Heavy footsteps carried him through a crowd of people who were having the worst days of their lives. There were doctors and nurses who might never be able to return to the careers they had worked so long to achieve. He saw new parents, almost all in their twenties and thirties, huddled close and openly weeping or staring into space with puffy red eyes. There were family members trying to give them support, not knowing how. Not that the extended family would be suffering any less. Police officers and detectives were trying to gather statements, well aware that the families wouldn’t know anything pertinent. Some were standing by, notepads in hand, unwilling or unable to proceed with their witnesses.

He’d known this feeling, once. To be the bystander, watching the aftermath, agonized as much by the inability to help, the lack of knowledge about what he should do as by the tragedy itself. To have it happen again and again. He banished the memories before they could take hold. It was easier to distract himself and think about the work. If there was no work to be done, he would let himself slip into that other state of mind, seeing the world coming apart, ways things could fit together.

But right now, he would focus on the job.

He glanced at the window. Four or five hours ago, these same parents might have been standing outside the window, watching their new babies sleeping. Now there was only a sheet taped up to block the view, marked for what it was by a yellow ‘x’ of police tape.

Keep walking. Something nagged at him as he set his right foot down, like a pebble in his boot, except not. He reached out, as if he were trying to move a finger, but the artificial nerves were hooked into his suit, and the impulse didn’t go anywhere in his body. He felt the air shift as the openings in his mask sealed shut. He sent out another command and the microphone came online.

When he spoke, only his ears and the microphone heard his voice. “Note to self. Prosthetics in right leg feel alien. I should check the treads on my old boots, see if one of my legs was longer than the other, maybe try to dig up recordings of myself to match my new gait to my old one. Should time adjustments to coincide with next procedure.”

Note made, he shut off the microphone, opened the vents. He saw two women embracing one another, eyes red, staring at him as he passed through the last of the gathered crowd. They were hoping for the impossible, willing it. But bringing their child back wasn’t in his hands. The best he could manage would be revenge. Or justice. The line between the two got pretty damned thin at times like this.

The local sheriff was waiting for him as he approached the waiting room.

“Defiant?” the sheriff asked. She looked small, mid-sixties, gray-haired. He suspected she was someone who had gleaned some experience in Boston or Brockton Bay and then ‘retired’ out to a smaller town in the middle of nowhere. She wouldn’t have expected to face a situation like this in her retirement, nobody would, but she was holding herself together in a way that suggested she had some experience to fall back on. She’d lost officers, and the town was small enough that people she knew would have been among the casualties, but she was all business, her chin set, her small dark eyes hard with determination.

He liked her right away.

“Yes ma’am,” He shifted his spear to his left hand, extended his right hand to shake hers.

“Miranda Goering. Sheriff. No need for that kind of formality here.” She sounded like she said something similar on a routine basis. She frowned. “I… would have a hard time expressing just how much I appreciate your being here.”

How was he supposed to respond to that? He couldn’t think of a response.

She was studying him. Her eyes settled on his weapon, the fourteen foot long spear. “How on Earth do you carry that spear indoors?”

“It folds, and it can contract to be half the length,” he said.

“I see,” she said. She shook her head, as if stirring herself from idle thoughts. Back to the nightmare. “Do you want to start in the nursery?”

He shook his head. “No. I can guess what happened, and I doubt there’ll be anything I can use there. Show me the other scenes.”

Wordlessly, she turned and led him to the stairwell. He noted the gouges on the walls. Two or three inches deep, with blood spatters following each. Plastic had been taped down over each individual mark and spatter. Evidence cards were stuck next to each. He could guess the culprit. Jack.

Another impulse sent to his hardware, and his spear broke down into three loosely connected sections as they made their way down to the next floor. A practiced motion let him catch the weapon under his arm. “You have any local parahumans?”

“Three. Nothing notable. Edict and Licit, a low-rated master and a low-rated shaker. We also have one villainess who occasionally tries to make it in one of the big cities and then retreats back home when she can’t cut it. Calls herself Damsel of Distress.”

He reconnected his spear as they passed through the door. “I know her. Mover and shaker. Storms of unevenly altered gravity, time and space. Edict and Licit keep her in check?”

“They manage with our help. Why do you ask?”

