
"Anyway." Amy waved her hand impatiently, as though swatting away those thoughts. "What's been going on outside of this place? The doctors and nurses don't really have the time to stop by and tell me anything about the outside world, so I've only heard bits and pieces and whatever the talking heads on the news feel is important."
I shrugged.
"It goes? Things have been fairly quiet since the attack. Empire thugs have been spotted around here and there, but no one's really seen Hookwolf or any of the capes, so it's mostly been a lot of waiting. And signing autographs when I go out on patrol."
Wasn't that fun? I got to enjoy the pleasure of throngs of people clamoring for my attention and asking me to put my name on whatever they happened to have on them. I, too, could bask in the attention and the acclaim of a true celebrity. Fame and fortune were now mine. I was the one at the top of the dog pile, now.
Was my sarcasm that obvious, or should I be clearer?
Well, fortunately, the furor and the frenzy of that first patrol had died down. Mostly, I was running into a couple of fans here and there or someone who had seen my interview. I'd been taking a few pictures, signing a few autographs, smiling for a few cameras, but I hadn't been mobbed by a gigantic crowd recently.
Part of that might be because I was doing my absolute damnedest to avoid them, but whatever worked, right?
"Nothing from the Empire?" Amy asked.
"Aside from claiming credit for the attack? All they've said is that it was retribution for the unlawful, illegal assassination of two of their own by the PRT. Other than that, total silence. PHO has been in an uproar with all of the speculation."
"You mean that double murder in the Towers," Amy clarified. "The one where, um, Excalibur?" I nodded. "Was painted on the walls in blood."
"Yeah." I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Nothing new on that front, either. I mean, obviously, the PRT has issued a statement that they" — or more accurately, I — "had nothing to do with it and that the investigation is ongoing, but…"
That was one of the most frustrating parts. I'd been keenly aware that the use of Excalibur as a symbol would tie back to me, and I'd been dreading the moment people made the connection and started speculating that I had been the one to murder those two. Granted, it didn't seem like it was a theory that was widely accepted, but it was the principle of the thing.
I did not go on national fucking television for the sake of using my fame and popularity to help the city just to have it undercut by the fucking Empire and a few crackpots on PHO.
"PHO is PHO," Amy concluded.
I smiled, but it was anemic and weak and devoid of any real mirth.
Of course, the focus on the murders only made me want to be a part of the investigation more, and that only made it all the more frustrating that I wasn't allowed to be. Too, with Piggot currently out of the picture, the PRT still reeling from the Empire's attack, and Renick as Acting Director in the meantime, Armsmaster's request to receive training from me through the usage of Aífe's Noble Phantasm was sitting in limbo.
It was certainly possible that they'd managed to find some evidence or something in the last few days and I simply wasn't in the loop. But I wasn't in the loop, so that didn't mean anything to me, and the difference of a few days probably wasn't enough for any breakthroughs.
"Any news about Director Piggot, then?" Amy asked.
I shook my head.
"Nothing since they took her away. They won't tell me where and they won't tell me anything about her condition. And when I asked Armsmaster about going to heal her, he said something about her having paperwork filed to deny parahuman aid in the event of a medical incident."
Amy sighed. "Yeah, that sounds about right. I offered to heal her kidneys a few years ago, but she turned me down flat. Guess she's paranoid about that kind of thing."
"Guess so."
If it had been me… But I guess if it had been my job for twenty years to be suspicious of capes, I might have been hesitant to accept healing from one, too. Personally, I still thought it was fucking stupid to be picky about it when your life was on the line and choosing to forgo healing was going to impact your quality of life and even shorten your lifespan, but I could understand why she might refuse, yeah.
Amy grunted.
"If her condition was serious enough that they took her to better facilities upstate or whatever, then she must be in some pretty bad shit," she said. She made a vague gesture with one hand. "I was half-dead and they still brought me here, after all."
My lips pulled tight. I didn't need the reminder that she'd come nearly as close to dying as Lisa had during Leviathan.
"It could be that her condition was stable enough that they could afford to take her somewhere else instead of getting her emergency treatment in Brockton Bay."
