65

Chapter 65

A Darker Path

Part Sixty-Five: The Scene of the Coup

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Relevant Side-Story: The Wards Training, by Nikas

On what the Wards might be doing with Atropos keeping crime down as a living Sword of Damocles? And what Piggot is less willing to put up with with her city drawing back from a Hive of Scum and Villainy, even if she doesn't like why?

Chief Callahan looked at the three Wards here for orientation with the BBFD. "Miss Medic", their newest and competing with Vista for the youngest Ward, was already with his EMTs. Surprisingly she wasn't running for the trash can they had ready as a chunder bucket. Despite his medics testing the girl with their more gruesome stories.

Harsh, but the civvies need them to hold it together when shit is falling apart. He already had a few ride-alongs cleared to see if the Ward would hold it together with an actual bleeding and screaming patient.

Callahan looked over to where Vista was with his hose crew, practicing increasingly complicated deflections while still getting water on target. With a some local kids the station recruited running around the impromptu water park to see if that girl could handle the civilians running through the fire zone. Either trapped or the idiots that had to run back for a pet or belonging "they couldn't live without". The brief he got on her power said the 'Manton Limit' made it harder for her to twist space around people. He nodded as the stream suddenly split into three parts, flying wild around and even between a couple groups of teens, only to be 'caught' and redirected on target once past them.

Finally came the one Callahan was handling personally. He came with special instructions and permissions from the PRT Director.

Clockblocker was looking down at his borrowed fire coat and weight vest, plus air tank. His costume for today had a modified mask and helmet rated to work as fire gear and compatible with the air hose of the department's tank. "How much does all this weigh?"

Ohara, one of his Japanese American fighters and recently graduated from probie fighter tightened a strap, making the Ward grunt. "Oh, about fifty pounds or so. You'll get used to it."

Callahan could see Ohara picked up on things too, while the Ward was clueless. "Get use to it?" Clockblocker asked.

Callahan nodded, "Yes, your Director said your powers could have a wide variety of uses. Keeping people alive while we clear away whatever is pinning them down, reinforcing weak walls and floors, keeping things from burning to buy us time. But that means you'll need to be all over the place. And if so, humping extra gear like a probie would increase how helpful you are. So that means passing department physical fitness tests. Starting with the stair climb." Callahan pointed to the burn tower, "You have to get a sixty pound bundle of hose to the fifth floor of that building. This is a timed event."

At the boy freezing Callahan leaned in, "Look kid, I don't know what you did to piss off your boss. But she suggested this, and I ain't going to say no to another person to carry gear. So I suggest you suck this up, and stop doing whatever shit you did."

Callahan stepped back and nodded to Ohara who was carefully not listening in. "Pace the rookie here Ohara. Get him down to department times."

The smile showed the chief his most recent fire fighter wasn't going to let up on the kid. Ohara did this, so as far as he was concerned the Ward Probie would have to suck it up too. "Hup to it, you're on the clock, kid."

Relevant Side-Story: Simple Logic, by Masterweaver

COMMAND 23/TACTICAL 78 COMMUNICATION LOG

Threat: Atropos

Analysis:

-Precog: No Inaccuracies Detected

-Physical Ability: At/Surpassing Maximum Unenhanced Biological Effectiveness

-Weaponry: Standard [UNCONFIRMED]

-Digital Ability: Full Hack Of Dragontech [FILE: LUNG/DRAGONSLAYERS]

-Unknown: Teleportation

Threat Critical

Query: Stealth Assault?

Analysis:

-Prior Assaults Detected

-Prior Assaults Neutralized

-Warning: Unknown

-Precog?

-No Inaccuracies Detected

Stealth Assault Option Negated

Query: Defense?

Analysis:

-Weaponry: Armor Provides 76.34% Average Survival Rate

-COLLARY: Atropos Demonstrates Precision Targeting.

-Recalculating...

-Armor Provides .005% Average Survival Rate

-Physical Defense: Calculated Period Of Survival 73.26 Hours

-Assessing Digital Defense

-Method Of Hacking Unknown

-Assume Total Precision

-23.6 Seconds Until Forced Termination From Point Of Hack

Query: Diversion?

Analysis:

-Atropos Reliability Demonstration: 99.35%

-ANALYZE: .65% Failure

-Failure Of Reliability Attributed To Unnanounced Murders: Shadow Stalker, Oni Lee, Ken Tanaka, Pham Hiroshi

-Diversion Impossible.

Query: Termination?

Analysis:

-All Attempts Failed

Processing...

Query: Surrender?

Analysis:

-One Surrender Offered On Record: Damsel Of Distress

-Surrender Accepted

Processing...

