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Chapter 92: Interlude 9-c: Faustian Antithesis

Interlude 9.c: Faustian Antithesis

"Door me."

A gaping chasm yawned open, a shimmering, glowing rectangle that unfolded and deepened, and on the other side was a hallway lined with white tiles stretching out and turning sharply down another corridor. A familiar building, comforting in its own way, and yet boring, clinical, the way only an office building could be.

Not a home, even though Cauldron called it such.

Alexandria — for that really was how she thought of herself, even though it was nothing more than a pseudonym she'd been wearing for nearly thirty years — floated casually forward and through the Doormaker's portal, felt the shift of temperature and pressure as the temperate air of the building was swept out and into the cold, thin air of the upper atmosphere. She landed with a soft tap of her boots on the tile, and felt more than heard or saw the doorway wink out of existence behind her as the hallway normalized again, a little colder than before.

She could have flown, but she decided to walk, the clack of her footsteps echoing off the walls as she made her way through the labyrinthine building. The wonder of flight had long since worn off, and these days, the normalcy of something so pedestrian as walking was…not a comfort, but a reminder.

Memento mori. Remember, thou art mortal.

Except there was no slave to whisper it in her ears, only these tiles beneath her feet and the inky blackness that covered half her vision.

The rest of Cauldron had already assembled by the time she made it to the conference room, except for Legend, who they had specifically left out from this initial discussion. The Doctor, Contessa, Number Man — Kurt — even Eidolon was in attendance, although he looked far more hungover than Alexandria would have liked.

He was trying, at least, because he hadn't forced her to make good on her threat of dragging him into work. Slower than she would have liked, but he was pulling himself out of his funk. If she had to consider another intervention, then that was a situation she would handle as and when it was necessary.

David really was too vital. They would need Eidolon when the situation finally came to a head and Scion turned against mankind. They — Cauldron and humanity both — couldn't afford for him to fall into a crippling depression.

"Alexandria," the Doctor greeted. "Good. Then we can begin."

"Doctor," Alexandria returned politely.

Eidolon looked up.

"We're not going to wait for Legend?"

"No." Alexandria slipped off her helmet and took a seat at the table in the center of the room. "The things we need to discuss most pressingly are subjects that he is either unaware of or would naturally oppose. We can agree on what to tell him before he is scheduled to arrive."

Eidolon accepted this reasoning without comment or complaint.

"Shall we begin, then?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes."

"Very well." The Doctor took the lead. "Then, our first topic. Number Man, it appears that your estimates may be accurate."

Kurt's eyebrows rose minutely. "Oh?"

"Recently, a powerful precognitive came to our attention," the Doctor went on. "We considered it prudent to investigate, and although she has the same limitations regarding Scion and the Endbringers that most Thinkers do, it appears that she is able to work around them."

"Modeling?" asked Eidolon.

"She can't see the cause, but she can see the numbers surrounding them," the Doctor clarified. "After some discussion, it was decided to consult her on our pressing problem: at our current level of readiness, how grim is our scenario for success?"

"And?"

"Low," said Contessa. "If we continue to prepare as we have been, the odds of humanity surviving past two more years is less than fifteen percent. The numbers drop sharply after that."

Grim news, for sure. The Alexandria of ten years ago might very well have felt a shiver down her spine, to hear such a terrible proclamation.

"Hence the final battle with Scion will be in two years, whether we are truly prepared or not," Kurt said mildly.

"And if we kicked off the final battle now?" asked Eidolon. "Are the odds any better?"

"No," Contessa replied simply. "The odds of success are never higher than fifteen percent, but if we engage him prematurely, they're less than one percent. Were we to attempt defeating him now, our failure is all but guaranteed."

"It only confirms what Number Man has already concluded," the Doctor said. "We can afford to wait no longer than two years. If we attempt to prolong it or act early, then our probable outcomes are far less favorable. At the very least, it gives us a final deadline."

"Fifteen percent…" Eidolon mumbled, looking troubled.

"Higher than we expected," Alexandria commented. "A fraction of a percent was always more likely."

"We've been chasing the one-in-a-million odds for thirty years," the Doctor agreed. "One-in-seven is far more favorable than we had any reason to expect."