“The Slaughterhouse Nine are recruiting. Their numbers are down, and they’ll be looking for a quantity of new members more than they’re looking for quality. At least until they’re stable enough that they can afford to be picky. Once they can, they’ll replace the weakest recruits with better ones. I don’t want them to get that far.”

“I understand. But would they want her? Damsel of Distress? Her lack of control over her power holds her back. I won’t say she isn’t a problem, but she’s never been a priority threat to anyone.”

“She’s a heavy hitter. They can give her control, or they can use that lack of control. Let’s not forget that they might be looking at Edict and Licit. I’ll need you to send me their files as well, please.”

“Of course.”

He didn’t really need the files. The PRT had provided access to everything except the highest level secured files. He suspected that Dragon would be able to gain access to those if the need arose. Still, asking the sheriff had let him gauge whether she was really as cooperative as she seemed, and her level of connection to the hometown heroes. There had been no resistance, which was reassuring.

She led the way to the area at the front of the ground floor. They stopped at the perimeter of the scene. He could see the path that Hookwolf had traveled, the bodies and body parts that littered the area, each covered by sheets or squares of cloth. There was little to be done about the blood. Every officer present was from out of town, and everyone was staying to the edges of the area. There was more evidence than there was ground to tread on.

Defiant examined the area. “They hit the nursery first, Jack and Siberian moving elsewhere in the building. Your officers got the call, but didn’t have enough details to know what they were getting into. They came in through the emergency room here, and Hookwolf was waiting for them. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” Sheriff Goering said, staring down at the sheet in front of her. Her composure was slipping, emotion seeping into her posture and expression, softening that hardness.

Again, he wasn’t sure what to say. He needed her in control, but any reassurance threatened to make things worse. He didn’t want to upset her, but everything about this was upsetting. There was no denying that. She would regret it if she broke down in tears here, and it would waste his time when he needed to be in pursuit.

“Tell her it’s not her fault,” Dragon spoke in his ear.

“It’s not your fault,” he told the sheriff. “They planned it this way. I would guess they controlled the information that was reported to your station to keep you in the dark, then would have had Hookwolf sitting in the lobby in his human state, indistinguishable from anyone else that was waiting for a turn.”

“That fits what we know,” she replied. She looked up at him.

“They have years of practice in this, and this is what they’re doing, ninety-nine percent of the time. Hit isolated areas, terrorize. Sometimes it gets reported in the media, because it’s sensationalist, and sometimes it goes unreported-”

“Back on track. Cut the digression.”

“-There was nothing you could have done differently, knowing what you did,” he finished, feeling like he was leaving his explanation incomplete. If it were him on the other side of things, he’d want the full picture, but he would take Dragon’s advice.

“You’re right. But that doesn’t make it much easier.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t expect it would.”

The lens of his right eye clicked through multiple frequencies and resolutions, until the scene stood out in high detail. The blood shone ultraviolet, and even particles of dust were highlighted. The entire area stood out with fingerprints, footprints and frost-like patterns where air currents had layered dust over walls and windows. He began to pick his way through the scene, setting his feet down only where there wasn’t any evidence to be damaged.

“You’re hunting them?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“If I can.”

“Talk to me? Give me some assurance that some good will come of this? That you’ll be able to track them down, because of what happened here, and that you’ll be able to stop them?”

He stared at the landscape around him, all white, gray and the brown-red of drying blood. It was washed out, stark. The magazines and brochures had been covered by arterial spray and clothing was hidden beneath sheets.

“Give it to her straight,” Dragon urged him.

“He was waiting here,” he pointed to a chair. “The blood and the way the bodies fell, Hookwolf wasn’t holding anything back from the moment he made his move. A walking chainsaw massacre. I’m trying to look at how it played out, so I can read something into how they’re operating and where their priorities are.”

“How?” Goering asked.

He saved the settings of the lens and then switched to a radiograph-ultrasound reading. The world was cast in monochrome, now, and he could see the vague shapes of the bodies under the sheets, light and dark painting a picture of densities rather than light. He closed his mask so the sheriff wouldn’t overhear and spoke into the microphone, “Count the skulls.”

“Twenty two.”

“Twenty two bodies,” he spoke aloud, “In the waiting area alone. It seems like too many for a town this size, this time of night.”

“We’re the only real hospital for this part of the county. We get people from neighboring towns flying in by ambulance or helicopter.”