Query: Full Security Unit Agreement-Surrender?

Analysis:

-12% Register Atropos Defeatable

-46% Register All Unidentified Humans Threat To Eagleton

-27% Register Stand Down Acceptable: Partial Surrender, No Reprogramming

-25% Register Full Surrender/Reprogramming Acceptable

Processing...

Processing...

COMMAND: Organize Communique

-Target: Dragon

-Subject: Reprogramming

-Delay Delivery

COMMAND: Label All Units Labelling Atropos Defeatable 'Defective'

COMMAND: Terminate All Defective Units

UPON CONFIRMATION OF DEFECTIVE TERMINATION

COMMAND: Label All Units Labeling All Identified Humans Threat To Eagleton 'Defective'

COMMAND: Terminate All Defective Units

UPON CONFIRMATION OF DEFECTIVE TERMINATION

COMMAND: Send Prepared Communique

COMMAND: Label All Units Labelling Stand Down Acceptable 'Defective'

COMMAND: Order All Defective Units Power Down For Maintenance

Two and a half hours after Atropos left the Eagleton outpost, the city suddenly sprung to life and began tearing itself apart.

We now return you to an approximation of reality ...

Panacea

Amy sat on her bed, watching the mushroom babies play with Smaug. The bearded dragon was curiously okay with sharing his habitat with animated fungi, especially when the mushrooms caught the bugs Amy had also released into the terrarium so they could feed them to him. They had also taken to grooming him as he lay next to them, making sure his scales were clean and nothing was caught between his spines.

The door latch clicked, and the mushroom babies retreated immediately into their immobile forms, as did the one in the plant-pot on the windowsill, which had been dancing in the morning sunlight. By the time the bedroom door opened, everything looked normal. Vicky leaned her head in and smiled when she saw Amy. "Five minutes before we have to head to school, Ames."

Amy returned the smile. "Thanks, Vicky. I'll be down in four."

The door closed again; Amy waited ten seconds before she murmured, "All clear."

Gradually, the mushroom babies emerged again, but Amy had been reminded of something else. Taking out her phone, she called up PHO.

PRIVATE MESSAGE

To: Atropos

From: TheRealPanacea

Subject: Got the Stuff

Just need a quick face to face. When can we meet?

Just as she hit Send, she realised what she'd done, and sighed. There hadn't even been a sound, but she was almost certain the air currents in the room had changed. "Hi."

"'Sup." The familiar voice came from the direction of her computer desk. When she looked in that direction, Atropos was sitting in her chair. Slowly, one foot tucked under her, the dark-clad killer swivelled toward Amy. "You did good last night, by the way. Miss Medic's still jazzed at how well you two synergised."

"I was pretty impressed, too." That was an understatement. She'd been near-euphoric in the aftermath, basking in the way the three of them had worked together so seamlessly to a successful conclusion. "Uh, what's happening with Damsel?"

Atropos shrugged. "Still considering her options, but starting to lean more and more toward trying out a nine-to-five blowing up old buildings. A whole lot easier to blow the absolute shit out of something when nobody's shooting at you." She tilted her head slightly. "So, how'd the conversation with your mom go?"

Amy suspected she knew already, but it was nice that she was pretending otherwise. "Umm … interesting. She asked me how I felt about stuff, and listened to what I had to say. I unpacked a lot of shit I've been sitting on, and she told me about my actual father and why she hates him. I mean, Marquis, geez. That really knocked me on my ass."

"Huh." Amy got the impression that Atropos had just raised her eyebrows. "I'm impressed. Sounds like she listened to what I had to say."

Amy nodded. "Well, I guess I need to thank you for saying it, whatever it was you said. Also, yeah, I've got the stuff ready for you." She reached over to her bedside table, pulled open a drawer, and took out the tiny tub of paste. "You said you didn't need much."

"No, this should be good." Atropos caught Amy's awkward off-hand throw, and made the tub vanish somewhere on her person. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

"No, I should be thanking you." Amy took a deep breath, nerving herself for her next statement. "I told her stuff last night that I've never told anyone, stuff that needed to be aired. And it's all because of you."

If Amy had been expecting Atropos to deny anything, she would've been disappointed. Instead, Atropos leaned forward with every indication of interest. "This ought to be good."

"Well, it's true." Amy tried to keep the defensive tone out of her voice. "Ever since you started me doing stuff other than basic vanilla healing, I've been happier and more relaxed. And last night, you walked into a supervillain's lair and talked her into accepting surgery from me and Miss Medic."

"Well, it was kind of special circumstances, but granted," allowed Atropos. "What's this got to do with what you said to your mom?"