Eidolon still didn't look quite convinced. He had likely made himself believe that it would be more like fifty-fifty, that with all of their preparations and all of the capes that would have to be involved in that final battle, it would come down to a coin toss. Certainly, an uphill battle with difficult odds, but one that it was possible to win.

Fifteen percent was far better than Alexandria had hoped for in nearly ten years.

"We'll continue on our current course, then," the Doctor said. "Unless and until more data becomes available or further options open up, operations will continue as normal."

No one disagreed. At this point, "further options" was just a nice way of saying there might still be a silver bullet, a single cape who could attack a critical weakness of Scion's…but none of them were really holding their breaths. Not when the trends from the last twenty years had proven that the Triumvirate was likely the best they were going to get, or at least the best they would be able to reliably field.

The S-Class threats that even the Triumvirate couldn't squash would be excellent weapons, if only they could be expected to cooperate.

"The next topic for discussion," the Doctor went on, "the situation in Brockton Bay. Has Piggot made any strides toward recovery?"

"Some," said Alexandria. "The damage was extensive, and her condition wasn't helped at all by her previous health problems, but she's expected to recover enough to return to work within a few weeks. In the meantime, Brockton Bay remains well in hand. Director Tagg is performing as expected."

The Doctor frowned.

"I'm not certain Tagg was the best decision as a replacement for Director Piggot."

"The situation in Brockton Bay is tenuous," Alexandria said firmly. "Piggot works well as a peacetime director. We needed a general."

The Doctor shook her head. "Let's be frank. What's tenuous is our grip on this new wonderchild. Apocrypha."

Alexandria's mouth drew tight. Across from her, Eidolon stilled, expression closed off and shut down. Deliberately blank. Trying to keep his festering animosity from showing on the surface.

"Taylor Hebert. Yes."

The Doctor turned to the woman next to her and asked, "Contessa, is she still a blind spot for your powers?"

Contessa nodded.

"Yes. She grows more indistinct every day. What models I construct to get around the block are increasingly outdated."

"And therein lies the largest problem," Alexandria said, folding her hands in front of her face. "She's unpredictable, and she becomes more so with every passing day."

The Doctor nodded, a look of understanding passing over her face. "You're worried that she's going to get out of hand."

"Yes," Alexandria replied bluntly. "She's young, sentimental, and in some ways, painfully naive. She's also capable of some incredibly dangerous things if she convinces herself they're necessary or can't be avoided."

"The Khepri Incident," Kurt concluded. Alexandria nodded over to him.

"We've seen what she can do when she's pressed for time and backed into a corner," she said. "She Mastered everyone in a significant range instantly, including two of us. What happens if she decides to be subtle?"

"You think she would?" the Doctor asked, sounding not entirely concerned. "I'm not sure what she stands to gain by Mastering the ENE branch."

"Her own personal fiefdom. She already has the castle, after all."

"Have we received more intel on that?"

No, and that was what made it all the more frustrating — and dangerous. It seemed more and more that they couldn't predict Apocrypha's powers or limits, only react to them as she let more slip, either on accident or because she was forced by circumstances to escalate. The Khepri Incident was only the most glaring of these.

Still.

"It's a castle. There isn't much room for what else it could be for."

"I see," said the Doctor. "You think she's been positioning herself for this for months."

Since shortly after her Trigger Event, actually, but she didn't have much basis for that other than conjecture and a gut feeling that might have been influenced by the dislike they seemed to share for each other.

"I think she has us over a barrel the instant she decides she wants to, and I want to be as prepared for that as possible."

Because the last thing they could afford was for the Hopebringer to become another Nilbog. It would only further destabilize an already failing system.

"So you told Tagg to keep an eye on her, to treat her like a suspect."

"Yes. And if she doesn't snap and give us cause to reign her in, then Legend can swoop down and offer her a place in New York, away from Tagg and his oppressive rules."

"That was your mistake," Contessa said suddenly.

Alexandria's head whipped around towards her. A tremor of apprehension threaded through her gut. "Mistake?"

"Contessa?" the Doctor asked.

"Your underlying assumption that we can manipulate her towards our desired ends," Contessa explained. "It only works if we assume she isn't aware we're doing it, that our hand can tilt the scale. That assumption hasn't been valid since the Khepri Incident."