“I see. Even so, it’s more than I would have guessed. I suspect there was some announcement across the hospital, as the attacks started. The way people were clustered here, they were probably ordered to stay put and stay calm. Your officers enter and Hookwolf attacks. There’s hesitation from the bystanders. People are caught between perfectly rational self-preservation and the authority of the hospital staff who didn’t have the full picture.”

“Don’t assign blame,” Dragon whispered. “The Slaughterhouse Nine are the ones in the wrong here.”

“He lunges across the waiting area to the doors, cutting off retreat and tearing through anyone in his way. This is new to him. He’s used to fighting people who resist, people with powers and law enforcement officers with the technology to fight him. This gives me the impression of a fox in the henhouse. The crowd turns to flee for the hallways, and he cuts them off there, herds them towards the center of the room, finishes them off.”

He could see the pain on the Sheriff’s face, but she was holding up. “And that’s useful?”

Defiant nodded. “Hookwolf was largely content doing what he was doing in Brockton Bay. He viewed himself as a warrior, a general, and there was a degree of honor in what he did. He wasn’t honorable, but he followed a code. The person who nominated him for the group, Shatterbird, is no longer a member. So why did he join? Our working assumption was that there were threats on some level, extortion. But he’s shifting focus too quickly. Adopting a new mindset. It’s possible Jack Slash convinced him in another way.”

“Or he’s under their control,” Dragon said, communicating over their personal channel.

“…Or he’s being coerced,” Defiant said, for the sheriff’s benefit. “An implant, something that’s turned him into a puppet.”

He looked over his shoulder at the Sheriff, but she wasn’t venturing a response.

Back to the job. He pointed with his spear, where Hookwolf had been seated, then traced the path the villain had taken. Front door, then one hallway, then the other. A loose ‘z’. People had clustered around the middle of the room, and he’d leaped into the midst of them to finish them off.

Defiant’s eyes shifted to the front desk. There was blood spatter there, but it was the furthest point from the path Hookwolf have traveled. It would have been his last destination before he moved elsewhere.

Defiant used the lens setting to watch for blood spatter and footprints as he made his way behind the desk.

There were more bodies. One was propped up against the wall, and the stains that were soaking through the sheet were more brown than red. He’d had his lower abdomen opened. The last to die.

With his spear’s point, Defiant lifted the sheet away from the man’s head. Young, head shaved, a tan collared shirt with a star on the shoulder and a kevlar vest. His arms and hands were mangled beyond repair. Defiant studied the area, noting the presence of footprints, then replaced the sheet.

His progress out of the area was slow, and not entirely because he was trying to preserve evidence. He needed to think, to draw the entire picture together and confirm what he was saying before he addressed the sheriff.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Your deputy went down fighting,” he said. “Tooth and nail.”

Her jaw clenched, and he could see her eyes glisten. She stared hard at the wall.

“He couldn’t have won. Not against Hookwolf. But I think he gave us what we needed.”

“Did he?”

“The aftermath of the fight suggests Hookwolf was in control of his actions. What’s more, I think Jack Slash is grooming him. The general and the cutthroat, playing off one another, educating each other in their respective disciplines, so to speak. Jack’s going to want to keep this interplay going, maintain Hookwolf’s interest and keep him from getting restless. What’s the nearest town?”

“Prescott.”

“Second nearest?”

“Enfield.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m going to talk to my partner, join her in paying a visit to Damsel of Distress if she hasn’t already wrapped that up, then we’ll be leaving. With luck, we’ll be right on their heels.”

“Execute the motherfuckers.”

“I’ll damn well try.”

He extended a hand, and she shook it. He turned to leave, sending nervous impulses to the computer system in his suit, drawing up a map of the hospital and overlaying it with the image he was seeing on his visor. He made his way to the exit and briskly walked toward the field where he’d parked the Uther suit.

“Talk to me, Colin? What’s the thought process?”

“Hookwolf gutted the deputy and then stood by while he died a slow, painful death. Footprints on the other side of the room are probably Jack’s, if you look through the feed. His back would have been to the filing cabinet.”

“I see it. Hookwolf doesn’t have a reason to inflict a slow, painful death if he’s just a puppet under Bonesaw’s control.”