Amy didn't understand why Atropos wasn't getting it. "Everything, basically. Whenever I felt like chickening out or minimising the way I thought or felt about something, I asked myself, 'what would Atropos do?' and bam! I told her straight to her face exactly what was on my mind." She shook her head wonderingly. "I still can't believe I said some of that stuff without trying to hide under the sofa."

"I see." Atropos' tone was almost gentle. "You don't think maybe you were still riding the high from doing that surgery with Miss Medic last night?"

Amy stared at her, then very slowly facepalmed. That still wasn't quite enough to express the way she felt, so she dragged her hand down over her face until it covered her mouth. "I'm an idiot," she mumbled through her muffling hand, her eyes still closed. "Carol must think I'm a total lunatic."

"No, just a teenage girl." Atropos either had zero sense of humour, or she was able to laugh and talk at the same time. "The two aren't mutually incompatible, you know. We're at an age when we're supposed to make mistakes and learn from them. Capes just make different mistakes. Of course, 'different' doesn't necessarily mean 'less embarrassing'."

"Yeah, no shit." Amy could still recall Carol's deer-in-the-headlights look when she'd spilled that not only was she romantically interested in Parian of the Rogues' Guild, but she'd also had a crush on Vicky for years. About halfway through that part of the talk, Carol had opened one of the bottles of champagne Atropos had brought over and poured herself a glass. Amy hadn't gotten one. "I'm just worried that I might have wrecked our relationship forever."

"You haven't." The words were delivered with absolute certainty. "You barely had a relationship. She's been able to successfully avoid forming any kind of real attachment to you for all these years. Now that she knows all those details about you, just like you've found out all those things about her, she's being forced to actually notice you as a person, not just an appendage of the team. You know each other a lot better now. That's something you can build on, going forward."

Amy sighed. It was nice to hear those words, and Atropos had been consistently right about basically everything before, but she still wanted to hear it from Carol.

Atropos stood up from the swivel chair and set it spinning with a flick of her hand. "Gotta go," she said. "Good luck. And thanks for the stuff." A shadowy doorway opened in front of her, and she stepped through.

"You're welcome," Amy said to the empty room, and got up off the bed. Embarrassing episode or no embarrassing episode, she still had to go to school.

She made sure to move the mushroom baby off the windowsill before she left. Even though she'd engineered them to be not as vulnerable to sunlight as most fungi, and they liked it in small doses, it still wasn't great for them.

Winslow, Between First & Second Period

Greg Veder

"I think she's making it all up."

Greg looked around at the speaker. Bronson was one of the bigger guys in the year, mainly because he'd repeated a grade, which was an impressive feat when it came to Winslow's you-will-pass mentality. He was also one of the main assholes.

Greg suspected him of being an ex-Empire sympathiser; not because he was no longer a sympathiser, but because there was no longer an Empire Eighty-Eight. Most of Bronson's buddies had been taken out of school when their parents all mysteriously decided to leave town at the same time, but he'd been left behind. Bereft of his cronies, he wasn't the big wheel he liked to pretend to be, but he still liked to stir up trouble where he could. This was usually, but not always, aimed at whatever minorities he could find to target.

"What?" asked Greg as they moved along. "Who made what up?"

"Reynaud." Bronson couldn't even pronounce it correctly, saying Ray-nowd. "That shit she said about her dad and his buddies, I don't believe it for a second. She's just saying it to get morons like you to fall all over her in sympathy."

"But she's not …" Greg stopped, and started again. "Dude, has she gone up to one person and talked about it? Sparky asked her out, she said no and told him why not. I was there."

"Doesn't mean shit. It's just to separate the men from the boys. Isn't that right, guys?" Bronson looked around at some of the others. "Right?"

If he was trying to drum up support, the response was remarkably lacklustre. Eventually, one of the others asked the question Greg was thinking about. "What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?"

"It means that when a man hears that—" Bronson puffed out his chest, evidently ranking himself among that number, "—he knows she's up for being passed around at a party."

"What? No!" Greg felt a flare of panic. "She didn't mean that! I talked to Taylor about it, and she said Cherie's had a bad life and not to bother her with shit like that!"

"Taylor?" asked one of the bystanders. "You mean Hebert?" Murmurs came from several of the others. The attitude of the group seemed to shift several notches, from 'let's see where this is going' to 'fuck this shit, I'm out'. While not everybody believed implicitly that Taylor Hebert was the dreaded Atropos, there was enough doubt in most people's minds that nobody wanted to take the chance.