Not that I really believed that.
Amy shook her head. "The PRT has access to a fucking teleporter, Taylor. They can get her wherever she needs to go in the blink of an eye, if they have to. She's probably in some top secret government facility getting treatment from the best surgeons in the country."
And that was why: Strider meant they could take her anywhere. If he had a range limit, I didn't know of it, because he routinely took capes across the country to fight Endbringers. That didn't count any other teleporters they might be able to call on, because the logistics of it meant they almost certainly had more than just the one.
I sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to be optimistic, because if Piggot is out for the count, that means they'll be sending someone else here to take her spot, and I'm not exactly thrilled about some of their options."
Amy snorted. "After how much the PR stuff frustrated you and all of the focus Piggot put on taking advantage of your fame, I'd think you'd be happy to get someone new in who might be more willing to see things your way."
Oh, you sweet summer child, Lisa might say here.
"Piggot was fairly reasonable," I admitted almost reluctantly. I hated that it was true. "She wasn't exactly wrong to focus so much on taking advantage of the fame that came from killing Leviathan, it just…wasn't what I wanted to do as a hero."
Because smiling for cameras and going onto talk shows didn't feel very heroic. Brave, maybe, in light of how just the once had left me wrung out and a nervous mess, but not heroic.
"It might have felt useless and pointless, but it actually did accomplish something," I went on. "And she talked to me about it. Some of the people they might replace her with wouldn't even do me the courtesy of keeping me in the loop, they'd just send the orders down and expect me to follow them without complaint."
Amy's brow furrowed for a moment, and then she made a noise of understanding. "More Khepri stuff?"
My lips pursed.
"To an extent, yes. Just because things went a certain way in her timeline doesn't mean they'll go exactly the same here. The situation is different, things aren't as bad. But if they still appoint who I think they'll appoint —"
A buzz from my work phone drew my attention, and when I pulled it from my pocket — fuck if keeping track of two different phones wasn't more hassle than I thought it was worth — it showed a notification for a recent text message. I dragged my thumb across the screen to open it.
The OAO Beardmaster: The new Director has requested a meeting with you. You are expected back at base immediately.
Lisa, you little shit, that's the last time I leave you alone with either of my phones, I swear to God.
"Speak of the devil," I said aloud.
Apocrypha: on my way
"I have to go," I told Amy as I stood from my chair. "The new Director is pulling me into a meeting. To touch base or something, I guess."
"Yeah," she echoed faintly. "Or something."
"I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Tomorrow."
I turned and started to leave, but as I reached the door I stopped and looked back.
"Oh," I said. "Before I forget again."
Amy looked up at me from her bed. "What?"
"Lisa says to get well soon, because it's not the same without you there to bicker with."
Amy snorted. "Yeah? Guess that gives me a good reason to actually stay here for another few days. I finally have a break from having to look at her ugly mug every day."
I smiled. "I'll tell her you said that."
Lisa would probably get a kick out of it. At this point, I wasn't sure if these two were actually still antagonistic or if they just enjoyed ruffling each other's feathers. Probably even odds either way, but I wanted to think it was the latter, because they could both use more friends than just me.
"Give her one other thing for me, too."
Amy made a rude gesture with her hand, the right one that she'd almost lost, and I burst out into laughter as I left her hospital room. The smile on her face made any weird looks from the nursing staff well worth it.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Armsmaster met me at the PRT building's secret entrance, for as much as it was actually secret. He was waiting for me there, decked out in full armor and grim-faced, with his halberd in hand. He looked like he was prepared to charge into battle, and with a new Director coming in, someone who might have an entirely different way of doing things, that just might wind up being the case.
His first words for me were, "Suit up. You're going to want to put your best foot forward for this meeting."
With a moment's thought, I was decked out in my full costume, without even bothering to break stride as I fell into step with Armsmaster. I spared a thought and a glance out of the corner of my eye at his armor, wishing a little that Glenn's plate armor idea could have panned out on a more permanent basis. I'd been a bit ambivalent about it at the start, but I had to admit that it had grown on me the last few days, and it did give a more serious, 'I'm ready for battle,' feel than my vest and pants.