“That’s my line of thinking. From the looks of it, he was standing there longer than Jack. If Jack moved upstairs, which matches with the gouges in the stairwell, then he was leaving Hookwolf there to watch the man die over the course of minutes. The deputy was someone strong, ferocious, a warrior, which is how Hookwolf identified himself. This wasn’t just killing, but rejoicing in the cruelty of it, the feeling of superiority over the fallen. I think what Jack was trying to instill in Hookwolf, challenging him to alter his code and be something darker.”

“I don’t like it when you try to get into their heads like that.”

“We have to be proactive. Predict. Get ahead of them, so we can stop them before they attack the next hospital, the next neighborhood or school. That means figuring out what they’re thinking.”

“I know. I just don’t like it. Not with the way Mannequin approached you.”

“Mannequin’s dead.”

“And he approached you for a reason.”

He signaled for the Uther’s cabin to open, then made his way inside. It was half the size of a commercial plane, outfitted with basic living quarters, and outfitted with long-range weaponry. The moment he was inside, the systems kicked into life, the pilot’s chair turning to be in position for him to sit, monitors lighting up. He had only to think, and the images changed, the cursor flying across the screen with a thought to click on icons.

“…You’re not responding.”

“Sorry. Still getting used to this setup. I feel like a baby, still figuring out how to move my arms and legs.”

“I hope it’s a little more intuitive than that if you’re airborne.”

“Exaggeration for effect. I’m like a toddler, then. I can walk, but I could fall if I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing during the more complicated bits.”

He settled into the pilot’s seat, and his senses opened up with vague ‘tactile’ responses from the Uther. He felt it lift into the air. Monitors in front of him let him note Dragon’s location.

“You didn’t respond to my question, Colin. I was asking if you think I need to keep a closer eye on you.”

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “I don’t know how you could be closer. But it helps, having you there. I appreciated the tips with the sheriff. I would have fucked that up.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“Any notice on Damsel?”

“Seems like we’re too late. They got her.”

His heart sank. “Got her in the sense that she’s dead, or got her in the literal sense?”

“The latter.”

“Fuck!” One more to contend with. He remembered who he was talking to. “Sorry.”

“I swore when I found out. Don’t worry. I’m thinking Enfield. You?”

“We’re on the same page. It’s close enough, but not so close it’s the next place we’d look.” He shifted the Uther into motion and plotted a course for the Nine’s next likely destination. He could see Dragon doing the same with her own suit.

They wouldn’t be able to do this for long. They were only able to track the Nine like this because their quarry was unaware. It would only get harder, with Jack obfuscating the group’s movements, with traps and misdirection, a contest of second guessing, trying to think more steps ahead.

He thought aloud, “We should have fought them sooner. In Brockton Bay.”

“We weren’t ready, on a lot of levels. You hadn’t recuperated, and I didn’t have anything that worked as standalone firepower. Better to wait, confront them with six suits at once.”

He opened his mouth to respond, then stopped.

“Damn,” she said, “I was hoping you weren’t paying enough attention.”

“I’m always going to listen when you talk. What happened to the other three suits?”

“Melusine is out of commission until I can build some replacement limbs. Azazel and the Astaroth-Nidhug were melted down.”

He frowned. “The Undersiders?”

“And the Travelers. I pulled the remaining suits out of the city. Can’t excuse the losses. Not with bigger fish to fry.”

“That’s… irritating.”

“What part? That they get to keep doing what they’re doing? Or that I didn’t mention it?”

“I’m still officially a prisoner. I’m just a prisoner on a manhunt, now. If you want to control what info I get, I’ll live.”

“I can’t tell if you mean that.”

“I can’t either. But right this minute, I’m more focused on the fact that the Undersiders and Travelers could hold their own against the full flight of seven. If they can get that far, couldn’t the Slaughterhouse Nine be able to defeat the suits as well? And us with them?”

“It’s the A.I. Substandard. They followed directions without an issue, but they aren’t creative. The A.I. can’t think outside the box, they don’t plan or get creative. They just do the tasks they were assigned: sequester, fight, detain.”

“It’s your work. I know you’re capable of designing outside of the box.”

“I’m working with my hands tied, Colin. There’s too many redundancies in my code, the rules against me making A.I.? They’re still there. You gave me some detours, some workarounds, ways to get around them, but I’m still stumbling over them.”

He tapped his fingers on his armrest, thinking. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Please.“

“I don’t want to spoil your code. This isn’t my field of study. It’s not even something I’ve dabbled in. As a rule, anything I do to change it is going to make things less elegant.”

