Most of the rest of the afternoon was eaten by a discussion about what kind of precautions I could take against a corrupt PRT. Quinn had said he'd need to talk to some other lawyers, but he thought that there were things that I could do with trusts, corporations, and ownerships structures generally that would make it harder to freeze my assets or attack me through the legal system.
Dealing with an outright cape assault on me — or by me — remained outside his competence.
I was pretty sure that the PRT would have a hard time freezing assets held by the Number Man, though there were other worries there. A quick phone call had gotten me wiring instructions which should baffle further investigation and which I'd passed to Quinn as 'a probably safe account, to be used for some but not all of my assets.'
He hadn't asked any questions about where that went, but only if there were any other income sources I wanted to try to protect.
I took a break from the enormous stack of signature pages before me to sketch out my 'bee vitamin' recipe.
He took it, and looked at it, then looked across the conference table.
"Taylor, have you even heard of Colony Collapse Disorder?"
I shrugged in between signings.
"Something that better bee nutrition might help with?"
He sighed. "Something like that, yes. Maybe. It might or might not be part of the total collapse of agriculture as we know it — at least for the plants relying on insect pollination. It's…"
He paused a moment.
"It's one of many problems that people blame on the Simurgh. Not that there's any real certainty that it's going to be a disaster instead of an issue, not that there's any evidence that the Simurgh was involved, but…"
I nodded, continuing to sign page after page. "We're being paranoid, but…"
"… are we being paranoid enough?" he finished the phrase for me. It was, spoken or unspoken, the unofficial end to any discussion about the Simurgh's activities.
"I don't know if you remember, Taylor, but there was a time when some parahumans tried to change the world rather than… fight crime. Or the Endbringers."
My hand traced another signature, all but illegible at this point.
He tapped his phone, absently. "Ideas. Innovations. The hope of a technological answer to problems, to powers… to the Endbringers themselves." Softer. "Even if only by running away."
The papers rustled as I shifted a stack to the side. "Sphere."
He nodded slowly. "Alan Gramme was once the final hope of humanity. That, even if we lost, here… our descendants might survive elsewhere, in a habitat of his design."
There wasn't really anything I could say to that. I hadn't been old enough at the time to really pay attention to the tragedy.
"The Simurgh put an end to that. Openly. And while other, stronger, Tinkers have arisen since — Dragon is probably the greatest Tinker ever to live — they no longer focus on wider changes. Only on fighting."
"The Endbringers need to be fought."
His eyes closed. Opened. "So they do. But there's more than one way to fight; more than one way to make a difference." He gently folded the piece of paper with the recipe on it, and placed it in an inside jacket pocket. "I'll see that this gets tested." His usual smile returned at last, bright as ever. "And if it does what I think it might, I'll see you get paid appropriately for it too."
I nodded, and thought about the tasks I'd set myself. The foes I'd have to face. The name he hadn't mentioned, the man who often, even today, was still titled 'the greatest Tinker ever to live.'
Hero.
One of the earliest heroes, he'd taken that archetypal name for his own… and kept it.
Few of us capes could get away with wearing an actual cape — it took something weightier than dignity to make it look real instead of like a bad joke.
Fewer still could have managed a name like his.
He bore it the way he had worn his gold plate on blue mesh armor: with an easy smile and a gadget for every occasion. And for all that, when his name was spoken today it wasn't usually about the good he'd done, the Protectorate he'd helped found, or the Tinkers who followed in the paths he'd blazed. No, mentions of him today tended to focus on the bitter truth taught by his end: no matter how great or beloved, heroes die.
"Should I be making out a will?"
"You're still underage. We've talked about the nominal purposes of the trusts that I'll be setting up for you — that's as much estate planning as can be done for you right now."
I nodded again, and stood to stretch.
The conference room's windows behind me faced out toward the Bay; reflected on the windows of the other office towers was the redly setting sun.
"Time to go."
He stood, and walked me to the elevator bank.
"I'll see about that referral. And… take care."
The elevator doors closed, and I shut my eyes and reached out to my swarms, mind already on the fights ahead.
···---···
As evening approached, I made my way to the northern part of downtown, to where Coil's men had thought Krieg laired.
Last night, Tattletale had thought he had the greatest concentration of force among the E88 factions, and Coil's threat assessments concurred, and that made him top of the list right now. Ahead of Coil at the moment only because I still had no idea what Coil's power really was, and finding out in a fight was… a bad idea.
If I had to, I'd do it that way.
Not otherwise.
I pulled my scooter into a parking spot several blocks away from my target, pulled out my current disposable flip-phone, and pretended to text someone while I reached out, searching the address they'd named.
The Regency, Fenrir's Chosen, the unaligned E88, Lung, Coil and his cape(s?) and mercenaries… who wasn't I at war with?
Purity's faction?
I owed her a conversation, first. If she really was trying to fight crime, to atone… sure.
I knew what it was like, to have something on your conscience. Something that couldn't be fixed, couldn't be taken back. Not just my father, but all the rest of Bakuda's victims.
The Merchants?
No, they were definitely on the list.
Faultline's crew of mercenaries?
Hadn't even heard of them doing anything local. Maybe that meant they weren't doing any harm; maybe it meant they just weren't getting caught.
Something to worry about later.
Much later.
The Undersiders?
I owed them, and they me. But if nothing changed, could I still turn a blind eye to their actions?
I snorted. If I got that far down the list, well… I'd worry about it then.
There!
Krieg was, as advertised, running his section of Empire Eighty Eight out of the back of a grocery store. I guess the plan was for all the skinheads to blend into the normal shopping traffic? Though… looking around with my bugs, there weren't that many present.
A couple of guards and the man himself, sitting at a desk and working.