Sometime, I'd have to figure all of that out. Another thing to put on my ever growing list of things I needed to do.
"So what's this about?" I asked as he led me through the PRT building. The route we were taking was convoluted and roundabout, and it only took me a moment to realize that we were meandering around the sections that had been badly damaged in the attack.
"The Director hasn't seen fit to inform me," he replied sourly. "He requested to meet with you privately and has not disclosed the reasoning behind it."
The ripple of surprise that shot through me almost made me miss my next step.
"What?"
He paused and turned to look at me, scowling and solemn.
"You will be entirely on your own," he explained clearly. "Neither myself nor any other member of the Protectorate will be there to assist you in any way. That is why you must be prepared and make the best impression possible. You must be professional in every aspect and you must carry yourself with the maturity of a veteran hero. You are the only representative you will have in this meeting."
He started walking again and I fell in step next to him.
"Isn't that illegal? I'm underage."
"Ordinarily," Armsmaster agreed. "However, the extraordinary circumstances give a lot of latitude, and as the Director is Wards' supervisor in Brockton Bay, the presence of a Protectorate mentor isn't strictly necessary. As a matter of courtesy, either myself or Miss Militia should be present, but there is no rule or law that demands it, only the presence of the Wards' supervisor."
Which is the PRT Director, in this case, he didn't need to repeat. He didn't seem particularly happy about it, either, but he was a hard man to read on the best of days, so I couldn't say what exactly had him so frustrated.
"What about my dad?"
Wasn't there some kind of law about that? But that had never really been a thing with Khepri, either, now that I thought about it. Dad had only ever been involved strictly where she involved him, and every other time she'd had a meeting with any of the Directors, she'd mostly been on her own, in terms of representation. The closest she'd had was Glenn or one of the Directors arguing for her, not on her behalf.
When I looked at it in terms of a job, that made more sense, because that would technically mean the Director was my boss, and you didn't bring your dad in every time the manager called you into his office.
"Ordinarily," he said again. "But the Wards' supervisor can also act in loco parentis, especially in situations of emergency. Although the immediate threat has passed, this situation would technically qualify."
My lips drew tight, but I said nothing. There was nothing in my meagre authority I could do about it, and I wasn't about to start throwing the weight of my new celebrity around for this.
Eventually, we reached a long hallway filled to the brim with all sorts of hidden security. Just on a cursory glance, I could see the half a dozen panels where nozzles for containment foam were hidden, and two troopers fully kitted out in gear stood guard outside the heavy door of the new Director's office — new in that both the Director and the office were new.
I didn't relish the idea of what the old one must now look like.
Armsmaster came to a stop. This was, apparently, as far as he was going to go.
"Remember what I said," he told me lowly, so that only I could hear.
I gave him an imperceptible nod, then stepped forward.
The troopers guarding it stiffened as I approached the door, and it might have been my imagination, but I thought I might have seen a few of the confoam sprayers turn in my direction, but I walked in unmolested and closed the heavy door behind me with a very solid sounding thud.
And then I got my first look at the man who would be replacing Director Piggot for the foreseeable future.
The new Director was a severe, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and cold, narrow eyes set deep in a clean shaven face. He wore a suit, as any other man in his position might, but it was ill-fitting in the way that it didn't jive with his image, with the combative posture and the stiff, almost military way he held his weight. He was all hard angles and straight lines, with tension threaded through his veins, and he had the appearance more of a commander on the battlefield than a desk jockey managing the bureaucracy.
I recognized him the moment I laid eyes on him and put a name to the dread that had been sitting in my gut ever since I'd found out Piggot had been taken out of action in the attack.
"You're late," James Tagg said coldly.
"You."
I felt the phantom sensation of bugs crawling along the floor and through the walls, and for an instant, I imagined them flooding the room, marching to their deaths as they charged into every orifice they could reach and bit and stung and chewed at every piece of flesh they could. For a single instant, I watched him die.
But I pushed the memory back down, because it wasn't mine. I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down, because none of the things that man had done were things this one had done. There were no body bags to lay at his or Alexandria's feet, none of my friend's lives on the line. He had not yet threatened the safety of anyone I cared about.
