Chapter 30: 3-9-5 Rebecca Costa-Brown

Interlude 3.9.5: Rebecca Costa-Brown

2000, July 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I sat ramrod straight before the cameras, the picture of professionalism. I schooled my microexpressions into a countenance of practiced concern and focused resolve. My dress shirt was perfectly pressed save for a few minor but noticeable creases, an intentional departure from my typically immaculate appearance. A few crow's feet had been added to my makeup as well, giving the appearance of a stern woman weathered by age and worry over the current crisis.

All according to the Path.

The cameras started blinking, telling me that they were rolling.

"Evening to all," I began. Even those three simple words were calculated not to be friendly, but to be clinical, a woman who wasted as few words on aimless pleasantries as possible. "There have been many rumors and false allegations coming out of the Phoenix area. I am here to set the record straight."

I shuffled the manila folder in front of me. Pointless props of course. I knew what color the janitor's shoe laces were, never mind such an important briefing. Still, Alexandria knew those things. Rebecca Costa-Brown was bound by mortal limits. One more thing to humanize me.

I cleared my throat and began again, head bowed in the picture of remorse.

"It has remained a longstanding mission of the Parahuman Response Team to integrate parahumans into society. We have gone through great lengths to provide parahumans with productive outlets for their powers and have attracted and nurtured a great many promising youths through the Wards program. In the course of this mission, we have likewise faced a great many number of trials and tribulations. Some were growing pains of a young organization with a noble mission but a lack of experience. Others… Others were less forgivable.

"And on July fifth, the Wards program failed utterly and unreservedly. I will not make excuses, nor will I try to hide what has occurred. A Ward was kidnapped from his own home. A senior Wards liaison was murdered. I will not speak further on ongoing investigations, but this much, I believe I must say: We failed. We, the PRT. We, the Protectorate. We, the nation, failed to safeguard one of our own, one who swore to be a hero and entrusted us with his safety. We cannot make things right; but we must try.

"To that end, I have authorized Watchdog to use every resource available. We are at this time certain that Rubedo is alive and well. Further, Alexandria has been dispatched to lead the investigative efforts from the ground. Rest assured, we will save Rubedo. We will bring his kidnappers to justice."

I stood. A brief address, but that was for the best. The cameras stopped rolling and I allowed myself a brief nod at a job well done. I began to walk out, my footsteps echoed by my secretary.

"You have an appointment to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in fifteen, ma'am," she said. Lena, I remembered. A pretty young thing who studied at Georgetown before deciding she wanted to do something domestic instead of pursue international relations.

She went on for precisely another forty-three seconds and I allowed her to "remind" me of my commitments. Letting her feel useful cost me nothing after all.

"Thank you for your help, Lena," I said, awarding her a practiced smile. It looked "warmer," a smile I'd practiced for those who were presumably in my confidence and a departure from the stern visage I kept up on camera.

She'd be useful one day. She too was a part of the Path.

X

2000, July 12: Phoenix, AZ, USA

"Take her," I said to Oathkeeper. "There is something I want to verify."

"Yes, ma'am," came her comms.

She, Bunyan, and I were striking out against the Southside Mesa and the arsonist called Calavera.

Over the past few days, I'd taken the screws to several captured gang members. My ability to act as a living polygraph coupled with the not insignificant detail of being interrogated by the strongest brute in the world let me acquire more information than any mundane detective. I found six hideouts, supply depots, and drug labs in short order and organized a series of raids the very next day.

The trouble with SSM and many gangs like them was that they were intentionally anarchic and scattered, lacking a single place they can call their stronghold. Dos Caras was in charge, but with only Calavera to assist him in terms of cape muscle, he had no choice but to spread his forces thinner than usual. It made rooting them out difficult, much like a guerrilla insurgency, but it also meant Dos Caras and Calavera were often separated.

I took advantage of that and isolated Calavera, pinning her with Oathkeeper's squad, all in the name of getting her another accolade under her belt. We'd decided long ago that she was worth nurturing and she'd soon be supervising her own city.

Of course, it wasn't just for Oathkeeper's sake that I veered off. Faith in the Phoenix PRT was at an all-time low. First came a nationally publicized lawsuit against one of their Wards. Then said Ward got kidnapped from his own home even as the largest gang war in the city's history erupts. We may have arranged for this, but even Contessa agreed that complete collapse of the local PRT would be detrimental to our ultimate mission.

