111 Encounter
Aisha left the workshop first, using her access key to slip back to her apartment. Unsurprisingly, when I first gave her the key she had immediately used it on every door with a lock that was in or around her home, allowing her to access pretty much the entire apartment building and surrounding area. It was a rather comprehensive level of access, particularly compared to my own range of access points, but she had been more focused on ease of access than creating a range of entry points across the city.
Even with Aisha gone, everyone inside my Workshop soldiered on, continuing with their individual projects. Aisha had been leading the research into applications of the impossible colors and directing it on a level no one else could come close to matching, but everyone had their own work to worry about. They didn't all align with our efforts to reverse Jack's influence, but that was definitely the overriding priority.
It was actually an odd experience, working under a deadline against a problem that couldn't just be brute forced or made trivial with a new power. Of course, I had never even considered taking on something of this scale before. Honestly, even with my understanding of the dynamics of passengers, I hadn't realized that this kind of scale even existed. It was a problem that required a complex and precise solution applied on a massive level, something so huge that was almost ludicrous to consider.
I was trying to roll back more than twenty years of accumulated mental influence on every parahuman on the planet. Not to the same extent for each person, but it was likely that even major powers from other nations had been affected by Jack to a certain degree. At the very least none of them had offered to deal with or collaborate against the Nine, or taken any significant independent action against them. Hell, you even had limited interactions between major powers within the country. Not that I'd want Bastard Son or the Fallen to gain any more prominence, but it was notable that organizations on their levels had effectively ignored the Nine unless the group had shown up on their doorstep.
Unfortunately, there was no way to tell how deep the rabbit hole went when it came to Jack's influence. It would be nice to think that rooting out this one effect would result in all the major issues of the world resolving themselves, but that was beyond optimistic. Jack's passenger could only affect parahumans, so the influence was naturally limited. Still, it was limited to only the most prominent people in the world. You didn't need to be a genius to see how the effect of that power would spread beyond the people being directly targeted.
There were only a handful of options available to me for a project of this scale, and all of them involved technology or principles that went well beyond the bounds of anything I had considered deploying before. Efforts within Passenger Space were being entirely directed towards this problem. It meant putting the tracking of Bakuda's signal on hold, but hopefully the greater understanding we were gaining about the dynamics and properties of Passenger Space would be enough to make up for any lost time due to shifting focus.
Unfortunately, expanded understanding of how Passenger Space functioned on its own wasn't enough to track the signal. Passengers operated in a network and tracing Bakuda's location was less like zeroing in on the source of a radio broadcast and more like working your way through an intensely complicated version of the internet, one where every computer ran a completely unique operating system.
That was also why trying to address Jack's influence was so difficult. His passenger was uniquely capable of accessing every passenger with mass broadcasts of information, but that was a capacity specific to it. My duplicates were studying the principles it used, but it had been hard enough to stay ahead of it and prevent it from gaining new information from the parahumans I'd been interacting with. Xenoarcheaologist had taken that from a holding action to something resembling progress, but it was unlikely that we would be able to crack enough of his passenger's operational principles to fully undo the effect of its influence before the Nine arrived.
Which was looking to be early the next morning. I was kind of split on that. On one hand, I was more than ready to get this over with, particularly given how I'd had a front row seat to all their bumbling and meaningless delays. Also meaningful delays, or at least delays that would have been meaningful if I hadn't been able to instantly counter all the measures they were trying to put in place to hold the city hostage and eventually cover their escape.
I was beyond done with the Nine and their end couldn't come soon enough, but if I wasn't able to counter the effect of Jack's power when I brought them down it would be extremely difficult to actually convince anyone of the full scope of what had been happening. I could explain things, put out data and analysis and full breakdowns of his influence, but without the actual shock of both losing that influence and recognizing that they had been influenced in the past, most people would probably dismiss things completely. That was just human nature, and given how far Jack's influence had gone, it was going to be difficult to convince people of the reality of the situation.
I could only hope that a good option presented itself before the time came to act. If it didn't, I'd have to pick between trying to convince people of Jack's influence after the fact, or going with one of the less good solutions. It was an accomplishment to actually have those kinds of solutions as technical options, but there were some measures I'd prefer not to have to resort to.
Even though the Nine were our top priority, it wasn't consuming the full attention of every member of the team. Mostly because not every member could contribute equally to this kind of project, and also had other commitments they needed to hold. Like Garment's meeting with Weld and Flechette.
The entire situation wasn't one I had ever anticipated. To be fair, Garment was such a unique entity that she had a kind of natural defiance of convention. She was also very much a person, with an extremely outgoing and apparently occasionally flirty personality. It was kind of obvious in retrospect, but I had utterly missed it at the time. To be fair, I doubt anyone was overly fixated on that kind of thing, given everything else that had been going on.
Well, no. I specifically wasn't fixated on that kind of thing, and mostly intentionally so. The unfolding disaster had done nothing to stifle online shipping and relationship theories, and Flechette had clearly developed a level of affection for Garment through a handful of encounters and regular, if limited, text message contact.
I didn't want to intrude on whatever was happening, or could potentially be happening, but I could pick up on Flechette's nervousness as she entered Garment's studio with Weld trailing behind her. He was doing his best to be a supportive presence without overly intruding, but the fact that he was there at all probably dampened things.
Garment greeted both of them warmly, and was at least aware of Flechette ulterior motives for the visit, even if they were completely absent from any of the metrics or indicators that Garment paid attention to.
Well, mostly absent. Flechette did make a slight adjustment of her cape upon seeing Garment. It wasn't the smoothest or most nuanced gesture, but it was at least something for Garment to respond to. Some of the tension drained away from Flechette at Garment's reaction, though it was the smallest of small steps.
Of course, Flechette wasn't alone and Garment welcomed Weld just as warmly, making particular note to the changes since he integrated the mithril I had loaned him. It had replaced the outer layers of his body, effectively displacing any portions that were previously iron, steel, or related alloys. There were parts of his biology that relied on the properties of other metals that couldn't be as easily replaced, but the new material granted improved control and reduced mass, enough so that a lot of his previous concerns regarding the weight of a metal body would no longer be a problem.