I was not sitting across from the man who would rather burn the city down than give an inch in compromise. I was standing.
"I am Director James Tagg," he told me bluntly and without circumstance. It was nothing more than a statement of fact. "I am Director Piggot's replacement in this quaint little hellhole, and you will refer to me as either Director or Sir."
Very pointedly, I crossed my arms. "Why did you call for me?"
The skin around his eyes tightened, but he didn't rise to the obvious bait. I was almost disappointed.
"I brought you here to discuss the future," he said, "namely, your place in it. It occurs to me that, volatility and instability aside, you are an incredibly valuable asset. Director Piggot has been requesting assistance in this city for years, only to be denied, and now you have neatly fallen into our laps, and I intend to see that we make the best use of you."
"How so?" I asked cautiously.
"How else?" he retorted, as though I was being purposely stupid. "We'll send you out into the field and take the fight to the likes of the Empire and the Merchants."
Which was basically what I wanted, wasn't it? Hell, it was what I'd been arguing with Piggot about that entire time, and here he was, offering it to me on a silver platter.
Fuck, was I actually going to agree with Tagg?
"Director Piggot implied I would be doing more PR work before we discussed my deployment against the gangs."
"Director Piggot was more interested in integration," he said with a sneer. The tone of his voice told me exactly what he thought of the idea, in ways and to degrees the expression on his face simply couldn't. "She wanted to make parahumans a part of everyday life, to make them something people could accept as nonthreatening or commonplace. She was trying to transition them, you, into society as smoothly as possible. She wanted to make you normal."
I cocked my head a little, lips pursed. "That is the PRT's mission statement."
"Is it?" he asked rhetorically. "Because I don't think so. The PRT is the Parahuman Response Team. Our job is to respond to threats of a parahuman nature, against enemies that use their powers to upset the delicate balance of society and threaten the fabric of social order. We are the shield that defends the populace from supervillains who misuse their powers and the sword that brings them to justice. We are peacekeepers, soldiers in the war on parahuman crime."
Fuck. I really was going to agree with him, wasn't I?
"And what does that mean for me, exactly?"
"It means you'll actually be making something of yourself," he responded. "It means you'll be deployed as and where we need you, rather than being a show pony to be trotted out in front of the masses. You'll be our weapon against the gangs."
Every muscle in my body stiffened.
"What?"
"Let me make it clear for you." He leaned over his desk. "I don't trust you. I don't trust your judgement. But I don't have to trust you to make use of you, and you don't have to trust me to follow my orders."
I felt my lips starting to curl. Fuck you, Tagg.
"Frankly, Piggot should have brought you in sooner," he went on. "A lot of the screwups and incidents could have been avoided if she had. The Shadow Stalker debacle, the Echidna incident. Part of the problem was that she coddled you too much, gave you too much leeway. She was too soft."
"You…!"
I was taking a step forward before I could even think about it, and the instant I did, every hidden nozzle in the room popped out and took aim. The shock of it forced me back a step and threw a bucket of cold water on my anger.
But banked flames were not dead, and the coals simmered in my gut.
"Careful," he cautioned, "I take my security very seriously. I don't intend to leave myself open to attack the way the previous director did."
I held my tongue. He took my silence as freedom to keep going.
"I don't trust you," Tagg repeated. "But as I said, that doesn't mean I can't use you. By happy coincidence, that means I can give you something you want, too. No more PR patrols, no more morning talk show interviews, no more smiling for cameras. I'm going to put you in the field against the scum of this city and I expect you to fight."
"That sounds like an attack dog, not a hero," I shot back, but it was petty and I knew it.
He scoffed. "Is there a difference? 'Heroes' are just the government's parahuman soldiers. Your job is to enforce the law and maintain order. To be the bulwark against the dark and defend us against those who would tear our society apart. My job is to keep you in line."
In some ways, he wasn't wrong, and I knew that, because it was essentially the role Khepri had given herself when she surrendered to the PRT. In others, he was missing the entire point of heroism, of the symbolism that heroes embodied, the things they stood for and espoused, because once you put on the mask and did something incredible, you became more than the person beneath it.
