Orb Weaver: Consequences, 2

About three hours later, Dad came back. He looked tired.

“How are you, Taylor?” he asked.

“I’m… fine.” I looked at him, then glanced back at the TV, currently showing a federal judge being escorted out of his courthouse… in handcuffs.

Underneath it, the words pulsed to get your attention:

E88 SCANDAL CONTINUES TO GROW. FOUR FEDERAL AND SIX STATE JUDGES IMPLICATED IN BRIBERY SCANDAL. “MORE TO COME” STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL. .

“That’s good. That’s… very good. Uh, I was… I wanted you to rest.”

“Thanks.”

Great, we were back to short sentences, awkward silences.

I couldn’t even use my bugs. I’d done a few experiments, bringing little groups of bugs closer to the building and there was always a response.

Armsmaster. He’d come up with predictive software to handle Endbringers, and to improve his fighting. It was clear that giving him a chance to see my bugs both when they were just being guided by pheromones and when I had them under direct control, had let him create some system to detect when I was controlling them, probably by their movements. That was going to be an issue in the future.

“But… we’d like you to attend a meeting… I can help you get up…”

“I can do that, Dad.” He winced.

Dammit. “But if you could push the wheelchair…”

“Okay, Taylor. Do you want a mask?”

“Is anyone there likely to not know who I am?”

Dad sighed. “The only people who might not know would be the Secretary for Parahuman Affairs and Legend.”

“They know.” The Secretary for Parahuman Affairs? That’s a cabinet-level position! He reports to the President! What the hell? “I’ll just forgo the mask.” Well, I created The Investigator as an identity I could afford to lose… it looks like I did. Orb Weaver was the bigger concern.

“Right.” Dad said. “Uh, Taylor, everyone in that room is your friend, you understand that? They’re not angry at you.”

Well, presuming you’re not including Orb Weaver, you’re right, Dad.

This was going to be hard. If I dumped any tells into my bugs… Armsmaster would know. I expected everything for several blocks around, not just the building, to be wired because Armsmaster would look at where my bugs started acting like they were under Orb Weaver’s complete control, and then double that range.

Maybe I should have decided to walk in. That would have… And between getting up, moving to it and getting into the wheelchair, my legs started to tremble.

God. Damn. It. All those early mornings, all that burning pain when I pushed myself through… gone. Completely gone.

And the hell of it was, I was lucky. I expected I could get it back in weeks and months. Someone without Panacea… years. If at all.

And then Dad was pushing me out of the small hospital room into the main PRT HQ. The nurse had mentioned that after I’d been stabilized, but was still out cold, they’d moved me here for security reasons. Which made me feel a little bit better. PRT medics were probably more prepared for getting punched than regular nurses. She’d laughed when I mentioned that.

 The rise in tension was subtle, but there. More troops in sealed armor, and while I couldn’t directly influence the few bugs in the structure, not without risk, I could sense that none of them were attracted to the gift shop like they normally were.

Obviously, it was closed.

The trip wasn’t long and Dad…

“Taylor… I’m sorry I seemed to angry back there, but I thought I was going to lose you, and I don’t think I could survive that.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t think. I could have done things better.”

For one thing, I had a favor from Alexandria. Why didn’t I use the same logic I used with Dinah, that Kaiser probably didn’t have the entire national Protectorate under his observation? At the least she could have provided information. At the best… I doubt Kaiser’s fellow E88 members would have followed his orders after seeing him get punched at mach 4.

The answer came back.

Death wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the E88 destroyed, and Kaiser broken.

But I could have called them in to deal with the hostages. Or could I? The last week… It was hard to remember in parts, not like I’d been concussed but… I hadn’t slept much… Huh, maybe I’d slept 12 hours over the six days? The stimulants had kept me going, but now that I was thinking about it, there were times… I’d kept going, the hatred and fury singing in my veins, but now that I’d had time to sleep…

I’d made errors. Some big, some small.

I’d have to think about this, but now the door to the conference room was being opened by two PRT troopers.