Well, I could wait and watch for an opportunity that wasn't right next door to several dozen shoppers. And there was a bookstore across the street where I could wait in comfort.
···---···
Two hours later, I was wondering if it might just be simpler to flood the room with insects.
On the one hand, I was pretty sure that if I methodically removed every cape who stepped up to keep the Empire together, it would eventually fall apart.
On the other hand, bystanders.
The surveillance wasn't even producing anything useful! He wasn't plotting strategy or taking calls, he was sitting there doing paperwork. And not the useful kind of paperwork, the kind that discussed E88 operations or personnel. The kind where he was carefully doing the accounts for the Rotisserie League Fantasy Baseball League which he ran.
Before my patience could snap, his little walkie-talkie beeped. Twice. He carefully finished the entry he was on, closed the binder, and stood, grabbing his black greatcoat as he exited.
A white panel van waited for him in the parking lot, and I carefully spread some bugs throughout it, registering another three in back plus the driver. Another man, and two women. Night, Fog, and Fenja?
As they pulled out of the parking lot, I got my scooter and followed.
They made their way east almost to the coast before turning north, into the industrial areas around the docks which gave that whole neighbourhood its name.
The streets were very quiet.
Ever since the Boat Graveyard was established, when the shipping industry was collapsing and some unpaid sailors and dockworkers had attempted to hold the ships then in port hostage by blocking the exit with a container ship, there hadn't been much activity in this part of town.
The attempt hadn't even worked: the abandoned boats simply rusted in place, written off for whatever their insurance might cover. Today, even if there were demand enough from shipping companies, clearing the docks would take the kind of time and money no one had to spare.
I'd been following them from near the limit of my range, uncomfortably aware of how few other vehicles I saw on the streets, and when they stopped at a T-junction in front of a shuttered compound, so did I, wheeling the Vespa out of sight behind a building.
I'd have to walk the rest of the way, but I could do that.
Outer clothes off, and into the Vespa's cargo space as the insects left it.
Mask on.
I felt my pouches: collapsible baton; taser, cellphones, three; epipens; homemade pepper bombs, six; combat knife; pepper spray, three; handcuffs, two; bugs… lots.
Meanwhile, I'd been assembling swarms where the van had stopped to give me eyes on them. The van had stopped briefly to let Krieg exit with the three others before driving on. I tagged the vehicle and driver, but let it go. I wasn't here hunting Krieg's driver. They exchanged brief words — too far from my swarms to hear, yet — and Fenja began jogging off into the compound. I tagged her, but she was out of range quickly. Night and Fog stood with Krieg. Waiting.
I considered, and began to move closer. Quietly. Stealthily. Insects watching every alley, every street, every window.
No one.
As I crept closer, I picked up Fenja again: she was atop one of many squat cylinders, each several stories high, a little to the east of where Krieg waited. She was carrying her sword and shield, and I knew from the fight with Lung that she could leap down from such heights safely… but it still seemed odd. Fenja was a melee specialist, a bodyguard. And right now, Krieg was too far from her for her to act in his defense.
I stopped two blocks south of them, and one east. More than close enough. I ducked down an alley — out of sight, good escape routes — while I gathered most of the insects in my range into swarms, filtering out some of the nastier types that I'd brought along to add punch to the locals. I left dustings of insects behind, enough to maintain awareness of the area. I closed my eyes, to shut out a source of distraction — it wasn't as if I couldn't see myself from three different angles right now anyway.
Krieg was waiting for something. Or someone?
Who?
I swept my awareness wide, checking more thoroughly.
A lit window drew my attention to a small office deeper in the compound to my right, a small and cramped space. A single individual at a desk, moving from a computer to machinery and back. I tagged him. Off to my left, three men sleeping in different doorways. At the edge of my range west, someone closing a garage door on a room filled with exercise equipment. A gym? I tagged him anyway. Another man smoking a cigarette in a doorway. Tagged. Two women getting into a car. Tagged.
This part of the city was almost entirely empty.
No witnesses.
Just the four of them. Could I take them? Make them vanish in the night?
I shook my head. Fenja was tough enough that I couldn't guarantee anything with her. I didn't have enough of a handle on Night's power to be sure of putting her down. And Fog's power was basically to turn into superpowered bug spray.
No, I'd have to wait and watch for now.
I heard a rumbling through my swarms before I heard it with my ears. A motorcycle. Loud one, too. From the north.
I focused the eyes of my swarm on them and on Krieg's group, on the other approaches to the intersection they were meeting, and on the approaches to where I was… all at once. Dizzying, but easier with practice.
The motorcycle proved to be Hookwolf on a Harley, with Cricket riding behind him. He pulled up, cut the engine.
If the apparent three to two odds troubled them at all, neither showed it.
"Say your piece."
Krieg smiled beneath his round, small sunglasses, hands clasped before him. "There's nothing to say, Herr Hookwolf."
"You put it out throughout the gang that we needed to meet under truce for nothing?" Hookwolf was very nearly growling.
The smoker stepped out of the alley, and on to the street approaching the T-junction from the west, giving me my first clear look at his face.
Lung.
Walking toward the meeting.
Of course this wouldn't go smoothly. On the upside, it looked like someone else was already working on thinning the E88 for me.
"I didn't say it was for nothing. Merely that it wasn't to talk. There is a distinction, yes?" Krieg's accent was faint but distinctive.
Cricket cocked her head, and looked west.
"Trap!" Hookwolf erupted into a tangle of sharp-edged steel.
Lung threw his cigarette away, and there was a brief burst of flame. Only ashes hit the ground.
Krieg's smile never wavered.
"Oh yes, Herr Hookwolf. A trap. But not for you."