"If Khepri even is who and what Apocrypha says she is," Eidolon said with a touch of venomous derision.

"She knows about your ruse," Contessa said, looking specifically at Alexandria. "She has since the incident, Rebecca."

Anyone else, and Alexandria wouldn't have thought anything of it. But this was Contessa. Every action was measured and every inflection meaningful. The usage of her name, then, was an intentional emphasis.

"Do you remember what demands she made during her recruitment hearing with Piggot?" Contessa went on. "It wasn't the other directors she was worried would force her under your command."

"It was the Chief Director," Alexandria concluded grimly.

"She knows we control the PRT," said the Doctor.

"She knows I control the PRT," Alexandria corrected her. "That doesn't mean she connected me to what everyone is convinced is a bogus conspiracy theory — a mindset we've done our best to encourage, I'll remind you."

"You're assuming that Khepri would not have ever encountered Cauldron in life," Contessa cautioned.

"We can't even be certain Khepri was ever real," was Alexandria's rebuttal.

"Whether Khepri is what Taylor Hebert says she is or a form of precognition that she has mistaken for something else is immaterial to the situation," the Doctor cut in. "If she is aware that Alexandria is also the Chief Director, then the possibility exists that she would also be aware of Cauldron. At this point, all we have are assumptions. Without a more complete understanding, any action we may take would be premature and virtually —"

A funny jolt shot through Alexandria's stomach, and she was on her feet almost before she realized what she was doing.

"Alexandria?"

Was it possible? No, that was perhaps a stupid question. There was no reason to assume it wasn't.

"During the Echidna Incident," Alexandria said grimly, the realization percolating in her brain, "one of the powers demonstrated by Khepri was teleportation."

She hadn't thought anything about it, at the time. She'd been more concerned about the fact that two of her only friends left had been Mastered into fighting her and she'd come very close to death — even she still wasn't sure how close. The bullet meant for her had obviously been special, but the only power that had managed to truly hurt her since she'd taken her vial was the Siberian's, and where would Khepri have found and acquired an ability like that, if her original power was supposedly bug control?

"A rare Mover type power, but not unheard of," the Doctor commented, unconcerned. "I don't see what exactly is so special about that."

Nothing, on its face. Even how familiar it was didn't necessarily mean anything, and Alexandria hadn't fully considered the implications until now, until faced with the very real possibility that Taylor Hebert, Apocrypha, might not only know that Alexandria headed the PRT, but also that she was a member of the secret organization Cauldron, which meant —

"The way it looked," Alexandria said, "the way it manifested, the way it was activated, even the phrase she used as a mnemonic device — if it even was a mnemonic device — they were all identical to —"

A sudden gust swept through the room, pulling the air away and towards a point directly behind her. At almost the same moment, the tap of a pair of booted feet setting down on the floor echoed throughout like a crack of thunder, and when she spun around, there —

"Doormaker."

— was Apocrypha, and she'd updated herself yet again, because upon her brow sat a simple crown of twisted gold, upon her finger was a heavy ring, and in one hand she held a golden chalice, a cup, a grail.

"Because it is Doormaker," the girl said as though she had not just walked into the secret base of a worlds-spanning conspiracy. "Not yours. Mine."

Alexandria took to the air, and behind her, she heard the whir of some power spinning up that Eidolon had grabbed. They would be weak and diminished, as he had likely just now taken them, but there was no time to wait for them to gain strength. If they were to fight Apocrypha, they needed to take her down with the first blow, before she could transform —

"Stop!" Contessa barked, and Alexandria, almost without conscious thought, stopped.

She'd gotten too used to it, to Contessa never making the wrong decision, always winning. Even now, Alexandria hesitated, fighting against the instinct to listen to one of Contessa's rare orders.

"Contessa?" the Doctor asked, a note of panic in her voice.

Contessa didn't answer her. Instead, she turned to Apocrypha and gave her a little smile. "I've been expecting you."

Alexandria's mind raced. The words, the familiarity, the lack of true warmth, but the assumption of a sort of casual friendliness; it all had to mean something, but Contessa was, as she always had been, utterly unreadable. Everything she projected was always perfectly controlled. Alexandria only saw what Contessa wanted her to see.

The answering expression tugged at the girl's lips, but no one who saw it would have called it a smile.