So, here I was, bolstering the PRT.

Oathkeeper and Bunyan were more than capable of bagging Dos Caras' remaining lieutenant. This minor triumph would be played up in the news as a grand struggle, injecting some badly needed morale back into the local forces.

As for me, I did as the Path demanded and flew down to a side street, barely more than an alley. There, I found an SSM member doing his best to cover up his tattoos and blend into the scenery. I recognized him, Lucas Parker, one of over a hundred death row inmates in the state of Arizona and one of the prisoners freed during the explosions last Sunday.

He turned and saw me looming above, cape fluttering behind me. "Shi-"

I didn't even let him finish before my hand clamped down over his face like a vice and dragged him from the side street. "Hello, Lucas," I said, tone silky smooth and cordial. He ceased his ineffectual struggles, eyes widening in paralyzing horror.

Yes, Alexandria knows your name.

I allowed myself a hint of smug satisfaction at his reaction. Seeing how I went over every major criminal dossier in whichever city I happened to be in, it shouldn't be surprising. My powers were no secret after all. I'd repeatedly gone on record claiming that my favorite part of my powers was my enhanced cognition. And yet, there was always this visceral terror in the eyes of normal criminals when they realized just whose radar they'd managed to find themselves on.

It was positively delicious.

"Ma'am?" came Oathkeeper's unasked question as I dragged Lucas Parker into the PRT van.

"This one, I have questions for. Do make sure he gets to headquarters, won't you?" I addressed the squad captain.

"Yes, ma-"

Before he could finish, I was off. There were more steps to the Path.

X

Getting Mr. Parker to squeal was a simple matter. From him, I was able to verify my "hunches," giving a visible source for the Path and its stepping stones.

Death row inmates were kept in a separate wing. Said wing was therefore shielded from the explosions on Sunday. Said inmates could therefore not have escaped without inside help. Far fewer guards and staff had access to this wing, particularly solitary, which Mr. Parker was in until his sudden release. Therefore, we could isolate likely moles in the guards and, tracing their activities, isolate moles in the local forces.

All of this took me a mere half an hour, a feat I'd handwaved as having been made possible with the assistance of Watchdog.

I walked into Calavera's interrogation room and saw her stiffen as she realized just who her interrogator would be.

The muscular woman was permitted to keep her purple skull-shaped mask, but her hands were chained to the cold, metal table using one of Rubedo's power-nullifying shackles. Wonderful bit of tech, that. It'd be a marvelous addition to Cauldron's arsenal and I'd already begun the process of acquiring a steady supply of fossilized wood, even from alternate planets if need be.

She stared at me mulishly.

I scoffed. Her willingness to cooperate was irrelevant.

"James Lewis. Carter Rice. Theresa Mueller. Stephen Guerra. Luis Strong. Sophia Copeland. Juan Navarro. Juan de la Rosa. Vincent Nguyen. Tyler Isley. Isaac O'Reilly. Owen Rowley. Jamal Johnson. Eunice Steinbrook. Booker Walston." I got up and spoke into the mic. "Detain Rice, Johnson, Steinbrook, and Navarro."

"What the fu-"

"Thank you for your cooperation, Calavera," I said mockingly as I exited the interrogation room.

X

2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA

It was a simple matter to come to the right conclusion with the information I received from the four arrested officials.

Some were bribed. A particularly important one was blackmailed. SSM did not have the resources to pull off an attack like this, either the breakouts or the kidnapping. Peckerwoods might, but only if they received outside assistance. Gesellschaft's influence did not reach this far, nor did they associate themselves with what they saw as "white trash." The Herren clan were struggling financially and wouldn't bother moving out so far west. This left the Crips or an outside party using them as patsies.

I also made a note that the Peckerwoods were acting strange, as though they were missing their leader despite Freeform still remaining at large.

The Crips kidnapped Rubedo. This conclusion was further supported by in-depth psychoanalytical profiles of all three leaders. Dos Caras was a mad dog. Freeform could be cunning, but only as far as it applied to his own power. He wasn't much of a leader of men. La Torcha though, she was Mortician's strategist and willing to make long-term plans while taking on significant risk in the name of greater ultimate gain.