Dad thanked them.

And into the lion’s den I went. I’d always imagined something like this with me striding in, not being moved like a bit of baggage.

Damn. It.

*****

The conference room wasn’t as big as I’d expected. Armsmaster and Emily Piggot, I knew. By them, Legend stood in his position as head of the Protectorate. Most everyone else was there via monitor. Director Costa-Brown was on one monitor, while the Secretary was on another. Dragon was also there, likely in her capacity as representative of the Guild. Glenn Chambers was attending, as was a woman I didn’t recognize. The displayed name… Dr. Yamada?

Damn it again. I couldn’t reach out and try to access things by bug, they’d know. Congratulations Taylor, you’re being treated like a national-level issue.

“Hello, Ah…” Secretary Brown was looking at my uncovered face.

“Taylor Hebert,” I said. “I expect my identity is widely known.”

“Well, not publicized, but yes, anyone who cares to find out and has any resources… yes.” He nodded. “You seem to be taking it well.”

“It wasn’t the biggest thing I wagered over the last week.”

Everyone tensed at that.

“Yes. We’ll get to that later,” Secretary Brown said. “But I thought you might want to be brought up to speed on the results of your and Orb Weaver’s collaboration.”

“So soon?”

“Victor was very talkative, especially when we offered a bargain that would ensure that Neither Othala nor Rune would go to the Birdcage. Easy enough with Rune,” Costa-Brown said. “Othala for her part is harmless without others to share her power with and so isn’t the kind of risk that would demand the Birdcage, not that we, ah, told Victor that.”

“I’ve seen reports of judges being arrested.”

“Those are just the obvious ones,” Secretary Brown said. “Ms. Hebert, I hate to drag… well check that, you’re probably well aware of how the sausage gets made, and how… messy the process can be.”

“Deals?”

“Two senators and four representatives, who we don’t have fully legally actionable information on, even with Victor’s assistance in telling us about the Empire, have decided that they need to spend more time with their families and will not be running for re-election.” He shook his head. “That doesn’t even extend to lower-level state and local investigations, but the FBI would string me up if I gave out information about ongoing investigations.”

Which means that you haven’t finished them, and are still following the evidence.  I didn’t blame him. That was the kind of information you didn’t share unless the person had need to know, and right now, I didn’t.

“And Victor’s crimes?” I paused. I hadn’t expected that level of vitriol in my voice but…

“Taylor are you sure you want to hear this?” Dad asked.

“I can handle it.” Every time I thought of Victor, I remembered the slack look on Shiela Cho’s face. Smile and frown lines alike reduced to… a mocking memory of the woman who had created them.

“Birdcage,” Dragon said. “He will be transported by the end of this week after specialists finish observing his effect to see if we can find a way to cure his victims…so far it is not looking like it’s possible to reverse, but it may be possible to undo some of the lingering effects. Panacea is helping. She can’t directly do brains, but…” The Tinker shook her head. “It’s complex, but put bluntly, some of his worst victims may at least be able to start the relearning process.”

“How many victims?”

“More than we originally suspected him of.” Surprisingly, it wasn’t any of the officials who spoke, but Dr. Yamada. “Jessica Yamada,” she continued. “I was brought in as part of the psychological analysis. In most cases, Victor’s  power was subtle. Save when he… indulged himself.”

“Powers are meant to be used,” I murmured.

“Yes, but in this case, it was clear Victor both hated and had a certain inferiority complex regarding minorities who were skilled or…” her lips thinned. “Above their station.”

I had a feeling he’d used cruder terms, but given Dr. Yamada’s race, I also wondered if she was considering that she also could have been attacked.

“The violinist.” I nodded. “A skill the Empire could never use, that Victor would never be able, or interested, in using. It wasn’t about him using it; it was about taking her passion and joy  from her.”

“Yes.”

“But that wasn’t the only case,” Legend said. “Evidently, Kaiser… ‘rented’ Victor to other groups, although the specifics of what he could do were always kept vague. He went on trips to assist other groups. Maybe a police officer needed to lose his temper at the wrong time, or a politician needed to have an affair.”