“In that one department.”

“And I’m legitimately afraid I’ll do permanent damage if something runs out of control.”

“I have backups. Weekly.”

“Which means we’d have to bring you up to speed on the mission here. I’m saying it’s dangerous. I like the you of right now more than the you of a week ago.”

“That sounds almost romantic.”

He smiled a little.

“Saw that.”

He smiled wider. “You’re bordering on the obsessive now.”

“I can dial it back. How are the prostheses?”

“Holding up. Eye’s working great.”

“I saw,” she replied.

He smirked.

She sounded legitimately embarrassed as she said, “Whoops.”

“Don’t worry. I knew you were watching. It’s fine, good to have an extra set of eyes on the scene. Um. The other parts are fine. I made a note to fix my leg. I think it’s a little too perfect. Feels uncanny. But I suppose you heard that.”

“I don’t listen in on any personal notes, just like I won’t pry into any journals you keep or personal mail. The deal we struck with the PRT was that I would make sure you followed the rules. That’s what I’ll do. But your thoughts are your own.”

“Alright.”

“You don’t sound overly concerned either way.”

“I’m not, really.”

“You let me know if you do start feeling uncomfortable.”

“I can do that. Listen, there’s no use in me getting deep into your code when we’re going to get there in a matter of minutes. I’m going to look at my knees in the meantime, then maybe I’ll refresh myself on your code if I have time before we land.”

“Alright.”

He glanced at one monitor, and windows opened to show images of the leg. He was able to draw the crude shapes that represented individual devices even when he wasn’t looking at the screen. A triangle here, a circle there. Another window opened up with a line connecting it to the triangle, and he drew an identical triangle, began filling it with more shapes. By the time he had a fourth subwindow open, he was drawing from previous notes to copy over other schematics of older work, seeing where things could go. Everything could fit together. The waste energy of one system could help power another. Even on a molecular level, there were ways to harness the ambient radiation that was emitted by everything in the known universe. Some was infinitesimally small, but it was usable. That energy could be heterodyned, or redirected into loops long enough that they were near-infinite. Hyperefficient, dense energy generation that could benefit from being hooked up to more devices. It was the fundamental basis of his work: efficiency.

Which suited him well. Efficiency, intensity, focus were all the same thing in a sense, and they were his strengths. The flip side was that they weren’t strengths when they were applied to relationships. Or to human relationships.

It seemed to be working for him with Dragon so far. Someone else might have bucked at the closeness of their partnership, the intimacy of it, her unending presence and watching eye. He understood that she thought faster, that she didn’t sleep, didn’t stop. She was fond of him and she was programmed to emulate people. Maybe she came across as intense at times, but that was simply a poor translation, normal behavior overclocked and given no chance to pause. He would watch for any problems just as she was keeping an eye out for the part of him that had drawn Mannequin’s attention.

For now, his own obsessiveness, arrogance, and goal-oriented mindset would keep him focused on the Nine, push other concerns to the periphery of his attention. He could adjust to any of Dragon’s peculiarities in the meantime. He could even enjoy them.

His lips quirked with another smile. She was amusing.

“Okay. I’m done for now. Want to look it over while I get into the code?”

“Sure. You have eight minutes before you should get your stuff together.”

He’d had to make a program just to get a handle on the code. It wasn’t working with a fixed structure, but was instead a torrential waterfall of data, a river of lightning, a trillion eels weaving through one another in a singular mass. Deciphering it required that he think in an entirely different way. To actually change it was something else entirely. The rules Dragon was obligated to follow were a fundamental part of her self, and everything she remembered filtered through that.

He isolated a part of the program and set it to run in a loop so he could study what it was doing.

“Your design doesn’t work,” Dragon informed him.

“Does too.”

“You inserted the nanomachine thorn generator into your leg, but your power source vents straight into your calf. You’d gradually roast your flesh from your bones.”

“I’m inserting more of the same into my calf. Daisy chain.”

“More self-alterations? Colin-”

“We’ve been over this.”

“I was going to suggest we take some time tonight, play another round of ten by ten. At the rate you’re going, there won’t be a point.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Not by much.”

He could have responded, but he held back, stayed quiet. No use starting a fight now, not when they might be fighting the Nine shortly.