Watchdog was the final avenue of investigation. Not only did they confirm my conclusions, they raised concerns of a master effect at play as extrapolated from Freeform's strange behavior and the presence of Parade. There was also a not insignificant chance, they said, that Tequila had a master power given her name and the connotations it implied.

All this was reported to Director Lyons, Deputy Directors Silva and Irish, Oathkeeper, and Royalle, along with my intention to stay off the field while I focused on tracking down Rubedo.

"We have to move cautiously from now on," I said, staring each of them down. "Calavera's capture was a great thing, but it in itself doesn't get us any closer to finding Rubedo. I'll be stepping away from the gang war so I can focus on tracking down La Torcha. We know precious few of her hideaways and even back in Los Angeles, she was among the more cunning criminals."

"We understand, Alexandria," Director Lyons said. "Happy hunting."

"Should we prepare anything for when you do find her or will you just swoop in and rescue Rubedo on your own?" Deputy Director Silva asked. He was a hard man with a constant frown. It rankled him that the Phoenix branch needed outside help, even if that help came from a Founder.

"Prepare a squad or two of your finest, but don't take so many from the field that it's noticeable," I responded. "Ultimately, finding him isn't the biggest issue. It's this." I tapped the Watchdog report in front of me. "A master warning means we need to account for the possibility that Rubedo is now hostile, unwilling, but hostile nonetheless. Trying to extract him could end poorly, even for me."

"Surely you're immune to whatever he can do?"

"We're still not sure how much Petricite it would take to negate Alexandria's powers, if any," Lyons said. "And… Rubedo… He's more than he seems."

It was Deputy Director Irish who spoke this time. As a former forest ranger, he was typically stationed overseeing the national parks near the greater Phoenix area. He'd been called down due to the emergency. "How so? He seemed like a good lad from what little I'd seen of him. Remarkably mature and potentially a genius intelligence to go with that maturity. Seemed to have his head on straight."

"There is no such thing as a stable cape," Silva said, then caught the eyes of the three high-level capes in the room. "No offense."

"None taken, director," Royalle nodded. "I know I mess around a lot, but capes… Yeah, being a cape can mess you up."

"Nothing like that," Lyons continued. "Rubedo is fine, at least, fine as far as any therapist can tell. He behaves like he's in his twenties, but he's hardly mentally unsound. I don't have any worries about his personality. It's his tech that concerns me.

"Back when he first debuted, we had a conversation about what else he might be able to make. I admit part of it was my own curiosity, former egghead and all, but most of it was so I could help organize his lab to his specifications. He told me that he could make anything from incredibly potent poisons and antidotes to something called the Shimmer, a super-soldier serum that drives the drinker mad, but is permanent."

I allowed the four others to mull this new information over for a bit.

"Fuck," Royalle summed up the general sentiment. "Why weren't any of us told about it? Are you saying we could have a horde of insane gangbangers with powers soon?"

"Because I vetoed its creation. It was sent along to the chief director, but otherwise left as a simple footnote. He never made it and openly admitted to having such capability rather than try to sneak one by us."

"Be that as it may," I broke in before the others started arguing about being left out of the loop. "I must now work under the assumption that a hostile Rubedo is capable of potentially bypassing even my defenses to poison me. If he's too far gone… Master victims have been known to commit suicide rather than let themselves be captured. We're going to need a more concrete plan. I might have to call in a few favors, maybe with a teleporter."

"A teleporter? We do have Masked Bandit for rescue," Irish pointed out. "Think she'd be up for it?"

"No," Lyons said. "She's just thirteen. She shouldn't have to deal with the Crips of all people. Worse, she's close to Rubedo. I don't want her to be at ground zero if things go wrong."

"Quite," I agreed. "It'll take a few days to get the one I have in mind so we'll carry on as usual until then."

"So more of that 'hurry up and wait' deal, eh? Can't say I missed this from back in my army days," Silva grunted.

"It is what it is," Oathkeeper said, standing. "If you'll excuse me, directors, Royalle, Alexandria, I've got to arrange a few more patrols."

At that, the meeting broke.