Of course, Garment was more focused on the aesthetic aspects of the change, particularly the improved detail and speed of control in his shapeshifting as well as possible combinations for new costume ideas. It was probably not the kind of distraction Flechette had been hoping for, but Garment was at least happy to include her in the design process, and the demonstration of her paper flower launched its own series of proposed complementary costume designs.
I wasn't sure if that was flirting or a creative collaboration. Frankly, there was a lot of crossover with that kind of thing when it came to Garment. I mean, I had seen that for myself. Looking back with the benefit of my new awareness of that kind of thing, it hadn't been particularly serious, but it had at least been sincere.
I shifted my attention away from the feeds of Garment's studio, giving Flechette her privacy for whatever it was worth. It wasn't likely to be a long visit, given that they were technically stopping by at the end of their patrol. They would probably have to move on well before Gully's appointment came up, though the fact that they hadn't reported our conversation was a bit amusing, considering what both the local and national office was currently dealing with. It hadn't been my intention to drop two bombs on them at the same time, though given the current opinion of my abilities they would probably assume I had coordinated things.
Actually, given the nature of fortune energy, there was a possibility I had without even realizing it.
It was probably a good time to head to the gym. Even though The Pleician Tome had been smaller than the typical 'large' mote that I dealt with, it had still triggered a delay, though a smaller one than I usually saw. Given the potential of some of the technology that was sealed within that data drive of a book, it made sense that it would be in the same category. That meant I had at least a bit of a break before I had to deal with another power, which would hopefully let me enjoy a visit to the gym without running into anything crazy.
Honestly, even the scraps I'd been able to extract with my entry level Mechanicus training had been seriously useful. I might be limited to the 'conventional' technology of that universe, but even that was frighteningly advanced. Suddenly all the holes in my knowledge base that hadn't been covered by my various schema or training were no longer an issue. I could build pretty much any form of civilian or military technology that was in wide circulation.
Or take the principles of those technologies and use them to enhance my other works, which my duplicates were happy to do on my behalf. That kind of innovation and customization was borderline heresy in the Adeptus Mechanicus, or not even borderline in some cases, but that was largely due to the technology being so old and opaque that they couldn't risk changing any characteristics of it, lest their entire ritual methods of operation suddenly become worthless.
It was like if someone memorized the keystrokes to activate a program on a computer without being able to see the screen, and then someone decided to rearrange the files. Harmless if you knew what you were doing, but the fact was that they clearly didn't know what they were doing, they just knew what worked and couldn't risk varying from that.
Fortunately, I didn't have that kind of problem, so improved cogitators, cybernetics, medicines, and even certain vehicle designs were now at my disposal. Not full starships, at least not yet, though there were guides to some shipboard systems that could be useful. More would unlock as we managed to work through the rituals, but I wasn't sure we'd be able to unlock anything significant in time for it to make a difference against Jack's passenger.
Really, it was a problem for later, and one that my duplicates had well in hand. I left it to them, along with Tybalt who was happily testing out the various weapon technologies we'd gained access to and unhappily not testing out the various combat drugs that had been documented within the Pleician Tome. He might be immune to addiction and negative effects of combat stimulants, but no one wanted to see how that ability would interact with the kind of drug cocktail that caused a person to literally explode upon death.
I was happy to leave Tybalt's complaints to my duplicates, instead changing out of my costume and opened an access point to the closet of my apartment. Once again, I was heading into the city, and for like my fourth excursion that day. Honestly, my schedule wasn't really any busier than it had been the previous days, but somehow the need to spend time outside my workshop and the more substantive interactions made it feel that way.
And it wasn't over yet. The gym was a nice diversion to unwind, but I still had to speak with Taylor, see Dr. Campbell, and see if there was an opportunity to speak with Amy at some point. On that subject, it looked like it was pretty much guaranteed that she was going to be released before the end of the day, but I doubted they were going to cut her loose unsupervised. Not with all the active cases around her.
That seemed like something I should apologize for, at least from the kind of perspective I used to hold to. I was sorry that Amy ended up in that situation and definitely could have handled things better on my end, but the chain of events leading to her extended confinement had been helped along by numerous other parties. I didn't know if Amy blamed me for it, but I was bracing myself for a fairly uncomfortable conversation.
Provided I managed to speak with her today. Somehow I doubted making my pitch in the aftermath of the Nine's defeat would make things any easier for her.
I left my apartment and made my way down the exterior stairs and around to the street. I always tried to maintain continuity of my location, rather than suddenly appearing in various corners of the city. In the event someone was watching, things would at least add up on that front. It was probably an excessive concern considering my neighbors were as happily disinterested in my presence as they'd been since I moved in. The unobtrusive neighbors were really one of the few positives that could be claimed about my apartment.
Of course, things got more active as I made my way towards the gym. It wasn't the complete maelstrom it had been immediately after the attacks, but the gradual paring down of activity had definitely been thrown into reverse. There was near constant flow of people into and out of the main entrance of the gym, with trucks cycling through the parking lot. It was probably for the best that I hadn't needed to take my car out since that morning.
Thanks to Survey I had a complete breakdown of the reason behind the spike in activity. I had used the cover of Garment's charity drive to cover as many requests for equipment and supplies as I could get away with. The Matrix had handled manufacturing and Survey had obscured the source of the anonymous donations, resulting in every charity and relief organization in the city being oddly well supplied. That had helped, but supplies and materials could only go so far. With the completion of the show and Survey's precise management of the donations, funding had finally been distributed.
Carefully distributed. Her lawyer identity had cultivated a reputation for thoroughness and while there would probably be some soft expenses once the money hit the individual organizations, it was better for that waste to happen on the ground level rather than it being consumed in administrative costs. A sudden infusion of cash had been a shot in the arm to every organization that received it, including the gym.