"Have you, Madam Simone?"

A trace of surprise, a bit of exasperation, but no sign of true shock, more like she'd just had something confirmed that she'd suspected before. The tone was hard, unamused, guarded — resigned, but not defeated.

Contessa inclined her head. A shallow nod. "You figured it out."

"You weren't exactly subtle."

"But it took you longer than you'd like to admit."

To this, Apocrypha said nothing. It was tantamount to agreement; even if she'd tried to deny it, Alexandria would have seen the lie in her body language.

"Contessa?" the Doctor tried again more urgently.

Alexandria watched, waiting for one wrong move, one act of aggression, one sign of Khepri, because then, the situation simplified.

"A confrontation was inevitable the instant I realized my agent couldn't properly account for her powers," Contessa said. "I attempted to influence her while I still could. I succeeded." She paused a moment, as though to gather her thoughts. "The instant I realized Khepri likely had knowledge of Cauldron, I knew a moment like this was also inevitable."

"Confrontation?" Alexandria demanded stiffly.

"Negotiation," Apocrypha replied. She stepped around the table and took a seat, as though she was a member, one of theirs; it was directly across from Alexandria. She couldn't hide her tension or discomfort, no matter how much she tried. Not from Alexandria. "I've come here to strike a deal."

"For what?" Eidolon asked. "Cauldron's resources are far more substantial than anything you could hope to offer —"

"If you have need of our resources," the Doctor cut across him, "I'm certain we could come to some sort of agreement."

The girl shook her head.

"Maybe that was the wrong way of saying it," Apocrypha hedged. "It's more like…I'm here to dictate terms."

"Dictate terms —"

She thrust out her hand and slammed the base of the chalice's stem onto the table with a metallic thunk that rang out through the room. Alexandria's fists clenched, involuntary, prepared for the attack that didn't come.

All Are Equal Before God

"Tilima-Šeštab-ene."

A red liquid bubbled up from the chalice, thick and blood-like, appearing from nowhere to fill the empty cup. It boiled over the lip, pouring onto the surface of the table, and then it took on a life of its own, arranging into lines and nonsense letters that belonged to no language Alexandria had ever seen before, as though some unseen figure were using the liquid as paint or ink and drawing out the design for a neopagan ritual.

A magic circle. If anyone had said as much to Alexandria when it wasn't happening before her eye, she would have scoffed.

The pattern was the work of mere moments. Barely had it started than it seemed to finish, and the finalized design flashed and glowed — and suddenly, Alexandria gasped and found herself struggling under an impossible weight as fog blurred the edges of her keen mind. She landed as though she had been dropped, and her elbows crashed against the table with blinding pain as her leg caught the seat of her chair and wrenched her knee.

Pain. For the first time since the Siberian, since William Manton had ripped out her eye, Alexandria felt pain.

"What did you do?" Eidolon rasped, horrified.

"The Cup of Communion," Apocrypha was saying. Alexandria found she couldn't read her, anymore. Her Thinker power, the understated ability that she prided herself on most, was utterly absent. "For so long as a group comes together to meet, they shall all be rendered equal to the least of them."

Her eyes turned to the Doctor, and Alexandria looked, too, with stunned realization of what that meant.

"That is to say," Apocrypha went on, "powerless."

"Sangreal," the Doctor breathed.

Apocrypha inclined her head.

"In a way…yes."

The Holy Grail.

No. No. This bordered on the realm of the ridiculous. Rebecca… Alexandria had long since lost any faith in a higher power, in a god, because the closest thing they had to one was an alien parasite who would one day attempt to wipe out all of life on every Earth.

(Because God had been nowhere to be seen as she fought for her life against her own failing body.)

The idea that this could be the genuine article, the real Holy Grail, proof positive that such a god existed and this cruelty was all a part of the plan —

No. Of course not. What had even come over her? Apocrypha had always claimed her powers allowed her to tap into the abilities and signature armaments — Noble Phantasms — of all heroes, past, present, and now future. Why ever would that not have included a figure as pervasive and worshipped as Jesus Christ, with his Holy Grail?

Alexandria pulled herself together and pushed herself up, ignoring the spikes of electric jolts that radiated up and down her arms and the hot throb of her knee, the way her shoulders shook with the effort. Through force of will, she schooled her face into stern impassivity and retook her seat, donning the air of authority she'd worn for so long.