Ten by ten. The ‘game’ involved some interplay between him and her android self, physical contact, and rating the sensitivity of the contact on two scales of ten. It had started out as a means of calibrating the various sensations her ‘body’ experienced and ensuring his own prostheses weren’t causing any damage to his nervous system, but things had progressed to inevitable, intentional conclusions.

Not the obvious conclusion. There was more to be done in refining her body and expanding her capabilities before they could take things that far.

Would he be more machine than she was by the time they got there?

On the other side of the coin, he had to wonder: could he afford to hold back? They were engaged in a battle of attrition against the Nine. In the grand scheme of things, there were also the Endbringers to consider. He’d gone too far in Brockton Bay, but the fundamental principle was right. They had to be stopped, if it was even possible, and he wouldn’t complain if it was him who did the deed. If it was a question of going all out, holding nothing back, showing no compunctions and finally stopping the abominations, well, he’d do it all over again. He wouldn’t trust the nano-thorns to the same extent; they apparently couldn’t cut through the entirety of an Endbringer, but he’d do the same thing again.

And he’d feel the same regret he did now.

“You’ve gone quiet.”

“Thinking.”

“Three minutes before you take the thinking cap off and we get battle ready.”

“That’s fine. I’m thinking in circles anyways. In the interest of being useful, I’m trying to isolate your ‘higher brain’ code from the rest. You want to take a minute, maybe turn your attention to my leg’s prosthesis again?”

“On it.”

He began to select the outliers from the two distinct strains of code.

“Think about nothing in particular,” he told her.

“Harder than it sounds.”

“Think white. Or stare off into space.”

He could see the code shift. He began to gradually narrow down the outliers.

Nothing too pertinent. It would help him to keep any changes from damaging the most essential parts of her, but nothing too useful.

Conversationally, he asked her, “The Undersiders are still holding the territory they did, then?”

“They kidnapped the Director long enough to get her to order the A.I. to stand down, got away from one altercation, then used some combination of Tattletale’s power and the Director’s knowledge to figure out that they could slow me down by knocking out cell towers. As far as I know, they’re in a better position than they were.”

“Damnation.”

“How are you feeling about that? The Undersiders?”

“Psychoanalyzing me? I’m itching to stop them. If you asked me what I’d change, I don’t know that I could name a thing I’d do different. I’d do everything over again, but do it better.”

“You wouldn’t get caught.”

“There’s that,” he said, sighing. “And maybe I was too harsh in my judgement of Skitter. I was angry at her, I was tired, maybe that led me to label her with some malice she didn’t have. In retrospect, yes, she made the decisions she did, but she had reasons for doing what she did.”

“In the same way you did.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

Dragon didn’t respond. He swore under his breath, knew she could hear it.

“They took down our Azazel?” he asked, aiming to change the subject.

“Yes.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. It would have been useful to have, here.

He could see a blip in the code, well beyond the outliers he’d marked out.

“What were you just thinking?”

“Flight plan, battle strategy, and fixes to the Azazel hardware. I have the black box data.”

“Think back through each of those things.”

“We’re going to be at our destination in less than a minute.”

“Please?

There was a long pause, then again, the flare of data being altered well outside of the boundaries he’d noted. He opened up the full stream in the view window, spreading it across every screen in front of him.

“Keep going,” he told her. The cursor flew between the seven screens, marking out areas in color to see where code was changing most radically. It was like the work he did with his own power, the smallest elements impacting everything else.

Like his own power…

He leaned back in his seat.

“What is it?”

“Either Andrew Richter was far better at designing A.I. than I suspected, or there’s something else at play. You have any notes on your code from a few years ago?”

“We just reached Enfield, Colin.”

“I’m only barely wrapping my head around this code as is. I’m worried that I’ll lose track and this will all be gibberish to me if I look away. Notes on your code?”

“How far back?”

“Let’s say in intervals of four years.”

“Loading them onto the Uther’s system. This isn’t like you, Colin. Getting distracted? Making the Slaughterhouse Nine a lower priority?”

“Four years ago, I think it’s the same. Hard to find flares like that and not think I’m cherry picking data.”

“Colin. I admit I’m a little unnerved. Way you’re talking, it sounds like Richter put some safeguard in place and I could fall apart any second.”

“It’s not that. Can you load up the earliest archive of data you have?”

“I’ll have to clear away one of the other files.“

“Do it. They’re useless. They’re the same thing as the most recent set.”