I mean, technically they weren't a charity, but there were exemptions for relief efforts, and they had certainly been pulling their weight in that department. It was actually kind of gratifying to have the various groups that had gone above and beyond actually receive some proper funding, rather than relying on the goodwill of their members and anonymous donations of goods and supplies.
I mean, most of those donations had come from me, but it was nice that they made it to people who were able to make use of them. Still, there was a big difference between people trying to distribute food or supplies that had been dropped off for their use and then suddenly having the funding to actually finance their work.
The gym wasn't really designed to manage that kind of thing, but as I squeezed through the crowds and made my way into the gym it became clear they would have no problem with the sudden increase in scope of their work. Not with Mrs. Gartenberg effectively holding court over a small army of volunteers.
The old woman spotted me the second I walked in. There was a bit of a complex expression from her, probably the remains of the mess that had been weathered the previous day. I doubt Mrs. Gartenberg speaking on my behalf had been a deciding factor, considering the way things had already played out, but I appreciated the effort she had made.
I gave her a nervous smile and she gestured towards a cluster of older members that was apparently centered around a very tired looking Doug. I nodded to Mrs. Gartenberg before breaking off to see if there was anything I could do to help.
"Nothing?" I asked, more than a little skeptical.
"I appreciate the offer, but we're covered for people on the ground." Doug said, looking around at the crowds. "More than covered. Donation money has to be tracked, but we can actually bring people on now. Pay for time and cover expenses."
"Ah." I said. "I'm guessing that's made it easier to get people onboard?"
"It's not a matter of getting them onboard, it's a problem of keeping it to what we need, and can actually make use of." He shook his head. "I'm working on a shift system, but we're set for drivers, deliveries, workers, and even basic labor." He let out a hard breath. "Should have realized how many people needed a paycheck in the wake of everything. Should have seen this coming, but it kind of got lost in everything else."
"I can understand that." I said, looking around at the barely controlled chaos. "So you're fully covered? Even for stuff around the gym?"
"If we were having any problems, you'd be the first I'd call, but everything's been going smooth on the Homefront. It's all the other stuff that's a damn nightmare." He sighed again. "You know, I thought things would calm down after that big show. Not that I'm complaining. We can do a lot of good here, it's just not something we're used to dealing with."
"I wouldn't have thought so." I said. I was glad the donations had been doing good, and from the look of things an immediate good, rather than some minor good weeks or months down the line. "Still, is it alright for me to be here?"
Doug looked over at Mrs. Gartenberg who returned the look with a stern expression. "I'm not going to kick you out." He said quickly. "We're mostly covered. Always glad to have more help, but I can't offer you anything official."
I shook my head. "I'm okay on that front." Doug looked at me. "I am. Probably luckier than most, after everything that happened."
"Yeah, Vince told me about your bike." Doug said.
I shrugged and put on a brave face, something fitting for my cover story of losing my bike in the Ungodly Hour. "I'd rather lose that than something I can't replace." I smiled at Doug. "Plus, I still have my car."
"Yeah, the Pinto." Doug said flatly, with roughly the same expression Vince had given me when I expressed the same sentiment to him.
Damn it, I wasn't actually in denial about my bike. Or my car. That Pinto was a near perfect cover for me. It wasn't like I could ride around town with my dragon in convertible mode, and not just because I'm pretty sure Garment would want to repeat her performance on the hood of the car.
"It's fine." I said nonchalantly, but I could see Doug still had his doubts. "Seriously. Given the state of things, something to get me from A to B is more than enough."
"I guess. But give some thought to those offers. I know a lot of garages who would love to bring someone with your skills onboard." Doug said.
"Thanks." I said with a nod. "Once things calm down I'll do that."
"If they calm down." Doug muttered.
I raised an eyebrow. "Have you heard anything else?"
"Not today, thank God." Doug said. "But you heard about last night?"
"Merchants, Empire, and the Teeth?" I asked.
Doug nodded. "With Fleet breaking things up. You know, the guy in the flight suit from Apeiron's team?" I nodded. "If what they're saying is true. No clear statements from the PRT, which usually means that things are about as bad as you could imagine." He let out another sigh. "Honestly, I'm just hoping we can make it to the end of the day without another disaster."
Right, we were on the one-week anniversary of the Ungodly Hour. Typically that would be a minor thing, but considering everything that had happened, every unresolved issue, and every complication that had been added to the pile, Doug's concerns were understandable.
"I'm sure things will be fine." I assured him. At least until between nine and ten tomorrow morning, depending on the traffic leading into town.
"I hope so." Doug said. He looked around again. "Actually hoped that we'd be able to get back to training today, but from the look of things, that's a ways off."
"It should be okay." I said. "I mean, on my part I haven't exactly been slacking, and I doubt anyone else has either." Doug nodded in response. "I heard Mr. Laborn was coming by?"
"Yeah, he got here earlier with Aisha and Brian." Doug said.
"Brian? That's his son?" I asked.
Doug nodded. "Right, you've never met." Doug said. "Brian was a real up and comer for a while. Thought he'd go all the way, but he dropped off a few years back. Never understood why, until…."
"Until what?" I asked.
Doug shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Shouldn't matter. Just nice to have him back around. Everyone agrees on that, at least."
There was definitely a story there, and it sounded complicated. Aisha didn't talk about her brother that much, but then again Aisha didn't talk about her family that much, and what I had heard was far from good. I didn't have the sense there was anything close to as bad as her mother's situation happening with her brother, but there was clearly some drama that she had wanted to sidestep.
That was further reinforced after I split off from Doug and found Aisha speaking with Casey and his wife, Meg. The auburn-haired woman contrasted with Casey's rougher tattooed look, but there was clear affection between the couple. They clearly knew Aisha and were quite comfortable with her, but I could feel an underlying current of tension from Aisha that spiked as I approached.