“We all have thoughts,” Dr. Yamada said. “Many of them unacceptable, but we think of them discard them, and go about our day. But if say, a man finds a teenager attractive and someone has been sitting in the same cafe he takes his lunch at for the last several days, draining his sense of self-control… Or just draining some skills from a detective or prosecutor in a case his superiors wanted wrecked.”

“How many?”  I didn’t recognize my voice, and Dad put his hand on my shoulder.

“We can’t know yet. Victor… didn’t bother to remember all his victims,” Armsmaster said.

“But it could be as many as several hundred.” Costa-Brown said. “He was very clever, and avoided people who would be regularly screened for Master/Stranger effects, and save when he was certain nobody would notice, he made certain to be subtle.”

Unless he was believed he wouldn’t be caught. Like With Sheila. Only she wrote a warning. What must it have been like, sitting there, tearing her skin, writing in her own blood while everything she was went away, and she must have known it, must have felt memories, skills being torn away from her, precious little thoughts, the ability to talk…

I couldn’t put my feelings into my bugs, I couldn’t. Armsmaster was right there, and so was Dragon and… yet, Sheila had helped me, and she’d been alone when he’d come for her. Nobody was there to help her, like nobody had been to help me in the locker, only no power had come to her and it was my fucking fault…

“…Taylor!” Dad’s voice was a little louder.

I snapped out of my thoughts. I had missed what he’d said earlier. Odd, I never missed what people were saying.

Everyone was looking at me with odd expressions.

Sympathetic?  Why—

Oh. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I… Might have been a little optimistic about how I would react.”

Costa-Brown nodded. “Ms. Hebert, do you want some time? We can reschedule this meeting.”

Did I look that bad? All these people were busy.

“No. I think we’ve heard all we need to about Victor, but I expect you have more to discuss.”

“Very well,” Secretary Brown said. “Ms. Hebert, I’m going to be blunt. You and Orb Weaver destroyed not just the Empire, but a network of racist and criminal organizations extending from Brockton Bay to across the world. And while we like to call every criminal group a cancer, in this case, under Kasier’s leadership, it was metastasizing. Now, it’s dead, and one of the few multi-generational parahuman lead criminal groups is gone, and taking a lot of associates with it.

“Huh.” I murmured.

“Ms. Hebert?”

“Multi-generational. That likely explains it. Most parahumans get their powers traumatically, and a criminal parahuman would  seldom have any kind of support network, material or ideological. The Empire created a framework where people like Kaiser could be trained and prepared…”

“You’re right, and more than a few FBI and PRT analysts are kicking themselves for not seeing the danger.” Director Piggot frowned, likely seeing more problems in her future.

“Which is why we’re here in part to thank you,” Secretary Brown said. “Ms. Hebert, you have done, not simply your city, but this nation a tremendous service. I won’t insult you by telling you you’ve defeated racism, but you, along with Orb Weaver, have struck a tremendous blow against the organized white supremacist and neonazi movement in America and beyond. We are keeping your name out of the press, save as the local Rogue who assisted Orb Weaver, which allowed the President to convince Congress not to subpoena you to testify—“

Wait, what?

“But understand that he knows just how much we owe you.”

“Ah… Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. Maybe scream inarticulately about how my original plans for that ID had been completely derailed.

“But with that, I fear I need to deal with some frothing Congresscritters in my outer office. Chief Director, Director Piggot, Ms. Hebert, it’s been a pleasure.”

With that, he vanished. And I suddenly had a terrible thought. He’d mentioned how the sausage was made, and one big thing about that political process was known when you wanted to directly see what was happening… and when you wanted plausible deniability.

“Now, Ms. Hebert,” Legend said. “This isn’t an interrogation, but I think we need to talk about you, and your relationship with Orb Weaver.”

God. Damn. It. Well it wouldn’t be as bad as talking about Sheila.

“I’m… Ready to talk,” I said.