X

2000, July 15: Phoenix, AZ, USA

Gemini, a teleporter and duplicator based out of Salt Lake City, arrived last night. He could make a second copy of himself, his "mirror." He and his mirror could teleport whatever they touched between themselves, including people. Because of this, he was almost always tapped for rescue operations like this.

Gemini's arrival marked the final preparations for what was being called Operation Hot Potato. I allowed myself a quiet chuckle at Deputy Director Silva's ridiculous naming sense; it wouldn't do to let them see Alexandria laugh in public.

Watchdog had identified the Red Sands Moving Company as Rubedo's most likely location. Gemini had been dragged into a brief as soon as he arrived and the raid had been scheduled at dawn.

All according to the Path.

The plan itself was simple. Two squads of the best the PRT had to offer would discreetly encircle the parking lot at six in the morning. The isolation that had helped the Crips get established so quickly would only work against them here, allowing the troopers to approach without drawing too much attention from the public.

Protectorate Team Two, led by Oathkeeper, would be riding along as backup in order to capture any stragglers. Redbird and Echo, formerly on loan to Team Two, would be returned to Team One as they would be needed to raid the Peckerwoods simultaneously. One more feather in the cap of the local Protectorate.

Once we were in position, Gyroscope would scan for and hopefully find Rubedo using his drones. From there, I would drop in through the ceiling. A drone carrying Gemini's mirror would follow shortly behind.

Once Gemini's mirror was through, I would run interference against any local capes and workshop defenses while Gemini made a beeline for Rubedo. As soon as Rubedo was teleported away, I would make my own exit. It was determined that this was the best option to minimize any chance for retaliation.

As soon as Gemini's original got his hands on Rubedo, a trooper would feed him his own Petricite Elixir, just in case. And with Gemini's greenlight, the rest of the backup squads would move in, capturing anyone left inside.

Meaningless, utterly meaningless.

The entirety of Operation Hot Potato was a façade. Rubedo wasn't in any real danger. La Torcha wasn't hurting him. In a vacuum, her goals were actually far more sinister, an attempt to co-opt a tinker, to grow her organization into a national superpower, and ultimately to orchestrate my death. It wasn't greed that made La Torcha so formidable; it was her ambition.

Fortunately, it was also that ambition and a willingness to take things slow, one step at a time, that allowed her to be so easily manipulated by the Path. She was the ideal whetstone with which to sharpen the PRT, Protectorate, and Rubedo himself.

An electromagnetic pulse spread out from the Red Sands warehouse mere five minutes before our arrival, just long enough to disable all other recording devices. The PRT squads slid into the parking lot just late enough to avoid the EMP. We'd be spinning this story on our terms, thank you very much.

All according to the Path.

The squads were gathered around the parking lot. A quick comms check reaffirmed everyone's position and their roles in the plan. And just as I began to tire of this charade, Gyroscope's drones spotted a figure exiting the warehouse.

Some idiot squad captain readied his weapons.

Perfect.

"Belay that," I spoke over comms as I hovered a thousand feet above the ground. "That's Rubedo. He's exited on his own."

"Was the plan leaked, ma'am?"

"No, no one would send the hostage out on his lonesome. I'll approach. Make no hostile movements."

"Be careful, ma'am."

I didn't bother to reply. Instead, I descended slowly, landing lightly ten feet away from the boy. I noticed him tense as I entered within the range of his pericognition, hand going to a bulge in his pants I immediately identified as a gun of some sort. It told me much about his mentality. Hero would have quite the job ahead of him.

We stood there, gauging one another. I'd memorized his picture of course, but there was a certain presence to him now that I was seeing him in person. He had no eyes of course, but if he did, I had no doubt that they would contain them hardened steel of a veteran rather than the fear of a child.

"Alexandria," he spoke, voice tinged with exhaustion that wasn't entirely from a long night.

I made a show of giving him a once-over. He'd changed sometime before emerging, but there weren't any extra shoes. Then, I did something that caught everyone off guard. I walked over, knelt, and hugged him in full view of countless personal cameras.

Alexandria did not hug.

I could practically hear their worldviews shattering as they tried to process this.

I gently but firmly kept his hands to his sides, keeping him from going for the dagger at his hip. Comms off, I whispered, "Your shoes still have bloodspots."

I felt him stiffen and smiled.

All according to the Path.