Weak. She felt so weak. Like every moment could be her end, like the slightest touch could deal irreparable damage.

"If you came here to deal in good faith," she said coldly, "then you've just ruined any chance of that."

"Like I said," Apocrypha shot back, "I didn't come here to strike a deal with you. Cauldron doesn't have anything I want. Powers in a bottle, influence with the PRT or Protectorate, troublesome capes removed from my way, even just cold, hard cash — none of that interests me. You can keep all of it to yourself. I'm not even going to ask you to stop experimenting or handing out vials, because the only way I have of enforcing that agreement is something you'd reject out of hand."

"Then what did you come here for?" the Doctor asked. Alexandria almost missed the slight tremor in her voice. "If it was simply to announce yourself or garner our attention, then there must surely have been more reasonable ways of doing it."

Apocrypha hesitated, scowling. "I don't want anything from you now, but I will need a favor or two in the future. Sometime in the next two years."

Two years. There was no way that was a coincidence.

"You're planning for the fight against Scion," said Contessa.

Apocrypha nodded.

"Then our goals align," the Doctor said, gaining surety. "There's no need for us to be at odds. Cauldron would welcome you —"

"I'm not interested in joining you, either," Apocrypha cut in. "I don't approve of your methods, and besides that, none of your plans worked out. Everything you threw at Scion failed."

"Precogs don't work properly against Scion," Eidolon started.

"Khepri won that fight," Apocrypha went on like she hadn't heard him. "Not through armies or force of arms, not through a silver bullet power, not through anything you tried. She won because she wasn't yours and she wasn't bound by your way of thinking."

"You don't know that," said Eidolon. "You can't know that. Powers don't work that way, your heroic spirits weren't real people —"

"According to you?" she retorted. "You, who've never shared headspace with one, let alone seen and remembered their lives and all the little things they took for granted? Yes, I'm certain you're far more an expert on my powers and how they work than the person who literally has them."

"As though that's anything special," he sneered. "Agents are perfectly capable of manipulating memories and emotions. You don't even need to look further than Heartbreaker."

She scoffed. "Because one is true, the other must be as well? If the Heroic Spirits I use were never real people, then why is anyone from an alternate future a part of them at all?"

"An alternate future that we only have your word even exists! How convenient that the one hero you have access to that comes from the future just so happens to be an alternate version of you who managed to save the world with bug control.

"You expect us to believe a seventeen-year-old girl with a few years of experience managed to do what Cauldron couldn't, after thirty years of planning? That she was so incredible she saved all of reality and got venerated for it?" He slammed his hands on the table. "Get real! If your alternate self deserves a place with all of mankind's most celebrated legends, then where were we? Where's heroic spirit Alexandria? Heroic spirit Hero? Legend? Where's heroic spirit Eidolon!"

"You failed!" she snapped, climbing to her feet. "You failed. All he had to do was whisper a few words in your ear and you folded like a house of cards! The only members of Cauldron left by the end were Legend, Contessa, and Number Man! Everyone else died, having bought us a few paltry minutes, at best!"

She took a deep breath, pushed herself away from the tabletop, and sat back down, still agitated.

"You want to know where the Heroic Spirits of the Triumvirate are?" she went on. "Fine. They exist. And they're virtually useless when half of my roster can do what they can, only better, and the other half can do things they can't. What else could I need them for? Their knowledge? Because that's certainly what I want, to listen to the plans and ideas of the people who failed to even slow Scion down."

Her words hung for a long moment that felt like an eternity. Eidolon, mouth hanging open, ashen-faced, fell back into his seat, looking like nothing so much as a deflated balloon.

"If you know how to defeat him, then there's no need for further experimentation," the Doctor said at length. "We would gladly adapt our methods to whatever plan you have, if you're so certain it would work."

"I already said, I'm not interested," Apocrypha insisted stubbornly. "Not in joining you, not in you joining me. We're allies, in the sense we both have the same end goal. Our association doesn't need to go any further than that — won't go any further than that."

"Not even to help fix Brockton Bay?" the Doctor suggested. "Perhaps, with your assistance, we might remove some of the S-Class threats that were too entrenched to deal with before?"