Not that she gave any sign of discomfort. Probably the result of Tybalt's help with her ninja training. I knew that covered a tremendous amount of infiltration and misdirection techniques. At this point Aisha could probably be on the edge of panic internally without the slightest hint that anything was wrong. At least not unless a person happened to be running about a half dozen extra senses at all times.
"Hey, Joe!" Casey shouted over the background noise of the room while waving to me.
"Casey, Meg, Aisha." I said as I approached.
"Nice to see you again." Meg said with a bright smile.
"Casey and Meg were just telling me about his brush with death." Aisha said with a slight smile. She was putting on a casual attitude, but I could tell the tension she was feeling was only increasing. She was also scanning the crowd without looking like she was scanning the crowd.
"It was nothing so bad." Casey insisted. "Bit of an overreaction. I was right as rain in the morning. They practically threw me out of the hospital."
"Hun, it was a miracle and you damn well know it." Meg said in a slightly patronizing voice.
He shook his head as he looked down at the shorter woman. "Doctors got it wrong. I mean, I understand, with everything they were dealing with, but they shouldn't have scared you like that."
"It wasn't the doctors who scared me." She insisted sternly. "I know what kind of shape you were in, you big lummox. That was a miracle and we need to be grateful for it."
Casey smiled and rolled his eyes at us, but I noted he made sure he was outside of his wife's field of view when he did so. Aisha returned the smile, but there was a slight brittle edge that they probably didn't notice, and I could guess why.
During the aftermath of the Ungodly Hour Aisha had been running around sneaking medical treatments to whatever critical cases she could find. With Survey's more than comprehensive assessment of the situation, that pretty much meant every critical case that managed to make it to a hospital, and plenty of others that we found in the field.
Her work had helped keep the casualty rate of the incident from reaching absolute disaster levels, and there was a good chance she had been the one to personally deliver treatment to Casey. I could confirm that with Survey, but given the context, I didn't really have to.
Technically, Aisha's task had been intended to test and evaluate various healing methods available to my duplicates when they were working on my treatment, but while that was certainly an asset, it was far from the only justification. Aisha's power had let my team effectively deliver medical care without needing to take a public stance on the matter. The moral and ethical issues of using those kinds of treatments on people without their approval had limited things to only the most critical cases where intervention was absolutely necessary, but that was also where intervention was most needed.
The task had also gotten Aisha out of the Workshop during the extremely stressful aftermath of the attack, which was probably good for her in a general sense, as well as allowing my duplicates to sidestep explanations of the more extreme treatments they were planning. Personally, I was grateful that Aisha hadn't been around when they decided to rebuild my heart, much less when they decided to break out the souls from the Prismatic Laboratory in preparation for that exercise in Chimeric Fission.
"There were actually a lot of cases like mine." Casey continued, not technically ceding the point. "They think there was something about the attacks that made things look worse than they were for a lot of people. Some tinker thing from Bakuda." He shook his head. "Not sure, and not something they've really had time to dig into."
"Or we weren't the only ones to get a miracle that night." Meg said. "Lord knows this city was due for them."
"Can't argue with that." I offered neutrally, which Meg seemed to take as affirmation of her side of the argument. "On a lighter note, I actually thought this would be a slow day." I said, looking around. "It seemed that way this morning."
"Took a while for people to hear about the funding." Meg explained. "Around here, that's basically blood in the water."
Casey grinned. "Had some people thinking they were just giving out handouts." He looked across the Gym. "They've had Doug, Laborn, and Mrs. Gartenberg to set them right."
I honestly didn't know which of those would be worse. The prospect of all of them together would set anyone straight. "Sounds effective."
Aisha rolled her eyes. "Yeah, my dad got a chance to yell at idiots again." She said with a smirk. "That will probably do more for his recovery than all the rest and physio in the world."
"It's nice seeing him back in top form." Meg said. "After what happened, everyone was worried about both of you."
"I'm fine." Aisha insisted, though in a tone that somehow made her seem five years younger. I had the sense that Meg had probably been dealing with Aisha's antics for a fairly long time. "I am." She repeated as an amused smile appeared on the other woman's face. The repetition and slight pout on her expression didn't do much to counter the sense of immaturity. Neither did her huffing and crossing her arms.
"It's nice to see the big cape life hasn't changed everything." Meg said as she pulled Asiha into a hug, "Same old Aisha, no matter what happens."
I raised an eyebrow at that and looked at Casey. From the man's expression I had the feeling Meg had a different opinion of what counted as the 'old Aisha', at least compared to the regular members who had dealt with her antics.
"It's not that big a deal." Aisha insisted as she squirmed away from Meg. "It probably seems super glamorous, but it's really just a part time job."
"That gala didn't count as glamorous?" Meg asked.
Aisha let out a breath. "That was like three hours of show after days of running around. Nobody saw all the work behind it."
"Nobody ever does." Meg agreed.
"I guess." Aisha conceded as Meg just smiled at her.
It was a bit weird seeing echoes of this side of Aisha's life. Specifically someone who had obviously known her for years and still at least partially regarded her as being the age she'd been when they met. I could recognize the dynamic from some of my own relatives, people who couldn't look at you without always seeing the kid they had first been introduced to, for good or ill, but for Aisha going from being Lethe, universally feared stranger of the Celestial Forge, to once again being the tolerated and occasionally indulged kid of her father's gym seemed to be quite the stretch.
Meg was at least able to pick up on Aisha's reaction and backed down a bit. A bit, but not too much.
"Seriously, everyone's really proud of you for working with Garment. That was an amazing job." Meg said.
"And congratulations on Arcadia." Casey added.
"Arcadia?" I asked. I was already aware of the cover story for Aisha's education, but there was no reason for my civilian identity to know that.
"Aisha's lined up for Arcadia this fall." Meg said proudly,
"If I can stay on top of all the course work and pass the exams." Aisha said. Really, there was no chance she'd have any trouble on that front, but her response seemed to be more centered around the idea that it was somehow expected or accepted. "Which hasn't stopped the entire gym from finding out and acting like it's already a done deal."