I didn't bother arguing the point. Tagg wouldn't change his mind and didn't agree, so it was a fruitless effort.
"So what does this mean for me, then?" I asked instead. "More patrols into more dangerous parts of the city? Being on call at every hour of the day to respond to every emergency? Am I being sent on precision strikes against the Empire, the Fallen?"
Not that I would say no to that. The Empire had stepped over a line, and I was all too willing to stomp on their toes for it. They'd get to find out that my heel came down a lot harder than most.
"It means we do away with frivolities," he said. "You want to meet up with your friends? Fine. It's your private life, you can hang out with your friends all you want in your off time, but the PRT isn't a hotel. If they're not going to join the Wards, then they need to make their own arrangements. I don't care what those are."
A growl rumbled in my chest, but I choked it before it made it out of my throat.
"You're kicking Lisa and Amy out?"
"Yes," he answered bluntly. "If you're that worried about it, your father can put them up or file for custody. Since we have no jurisdiction over that, it's up to you and him to make those arrangements. That's not our field."
Asshole. I didn't say it out loud. The PRT housing them had always been a temporary arrangement, I knew that, I'd just figured there'd be more leniency, considering the city had just survived an Endbringer.
Whatever. Fuck him. Dad would be happy to take them in, and in the worst case scenario, my castle was big and empty and had plenty of room. I'd probably even feel better about having them as far away from Tagg as possible.
"What else?" I managed to grind out.
"Your little training sessions with the Wards and troopers," he added. "I'm putting a stop to those, too."
"What?" I was more surprised than angry. "Why?"
"Because they're a waste of your time. If you have time to spend training them, then you have time that could be better spent in the city, handling actual problems. Every second you're not off duty, you'll be spending out in the city on patrol. If you're so bored that you feel like you need something to do, then you're going back out into the field."
Something told me that wasn't strictly legal. Forget child labor laws, I was sure the regulations had something in them about the amount of hours a Ward could put into actually being a Ward before they were mandated to take time off.
Whether training the troopers or the Wards had counted as part of that… I had no idea. Maybe Piggot had pulled some strings or found a loophole to make it work. She wasn't around right now for me to ask.
Damn it. The worst part of all of this was that it wasn't entirely unreasonable and it wasn't actually something I was completely against. I wanted to train the Wards, yeah, because I wanted them to be able to defend themselves and punch above what should be their weight class. I wanted them prepared for the battles to come.
But right now was also a critical time and there were a lot of threats coming soon that it might be better if I just handled myself. There'd be plenty of time later to focus on bringing my teammates up as close to my level as possible.
"Anything else?"
"Not at this time, no," he said. "If you have any concerns, feel free to file them with the secretary, and they'll receive the attention they deserve at the appropriate time."
Why did that sound like 'none' to me?
Maybe I was just being uncharitable, though. Khepri's interactions with Tagg had been extreme enough and negative enough that at least some of that was bleeding over into my own thoughts and opinions.
Couldn't get much more extreme than murder, after all.
"For now, you're dismissed," he went on. "The schedule for your patrols will be finalized shortly and you'll be informed when they are."
I didn't give him the satisfaction of my respect. He was right, I didn't trust him, and if he wanted it, he was going to have to earn it.
Instead, I turned and made to leave.
"Apocrypha," he said to my back. "I don't care if you don't like me. You don't have to trust me, either. But we are going to clean up this mess of a city, together, and I expect you to be on board with that. I'll accept nothing less than your full commitment."
I glanced at him over my shoulder.
I know exactly what your 'full commitment' looks like.
But my lips stayed shut and I said nothing as I pulled the door open and left.
One chance. I'd give him one chance to make this work. One chance for him to be a better man than the James Tagg that had risked the lives of hundreds of civilian kids, just for a petty shot at a supervillain.
I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted him to fail.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
NOTES
Longer chapter than usual. I was almost ready to split it in half, to be honest.
I tried to give Tagg the feel of a politician who thinks he's a soldier. I'm hoping his paranoia isn't too subtle, too.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best.
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