For a single moment, the girl wavered, tempted, and then her resolve firmed again before Alexandria could pounce on that second of weakness.

"Not. Interested," she said. "I'll handle the things I need to handle my own way. I don't need you to get in my way."

"Then perhaps the problem isn't what we could do for you, but what we could do to you," Alexandria said. "As a member, of course, our resources are your resources. But if you are so adamant about refusing our generosity, we could just as easily turn those resources against you. Remove funding from the repair of Brockton Bay. Have your patrol hours cut. Censure you for the slightest toe out of line —"

"Haven't you heard?" Apocrypha said, lips quirking a little. "I already quit."

Alexandria drew up short. "What?"

"It didn't take much thought to realize your hand in Tagg's placement, by the way," the girl added. "Looking back, you wanted him there, because you wanted him to act the way he did. To push me. To make me act out or break regs. You might not have put that paranoia into his head, but I'm betting you encouraged it, didn't you?"

Alexandria's lips drew tight and her eyes narrowed.

"That was her mistake, too," the girl said grimly, brow drawing down. "The Alexandria that Khepri knew. That Alexandria underestimated her. Tried to manipulate her. Do you know what Khepri did to her?" The girl's lip curled. "She drowned her on dry land."

"The actions taken in a now-defunct timeline have little bearing on the here and now," the Doctor tried.

"Don't they?" Apocrypha retorted. "From where I'm sitting, there isn't much difference between the Alexandria that Khepri killed and the one sitting in front of me. Both of them have tried to control me. Both of them tried to manipulate me. Both of them tried to kill my only friends. You just happened to get lucky enough that Lisa knocked my aim off track."

Alexandria's fists clenched, and her costume creaked as the material stretched tight around her knuckles, but she didn't let herself waver, she didn't let herself blink and take her eyes off of the girl across from her for even a second.

She would not bend. She would not bend. Not to this girl. Not when all the horrors that had forged her over the years had made her into steel.

"Killing a member of the Triumvirate would not have done you any favors," the Doctor said.

"No. But she isn't doing any for you." A breath hissed out of her nostrils. "You can threaten me all you like. I don't care. You can put pressure on me through economics or the PRT. I can deal with that, too. I have a lot of experience to draw on, in case you've forgotten that. Honestly? There's not much you can do to me, just because you need me that much. But…"

The air changed. Something heavy filled the room, and Apocrypha pinned Alexandria with a fierce, furious glare.

"Come after the people I care about, and I'll rip this organization of yours apart. I'll take what I need from you and tear everything else down. I'm willing to leave you guys alone because the world needs you more in the long run than it needs the sins you've accumulated to be punished. Make it personal, and I'll stop caring about that."

"You child," Alexandria spat. "You're going to let petty grudges get in the way of saving the world? All worlds?"

"The fact that I'm here is proof otherwise," she said. "I. Don't. Need. You. But the world does. The PRT, the Protectorate, all of the things you've built? We need those to keep functioning. The instant those fall apart, civilization starts to come apart, too. Villains start winning where they shouldn't. Heroes die. Endbringer battles get worse. Whatever you might think of me, I don't want that."

"Then what do you want?" the Doctor demanded. "You said you came here to dictate terms, but all you've talked about are the things you don't want. If you don't need us now and you don't want access to our resources, why not wait to contact us until it was time? We needn't even know you knew of us. This whole confrontation might have been avoided. We could have met on more amicable terms."

"Because the Fallen are in Brockton Bay," Apocrypha answered, "and what I'm going to do, what I'm planning on doing, it's going to be too massive to ignore. The PRT, the Protectorate, neither of them will be able to just turn a blind eye to it."

"The castle," Number Man breathed. Apocrypha glanced at him but didn't reply.

"So don't," she went on. "Don't treat me any differently. Don't come down harder than you need to, don't be softer than you should. I don't want your help — don't give it to me."

"That's it?" asked Alexandria. "You came all this way, did all of this, just to demand that we don't give you special treatment?"

Are you daft?

What kind of idiocy was this, to break into a meeting held by the secret cabal who not only controlled most of government policy in North America, but was working to save the world — and all alternate versions of it — from an existential threat, even if that meant soaking their hands in blood, all so that she could ask that they don't treat her any differently than any other cape?

