I actually had a whole rant written out into response to this, but stepped away and condensed it for ease of reading.
People love Piggot bashing, but in reality very little of Joe's situation is her fault directly. Joe is just being bitten hard by what are likely existing PRT procedures regarding human master influence, his own unwillingness to speak with local authorities, and the side-effects of March and the ABB throwing the entire damn city into chaos at the same time. At no point has Piggot attempted to force compliance or made threats to him - she is merely following procedure to a potential human master and apparently walking disaster area - something she is likely following even more closer due to his accusation of insanity. I'm not even fully sure at this point if the PRT has listed him officially as a villain or merely as a person of interest.
Attempting to force compliance would imply that she has tried to find and speak with him, which she has not. The only time, arguably, we can make a claim to this is after the Uber and Leet fight when he's confronted by part of New Wave and we hear some com-chatter. Which at that point, is completely reasonable considering he had just used an high yield energy tinktech weapon to wipe out a swarm of missiles within the city, not to mention all the other damage he was causing.
Numerous characters in interludes/appendums/prologues/whatever have pointed out that the vast majority of Apeiron's issues would be non-issues if he actually took the time to
talk to the PRT. It's his refusal to do so, solely on a Thinker power he himself has noted is not fully reliable, that makes things so difficult. And the longer he waits, the more difficult it is going to be, due to crazy ass powers showing up out of nowhere like the 'Enigmatic Artificer' thing.
There are things we can genuinely bash Piggot and the PRT over. I, personally anyway, don't feel as if her response to Apeiron is one of them, given what she knows and what she has seen. We see it as unreasonable, because we are readers outside the situation and with outside context/information the PRT would have no way of conceivably knowing unless Piggot triggered with the power to see through the 4th wall.
I'm genuinely hoping Joe grows up a bit and reaches out the PRT with the Teeth having returned to the bay, post summit. That's not the kind of thing he should keep from them, even if he IS paranoid about Piggot. The situation in the city is unstable enough as it is, and Joe's rapidly reaching the point that he's going to need to come to some sort of understanding/agreement with the local branch if he's actually going to do some of the things he wants to do (clean up the dark zone, finishing removing all the bombs from the ABB-conscripts, anything else he wants to do that he hasn't really though too much about yet.)
The fact that this is the 'condensed' version of the rant should probably say something