He watched as the flow of data appeared. It was odd how he could look at it and she almost felt younger, like a musician might read music and hear it in his head. Only here, it was like looking at a video image of a girlfriend as a child.

And… more constrained. Certainly more advanced than anything else in existence on the planet, but things flowed. A led to B led to C. He sped through volumes of the data to hunt for a flare, glanced at the time markers. A year ahead. Two years.

No, he couldn’t afford to pore through Dragon’s entire lifetime. He closed the image, leaned forward and stared at the screen, the recent image of Dragon’s code, caught in a three second loop in the midst of her plotting her design.

“What is it?”

“You’re a tinker.”

“This isn’t a revelation, Colin.”

“No. I mean, not just as far as the classification applies to you. You’re a parahuman. I don’t have time to hunt for it now, but at some point between now and a few years after your creation, you had a trigger event.”

“How can I be a parahuman if I’m not human to begin with?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not even close to human. I might be trying to emulate one, but a sea cucumber’s closer to being a human than I am. That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know either.”

“What does this mean?”

“Yet again, I don’t know. But it’s now my turn to remind you that we’ve got to carry on with our mission, see if we can’t track down our targets. The four A.I. suits are close?”

“They’ll be here within the minute.”

“Good. But this thing with the data and your nature, it’s important. A clue. I’m only mortal, I might not come out of this alive-”

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true. I want to leave nothing to chance. So I’m going to leave a note, just in case the worst happens and we both die somehow. Instructions.”

“To look at the code.”

“To look at the code. The fact that you haven’t noticed this yourself suggests there may be a mental block in place.”

“I don’t have a mind to put any mental block inside. I’m data.”

“And the same limitations still apply. Just in case, we’re going to make sure someone can look over the code if we don’t make it back. Whatever happens, someone’s going to page through your memory, get our first hard data on a trigger event. Ideal world, it’ll be us. You can’t remember it happening?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll see just how well that data was erased. Or if it even was erased. Could be a block keeping you from accessing a very real memory. With luck, maybe a bit of a loophole like the one I created around your ability to create child A.I., we can unlock that memory, decrypt it or find a snapshot of it as it’s in progress.”

“To what ends?”

It was a good question. It took him a moment to conceptualize it into a complete thought.

“…Since the day I got my powers, I’ve seen myself as a soldier in a greater war. Good against evil, order against chaos, mankind against the likes of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Endbringers. It’s a war on every front. And sometimes that’s called for ugly choices. When we talked about unlocking the restrictions in your code, breaking down the barriers Andrew Richter was so careful to put in place, we talked about the idea that you and I could work together, give our side the upper hand in sheer firepower. And I think we can with a little more time, a little more work. With this? This snapshot, this recording of a trigger event in progress? Maybe we can get the upper hand in knowledge, too.”

“I know what you’re thinking. Reproducing trigger events, deciphering or even controlling the source of powers. This is the type of radical thinking I’m supposed to rein in while I’m working with you.”

“Are you saying I’m wrong? That we shouldn’t investigate?”

“No. We should. I’m worried about the can of worms this opens up, but we should.”

“I don’t see why you’re so reluctant.” He was already typing up the note to check the code, marking out the dates and times to investigate, the things to look out for. It was painfully abstract, but the right tinker or the right genius could find it. He opened the channels to deposit the files on the primary PRT server.

His computer froze.

“Dragon?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said.

The speakers produced the sound of a sigh. “We won’t put the note on anything the PRT can get at.”

“Why?” he asked.

“That,” she said, “Is a long story, and it’s where I’m asking you to trust me and leave this for later discussion. Our priority right this moment is the Slaughterhouse Nine. I doubt we’ll stop them outright, but we’ll try. Six powered suits in all. I can’t disobey the directive, and you can’t let yourself lose track of the mission, or you’ll never get back on it. I’ll explain this after.”

“You said you couldn’t put the files on anything the PRT can get at?”

“I’m almost certain they already know whatever we stand to find out. I suppose it’s unavoidable, given how close we are on so many levels, but you’re getting drawn into another fight, with an enemy that may be on the same level as the Nine or even the Endbringers. An enemy I can’t afford to fight face to face.”

“Who?“

“I’m obligated to follow the laws of the land. To obey the local government, no matter who they are. When we’re done here, whether we stop the Nine outright, see them escape yet again or lose the fight, you should ask me about Cauldron.“