"I want what I never got at Winslow," said Apocrypha. "What Khepri never got. What Paige Mcabee never got. I want to be treated fairly. That's it." She reached out, ran a finger over the lip of her golden chalice. The metal sang a low, keening note. "Wasn't it obvious?"

"Surely that's not all?" the Doctor said. "One would think a simple visit to Alexandria's office would have sufficed, if that was the only thing you needed."

The girl's finger stopped. She tapped it against the rim of the cup, frowning thoughtfully.

"No," she admitted, "I guess it isn't."

She leaned back in her chair.

"What I'm going to do with the Fallen, what I'm going to do in Brockton Bay, it's the start of a larger plan. One you might not like," she said. "So that's the other thing. When the time comes and you realize what it is I'm doing, don't stop me. Don't try to get in my way —"

"You think we'd just agree to something that vague?" asked Eidolon.

She looked at him. "No, I didn't think you would. That's why I said I was dictating terms, not coming to bargain." She stood from her chair. Alexandria watched her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, fingers woven tightly together, because she knew there wouldn't be anything she could do when it did. "But okay. It's really not that complicated or even bad. You won't like it just because it competes with your own brainchild."

She picked up her chalice and said, "(Go Now With God)We companions depart."

Instantly, the world righted itself, and Alexandria was Alexandria again. The haze of mundanity was stripped away, leaving her mind blessedly, wonderfully clear, like a film had been taken off of the world around her and she could finally see. In his chair, Eidolon sucked in a sharp breath, and even Contessa gave a little gasp.

"I'm going to create my own organization," Apocrypha said, certainty lining every bit of her body. "An organization of heroes, one that does in the sun what Cauldron tries to do in the shadows. I don't want your money or your support in building it. I don't want you pulling the strings to make it function. All I want is for you not to sabotage it."

"And why should we?" asked Alexandria. "If this organization of yours is gathering capes who would otherwise join the Protectorate, does that not undermine the very purpose of it? Why should we abide a loose cannon like you leading a group of vigilantes, unbeholden to any governmental authority?"

"Besides the fact that the PRT and the Protectorate aren't really beholden to the government either?" she retorted frankly. "Because underneath all of that mud you've caked yourselves with, I'd like to think there's some genuinely decent people. You might not believe it yourselves, and I'm not about to sit here and argue that you're just misunderstood and all the things you've done should just be forgiven. But evil, irredeemable megalomaniacs wouldn't spend thirty years desperately scrambling for a plan to stop the end of the world."

She turned away, presenting her back to them like she wasn't at all worried they might attack or try to subdue her, and spoke to the empty air.

My Reach Touches All Places

"Door Me."

The air stirred. A plane of golden light described itself in the space between the table and the walls, and on the other side, the courtyard of a castle faded into view.

Then, the Endslayer, the Hopebringer, stepped through and vanished.

"Naive," Eidolon said into the silence. "Does she think others haven't tried? Let her build her organization. Let her watch it fall apart around her ears."

Like New Wave. Like so many other attempts at building an organization of heroes outside of the Protectorate. A precious few succeeded. Most failed.

"Feasibility aside," said the Doctor slowly, "do we let her try? We made no agreements, swore no oaths…"

"We have no stake in it," said Number Man. "No resources will be lost, even if it does fail. The only thing we stand to lose is time."

"We have two years," the Doctor said. "Time is a precious enough resource, these days."

"Let her try," Alexandria said. "If she succeeds, then we lose nothing. If she fails, then Cauldron will be the only ones with the resources to do what needs to be done. She'll have to come back to us, and she'll have to join."

And then maybe she would understand that pretty words and idealism had no place in this world.

Alexandria had learned that a long time ago.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

NOTES

Two more chapters, I think, and then this arc will be over and I start my month long hiatus to work on arc 10. Gosh, it feels weird to be getting so close to the endgame.

Undoubtedly, I butchered that Sumerian, right there. What can you do, though? It's a dead language, after all, although I would flip out if someone somehow managed to bring it back. Ha, like that would ever happen.

Anyway. Remember when I said Tagg's paranoia wasn't entirely of his own making? Yeah. Alex encouraged it. Because she can't have nice things.

EDIT: Whoops. Forgot to fix the SV stuff.

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