I'm pretty sure that detail had circulated at Garment's show as well. It definitely helped for her assistant to be listed as 'starting at Arcadia' rather than 'between schools'. A better look for Aisha and effectively free publicity for the school itself.
"Sorry if it's been a bit much." Meg said. The woman let out a breath and I could see the hints of long-term exhaustion behind her cheery exterior. "Been a bit much for everyone."
There were nods all around. "Are you still working?" I asked Meg. "I mean, now that they've got more funding?"
She nodded. "Handling deliveries and drop offs. How about you?"
I shook my head. "Nothing official, and it seems that's what people are focused on right now. Just stopping by to check in and see if anything needs a patch job."
"No worries there." Casey said. "Everything's been holding up. Actually better than before all this started. Can't thank you enough for that. Really glad to have someone with your mechanical talents on hand."
There was a knowing look between Casey and his wife that I couldn't quite place, but it was clear there was an assumption that there was more than just mechanical skill in play. I was fairly certain that I had enough deniability in the work I'd done to avoid any serious suspicion, but rumors could end up running away on their own. I had an active curse protecting my identity, so there was no chance they would connect me with Apeiron, but there were plenty of other assumptions that could spring up.
"Glad I could help." I said neutrally, and earned a couple of nods in response.
Meg turned to Aisha. "How about you? Do we have you on staff, or are you off to Garment?" Meg asked.
"Neither." She said, "I'm just here so my dad can yell at people. And my brother can catch up."
I could feel her tension growing again, even though she gave no hint of it. There was a similar reaction from Casey and Meg as they gave Aisha a short nod.
"Right." Meg said. "I heard about that. Glad he's back, and that things worked out for him."
"Was there…" I paused. The start of my question was met with a spike of concern from Aisha that she once again managed to conceal from everything but supernatural awareness.
"Um, yeah." Casey said. "Part of why Brian left the gym. I mean, some of us suspected…" He cut himself off as his wife elbowed him in the ribs. "Right. Nothing to be concerned about."
He seemed to be assuring Aisha more than responding to me, and probably thought he was doing a good job, considering he had no insight into how she was effectively screaming on the inside.
"Anyway, we should get going." Meg said. "Nice seeing you again, and congratulations on everything." She added, nodding to Aisha.
"Yeah, thanks." Aisha said, glancing at me while also scanning the room.
Casey and Meg pushed their way through the crowd, leaving me with a very anxious Aisha who looked perfectly serene to all the world. I gave her a moment, but the tension was only getting worse as time went on.
"So, about that." I said. "Don't want to pry, but is there a problem with your brother?"
"No." She said as she scanned the room. "Or not what they think."
"Then what…" I trailed off as a sudden spike of emotion drove itself into my awareness, registering through thermal senses, the Dragon's Pulse, low level telepathy, Aura awareness, and various shades of divine perception, all effectively screaming at me from the intensity of the directed emotion. Aisha wasn't great with her own enhanced senses, but even she was able to pick up on the reaction, immediately turning towards the source.
I didn't really need to turn, but I did just to confirm what I had already picked up through a dozen other methods. A person's signature under the Dragon's Pulse was as identifiable as a fingerprint. I didn't obsessively track the location of every person around me, if just for the sake of privacy and my own mental state, but there was always some level or recognition, particularly when the person in question was close or experiencing heightened emotions.
I looked across the gym, through the crowd of people to the presence I had sensed. There, standing next to Vince was Brian. Brian from the Undersiders, who was apparently completely at home in the gym, based on the level of familiarity I could detect from Vince and the other members. A level of familiarity that was presumably being returned by Brian before he had spotted me.
Brian, like the name of Aisha's brother. Which based on the now obvious resemblance was definitely not a coincidence.
Brian Laborn. Aisha's older brother who I had never met. And Brian from the Undersiders, who I had learned was trying to protect someone close to him. Someone like a trouble prone younger sister who was dealing with a bad situation from their mother.
I didn't even need to ask. With everything laid out my passenger was more than happy to confirm things for me. Probably would have been earlier if I had given it any serious consideration. But I hadn't, because that had been Aisha's business. The same way the specifics of who Brian was trying to look after had been his business.
Had been, because apparently I had stumbled into the middle of this situation without even realizing. Actually no, I had already been in the middle when the situation developed, joining the gym before I'd met Aisha or Brian in either of his identities. It was the kind of coincidence that I'd want to blame on my luck or fortune, but the pieces had fallen into place before either of those had been a factor.
No, the only truly unlikely aspect of this was the fact that this had dragged out for so long without coming to the surface. An early misconception was explainable, but for things to go on this long someone would have needed to be actively avoiding anything that could reveal the connection. And on reflection, I could see the exact pattern of those efforts, how they shifted from amused to increasingly uncomfortable and desperate until they culminated in effectively throwing me at the gym at the exact moment when I was most likely to find out.
Slowly I turned back to Aisha and looked down at her with a stern expression on my face. She had a very difficult time meeting my eyes.
"Um, yeah." Aisha said awkwardly.
I could see the way this was heading. An awkward chance encounter leading to a stilted confrontation with only the public venue moderating things. Being completely off guard and without the full context of what was happening while Brian was in an even worse state and more likely to act out or do something similarly rash.
That was how things would play out for a normal person. A normal person dealing with normal, if uncomfortable social situations that they had to dive into while under informed and half prepared.
I was not a normal person. I was not close to a normal person. I commanded forces that normal people could barely comprehend, much less harness to their will. Some might say that exercising that kind of power, power on the level of the most fundamental forces of the universe to address petty inconveniences and avoid awkward situations would be beyond frivolous, but honestly, what was the point of being able to command the power of the cosmos if it couldn't make a difference when you really needed it?
I focused, calling on powers both arcane and divine, channeled through fantastic technology and refined by focus and conduit items that defied categorization. In a fraction of a second never before seen phenomena were brought into being and harnessed by forces that might not actually exist within the natural order. There was a flash, a jolting sensation, and the world suddenly became faded and washed out.
"Gah!" Aisha flinched violently. "What the hell?" She asked, then looked around at the near frozen room. "What the hell?" She repeated in a more concerned voice. "Did you fucking stop time?" She gasped before examining the scene around us more closely. "No, this isn't purely temporal. Perception based? Like the computer core?" She whipped her head around towards me. "Did you just overclock my brain nanites?"
"Given the circumstances, I think it was justified." Her expression didn't waiver and I let out a breath that wasn't really a breath. "Similar to the Spiritron Core. The nanites were literally the best I could make, including all the technology I could roll into them. Which included photonic crystals, or at least the principle behind them." I tapped a finger against my temple. "I have the same upgrade to my implant."
"So you can just roll out a new Serial Phantasm whenever you want?" Aisha asked.
"No, not even close." I explained. "This can't handle advanced reality simulation or power modeling. It's closer to one of the magecraft principles my duplicates have been working on, Thought Acceleration. Still, it's an order of magnitude slower than the Spiritron Core."
"So about seven minutes per second real time?" Aisha asked. She looked around, then her eyes briefly flickered blue. Her preferred form of nanite information access was even less necessary inside a virtual environment, but it was clearly what she was comfortable with. "We're still out there. I mean, just standing in the gym."
"Basic reaction protocol." I explained. "Pretty much just your body running on a very slow autopilot. Well, relatively slow. I mean, technically you could try to use this in combat, but the separation delay would make things awkward and your presence in the Spiritron simulation would prevent you from utilizing any higher-level powers in the outside world." I shrugged. "Soul in the computer means it's not out there, so anything based on it…"
"I get it." Aisha let out an equally unnecessary breath. "Didn't expect you to break out prototype mobile Spiritron technology just to deal with me springing THIS on you."
"Yeah." I said, looking over to where Brian was standing effectively frozen, a look of shock plastered across his face. "You want to explain exactly what 'this' is?"
Aisha shifted awkwardly. "Honestly? Not really." She said with the insight of someone who knew I could detect manipulation. "If I wanted or even knew how to deal with this I probably would have come up with a better idea than just throwing everyone together and hoping it works out."
At least she was being honest, but that didn't change how fucked this situation was, or how fucked it could have been if I hadn't been able to get ahead of it.
"I'm guessing you know about your brother?" I asked.
Aisha looked up at me. "You mean that he's Grue?" She asked. "Yeah. I mean, he never told me. Well, not exactly. He told me he was a parahuman, but nothing else."
I raised an eyebrow. "And he thought that would stop you from finding out?"
She smiled slightly. "Maybe at first, but that didn't last. I'm pretty sure he knew I knew, but I never let him know that I knew, or knew that he thought I knew that he knew." She shrugged. "Deniability. We both just kind of ignored things, or talked around them."
I nodded. That was common enough in families, even when you were dealing with things less significant than a cape identity.
"Honestly, I just thought you would figure it out. Like, I never expected it to go on this long." Aisha admitted. "You seriously didn't know?"
"You aren't a second-generation trigger." I said. "We've literally seen your passenger and it's completely distinct from Grue's." I shook my head. "It's not impossible for siblings to end up with completely different passengers, but it's incredibly unlikely." I considered things for a moment. "You were with your dad when you triggered?"
"Yeah." Aishas said with a shallow nod. I'd never pressed her for the precise details of that attack, and for good reason.
"Could be your father had an original connection. Then it jumped to you. Two parents with dormant connections could cause this kind of situation." I theorized.
"Wait, that means Brian got his powers from our mom?" Aisha asked eagerly.
I shrugged. "Possibly?"
"Oh, he's going to hate that." She said with the first sliver of amusement since I launched the accelerated simulation.
Diving into passenger dynamics was a distraction. It wasn't really important, but it put off the confrontation that we both knew was coming. This entire situation was stupid and reckless. Pretty much the only thing moderating my response was the fact that I knew full well how embarrassed and ashamed Aisha was by the entire mess. This wasn't something I'd expect from her, but more specifically this wasn't something I'd expect from her now. It was fairly clear that this had been in the works and hanging over her head for a long time, well before I'd have trusted her to know better. Unfortunately, there was a difference between making good decisions going forward and being able to effectively address all your previous missteps, even if they were the kind of thing that was likely to come back and bite you in the ass, like this one had.
"Aisha, seriously, what happened here?" I asked as calmly and companionably as I could. Aisha turned to me and let out a long breath before replying.
"I fucked up." She admitted. "I thought it was funny at first, but then it kept going and I couldn't figure out how to bring it up or deal with it." She shook her head. "I mean, at first I thought you already knew."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"After the bank robbery? Brian and the rest of the Undersides were using your gear. You vanished leading up to that, then showed up again. I mean, I knew you were a cape, so it kind of made sense." She chewed on her lip. "Honestly, I thought Brian asked you to keep an eye on me."
"Seriously?"
She shrugged. "Everyone at the gym does that kind of thing. I thought you knew, and then I found out you didn't and thought it would be funny when you figured things out." She dropped her head. "Really didn't expect things to get this complicated."
"Yeah, neither did I." I admitted. Aisha had gone from playing a prank on what she figured was a minor tinker working with her brother to juggling a secret as a member of the highest profile cape team on the planet. And speaking of…
"Who else knows?" I asked. "I'm guessing Survey does."
"Obviously." Aisha said, rolling her eyes. "Thought she would have told you, but she's be big on deniability as well, and the whole 'need to know' thing." She looked up. "I get why it's important, but still."
"Yeah." I agreed.
"Um, Garment probably, since she worked on his new costume. Fleet and the Matrix might know, but they probably don't care. Tybalt definitely doesn't care. Oh, and probably Tetra?"
There was a slight red flicker within the virtual space accompanied by a distorted voice calling out something that sounded like "I did!"
Aisha took a breath. "And she can show up in here, even when we're running at superspeed, because of course she can."
"Unbreakable connections mean unbreakable connections." I said with a slight smile at Tetra's antics. "You know you could have just told me, right?"
"Yeah, well, there's 'knowing' that and there's having a lifetime of experience with that kind of thing blowing up in your face." Aisha said. "Like, I knew that you would probably be okay with it, or at least understand, but I KNOW every way something like this can blow up and go wrong." She let out a breath. "So I put it off, and it kept getting harder, because it meant I'd been keeping it from you through all the lessons and presents and training and…" She sighed. "Fuck."
"Yeah." I said.
"And even now, you aren't mad?" She asked. "Or is this one of those things where you're just running super logic to keep everything under control?"
I took a breath. "If I said I wasn't mad, just disappointed…" I said in a leading tone.
"Yeah, you can fuck off with that. I'd rather have you screaming at me." Aisha said, though there was at least a measure of humor in it.
I nodded. "Honestly? I'm plenty annoyed that you tried something like this, but there was plenty to be annoyed about back then."
Aisha dropped her head. "Yeah. Fuck, I know I was kind of insufferable. Don't think I apologized for it. I mean, not properly." She looked up. "Sorry for being such a pain, and thanks for putting up with me."
I nodded. "Considering the alternatives, I figured you needed it. And I know you haven't tried anything like this since then."
"Definitely not." She assured me. "Just had this mess hanging over me, while becoming more and more aware of how badly I'd fucked up."
"I get that." I said.
She shook her head. "Is there, like, a word for looking back at your past actions and being pissed off at how stupid you were while also having no idea how to deal with the consequences of the bad decisions that you only became aware of when it was too late?"
I smiled at that. "Most people call it growing up."
Aisha looked up at me with an expression of surprise that quickly shifted into a grimace of pure horror. "No, seriously, no."
I shrugged. "Sorry, I don't make the rules. Welcome to maturity, where you're aware of all your mistakes just slightly too late to avoid having to deal with the consequences of them."
"Argh!" Aisha exclaimed. "First you make me a nerd, and now I have to be an adult? That's not fair! None of this is fair."
"You get used to it." I said.
"Really?" She asked in a flat voice.
"No." I said honestly. "But you're one of the most feared parahumans on the planet. It's probably a good idea for you to at least be aware of the consequences of impulsive actions."
"Yeah, I guess." Aisha said, clearly sulking. She shook her head before looking back at me. "And that's it?"
"Well, I mean we still have to deal with this." I said, pointing towards the virtual representation of Brian, still standing in nearly frozen shock.
"Right." Aisha said, apparently realizing that she had only dealt with half of the current problem. "Don't suppose there's some way to go back and have this conversation before we leave for the gym?"
"Not without risking irreparable damage to the space-time continuum. Which as tempting as it might be, isn't actually worth it for the sake of avoiding awkward family conversations." I looked from Aisha to Brian. "Believe me, I would know."
"Yeah." Aisha said, letting out a breath. "Maturity sucks."
"That's the general consensus." I said. "So, how do you want to play this?"
Aisha raised an eyebrow. "You're asking me?"
"He's your brother. And I'm guessing he doesn't know you're Lethe." I said.
"No." Aisha said, "I mean, he suspects something, particularly with all the stuff with Garment, but he doesn't know. I know he thinks I might have triggered but he hasn't asked outright."
That was more complicated. It was possible that we might be able to downplay things, leaning into my association with the gym from before I had met Brian and play off Aisha as an acquaintance, but if Brian already suspected Aisha of having powers, he was probably going to put things together eventually. Particularly if Garment actually participated in the action against the Nine.
I could deploy the same type of curse I had used to protect my own name on Aisha's behalf, but that had its own issues. There was also the possibility that Brian could stumble into the negative effects of the curse, particularly if he was already acting on previous suspicions. I doubted Aisha wanted that to happen to her brother, and the same was probably true for more severe options. I hadn't used containment or memory wipes when Aisha had snuck into my Workshop and I doubted she wanted to see those options used against her brother.
Well, in the case of memory wipes, she was more than capable of handling that on her own. The fact that she wasn't even suggesting as much made her position clear.
"Do you want to tell him?" I asked.
Aisha shifted her weight from one foot to another. "Are you okay with that?"
I shrugged. "He already knows I'm Apeiron. A bit more information about my team isn't going to seriously affect me. This is more about your side of things."
"My side of things." Aisha said, looking at the image of her brother constructed from scanner data and reconstructed inside the virtual environment. "You know, I was set to move in with him?"
I felt my eyebrows raise. "Seriously?"
"Yeah." Aisha said with a faint laugh. "Before the attack, things were a lot worse with my dad. Well, things were a lot worse on a lot of levels. Chances had fallen through, people had given up." She shook her head. "Brian stepped up. Was trying to get custody. Setting up a room in his apartment for me. Really trying to make things work."
"That's nice." I said.
"That's Brian." Aisha replied. "He's big about responsibility, or about certain kinds of responsibility, even if he can be incredibly stupid about it." She was silent for a moment before turning to me. "You know, early on, when he got his powers, he robbed a convenience store to get bail money for me?"
"Really?" I asked.
She nodded. "I didn't know it at the time. It was stupid. I mean, a lot of stuff back then was stupid. I was stupid." She muttered something that sounded like 'maturity' under her breath in a tone filled with contempt before continuing. "Got arrested for shoplifting. Nothing important, just random crap, but some of the stuff I grabbed was expensive. Got booked for it and Brian showed up with bail money that I knew he didn't have." She shrugged. "Figured he borrowed it from a friend or called in a favor or something."
"When did you find out?" I asked.
"Night before last, so like years ago?" She shrugged. "You remember how I was digging through everything about the city? Survey's full breakdown of all the economic and political bullshit that's added up over the years?" I nodded. "That's how I found out. Police report of Grue robbing a corner store, before he was going by Grue." She turned back towards Brian. "The place is closed down now. Not sold, just boarded up and abandoned. It had been robbed before, but you know what parahumans hitting a place does to insurance rates."
I nodded. It was one of the major knock-on effects of parahuman crime. Namely the fact that some parahumans could trivially bypass even the best security measures. Insurance was already a nightmare when it came to parahuman activity, and it was particularly bad when it came to theft. Normally you could secure lower rates by installing security measures, but there wasn't a class of lockbox, security gate, or even vault that could consistently hold off parahumans. Once capes started getting involved in robberies, it could be almost impossible to get a property insured. Most of the time the option was to just move to an area with less parahuman activity.
Or one where the parahuman crime was more organized. The gang's protection rackets were monstrous, but they were usually at a point where businesses could continue to operate, at least to a point. That was largely why gangs tended to be more focused on holding territory than hitting high value targets within their own city.
"Like, things were already on a downward spiral. I'm not saying they shut down because of Brian. Because of me. But that didn't help." Aisha continued.
"And you want to help." I said.
Aisha dropped her head. "Brian wants to help." She said with an slight edge of sarcasm to her voice. "And he's going about it in just about the most stupid way possible." A sad grin crossed her face. "Must run in the family."
"Trust me, that kind of thing isn't limited to any single family." I assured her.
"Maybe, but the Undersiders… I mean, Brian doesn't even know he's working for Coil, does he?" She asked.
I shook my head. "Not as far as I can tell. Not unless he's been looking into it on his own."
"He's not." Aisha said with certainty. "So all this, everything he's been setting up for our new life, it's built on a relationship with a crime lord he's never even met. He can't even guess who he's working for."
"You want to help him." I said, repeating myself.
"I'm going to help him." Aisha said with conviction. "The only question is whether we get into it now, or while he's scrambling to pull his life together and salvage things from whatever flaming wreck Coil leaves behind once you bring him down."
I nodded. I was guessing that the confrontation with me over Brian's identity was only half of what Aisha had been looking to address by throwing everyone into the same room and hoping for the best.
"Alright." I said with a nod.
Aisha gave me a critical look. "You're really okay with that? Like, bringing him onboard?"
"Well, I'm not inviting him to movie night and I'm out of spare keys, but he's your brother. If you want to tell him, that's up to you." I said.
Well, up to a point. Fleet's efforts in Passenger Space were enough to block innocuous information from reaching Jack's passenger. As long as Aisha didn't get into the specifics of our plans against the Nine, it shouldn't cause any serious issues. Still, it would probably be a good idea to have the conversation in as secure a location as possible. Fortunately we had quite a few options on that front.
"Right." Aisha said, bracing herself as she turned towards the image of Brian, still with that look of shock on his face. "Then I guess we should get going."
"If you're sure?" I asked. She nodded and I returned the gesture before shifting my focus. With a thought I extended my control towards the field-improvised Spiritron Core and began to slowly collapse the Pseudo-Serial Phantasm.
Aisha looked at the destabilization of the environment around us, an uneasy expression on her face. "Um, hey, this is basically a thrown together version of the computer core, right? With the faster perception and all that?"
"Yeah." I said, still folding down the virtual environment.
"I mean, it's faster than the safe threshold for neuroactivity, which means we're looking at soul interfaces, right?" She continued. I nodded as I continued to focus on the decompiling. "So, uh, is this like the good version from where you got the whole photonic system set up, or like that earlier one where it jammed your soul back into your body and you brain runs through fifty system updates in three seconds to try to bring you up to speed with everything that happened inside the computer?"
I smiled at Aisha then turned back to the environment, which was slowly losing cohesion as the virtual constructs defragmented in response to the system breakdown.
"Joe?" Aisha asked as I pointedly ignored her. "Which is it? Seriously, I am not going through that in the middle of the gym."
"It'll be fine." I said as the last of the figures vanished from the area around us, leaving walls that slowly began to flicker out.
"Fine because it's using the good technology or fine because you always said the soul upload wasn't a big deal?" She asked pleadingly.
I kept smiling as the last of the walls flickered out and the area around us began to warp and contract.
"Joe, I'm serious, which one is-"
"-it?" Aisha gasped as she finished her sentence in the bustle of the gym. Frozen figures suddenly sprung to life and the dull roar of background noise pressed in around us. Aisha quickly looked around, then turned to me.
"You fucking bastard." She muttered without showing a hint of emotion on her face.
"I told you it would be fine." I said under my breath.
"That was because I didn't tell you about Brian, wasn't it?" She asked. I declined to answer. "Did you even have to have the place shut down like that, or were you just dragging things out?"
"Think of it as the value of presentation." I said.
She snorted. "Vindictiveness doesn't suit you." She said, "Not even at that petty level."
"Pretty sure this level is all I can do without causing an international incident." I joked.
"Yeah, well, it's plenty." Aisha assured me.
Across the gym Brian's face shifted from shock to horror then to a kind of blank stunned expression as he began quickly speaking with Vince. And from Vince's expression and Brian's reaction to his response, I'm guessing Vince had badly misinterpreted the reason for Brian's sudden shock. Whatever that reason was, it seemed to amuse Aisha a great deal.
Which was needed, because even with everything we had discussed, I could tell this was not going to be an easy conversation. It was good that Aisha was going into it with raised spirits, but I knew full well how messy things could get with siblings, and most of my problems were decidedly mundane compared to what Aisha would be dealing with.
Still, she steeled herself and looked across the gym to where Brian seemed to be desperately trying to explain something to Vince while the other guy just nodded absently.
Wasn't this entire outing supposed to be a chance to relax before I got into the serious stuff remaining in the day? Once again, I wondered at my luck and how it was supposed to be working if this was the kind of situation that presented itself to me. I could only guess that the alternative would be the same mess playing out, but at a much worse time and place.
It was nice to imagine that my luck was acting to get everything out of the way early to give me clear sailing for the rest of the day, but considering my remaining commitments, I had my doubts.
"Well," Aisha said, "I guess we should go say hello to my brother."
"Sure." I replied dryly. "I mean, it's only polite."