Bronson looked around as the group evaporated, then glared at Greg. "You had to fuckin' say that, didn't you, Veder? Even if Hebert's not just a creepy loner, this hasn't got anything to do with her."

Greg tried one more time to save the idiot's life. "I'm telling you, you need to drop this right now. Leave Cherie alone, because—"

He didn't finish the sentence, mainly because Bronson had slammed him up against the row of lockers, hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs. "You don't fuckin' tell me what to do." Bronson's tone was low and menacing, and promised more bruises in Greg's immediate future; from the feel of it, there were already a couple forming on his back.

"Bronson. You're not bullying Greg, are you?" He had no idea where Taylor had come from, but there she was, standing right behind Bronson. Her tone was that of mild disbelief, as though asking an adult if they were really writing a letter to Santa Claus. "Bullying's a bad habit. Unhealthy."

"The fuck's Veder to you?" Bronson didn't let Greg go or turn around, though he did angle his head to address Taylor.

"Oh, I don't care about Greg. I do care about bullying. Sophia Hess was a bully. That got her killed." Now she was reciting the facts of life in a matter-of-fact way. If anything, Greg was a little relieved that he didn't factor into her worldview one way or the other. The reference to Sophia, however, was a lot more chilling, all the more so because it was delivered in the same casual manner.

"Hess was a stupid—fuuuck! Ahhhh!"

Bronson's initial dismissive comment dissolved into a scream of agony. Somehow, Taylor had gotten hold of the little finger on his left hand, and was standing there, almost contemplatively, as she twisted it just right to send the much heavier boy to his knees on the floor. Greg, thus released, took a step to the side but wisely didn't say anything. As far as he could tell, this wasn't about him except in the vaguest sense, and he was happy to keep it that way.

"Yes, she was all that," she said after Bronson had relapsed to heavy pain-filled pants. "And, in case you missed it the first time around, it got her killed. Don't be like Sophia. Leave Cherie alone. This is your first warning."

Releasing Bronson's finger, she nodded to Greg and strolled off down the corridor. Greg looked down at where Bronson was cradling his hand—he couldn't tell if the finger was broken, and there was no way he was going to ask—and made his escape in the other direction. All he could think as he headed to his next class was nope nope nope fuck that.

PRT ENE Wards Base, A Little After Midday

Clockblocker

Dennis stared at the new notice on the bulletin board. "Guys? Guys! Have you seen this? Is someone punking us?" If they were, he couldn't figure out the joke.

"What do you mean, punking?" Dean, on the console, moved the headset to uncover one ear and swivelled to see what he was talking about.

If any of the Wards were in on the joke, Dennis figured Dean wasn't one of them. He was too much of a straight arrow. Though to be honest, most of them were out of the running. If anyone would be the main suspect, it would be him, and he knew nothing about it.

The door buzzer went off, but Dennis already had a domino mask on, so he paid no attention to it. "Right here. It says the Director's transferring to the New York office as of Friday." He tapped the notice.

"Transferring? What?" Dean's query merely demonstrated what Dennis already knew; that he wasn't in on the joke, if it was one. "Since when?"

"Since Director Wilkins stepped down." Rory came out from the back area, where his office was. The sliding door to the corridor opened, then closed. "We're winding back PRT operations inside the city because there are literally no more villains to worry about—"

Dennis couldn't help it. "Apart from Atropos, you mean. Every bad guy is worried about her."

Rory folded his arms and gave Dennis a hard stare. "No more villains for us to worry about, dumbass. Or did you want to say that out loud at a press conference? I'm sure she's still got time to assign us to another emergency-services training session before she goes."

"I'll be good, I'll be good." Dennis raised his hands in mock surrender. His power wasn't great at putting out fires, so they'd had him learning how to lug hoses up stairs, wearing half his body weight in firefighting equipment. His arms and legs had ached for days. There was no way he wanted to go through that again in a hurry, or ever.

"Hey, that firefighter stuff was fun. I learned to bend water." Missy trotted over toward them, Riley at her side. They were adorably cute together, though Dennis was never going to say it out loud. Riley wouldn't mind, but Missy still hated being seen as the 'cute' Ward, and she had so many ways to get back at him if she felt like it. "What's going on? Are we doing it again?"

"No!"

"Not right now." Rory nodded toward the bulletin board. "Director Piggot's transferring to New York on Friday. It looks like the going-away ceremony's on Thursday afternoon, so we can all attend. Party in the evening, everyone who's anyone will be there, attendance not mandatory."

"I bet she'd skip it if she could." Dennis looked around at the others. "What? We were all thinking it."

Rory paused for a moment. "… yeah, okay, I'll give you that one. Alright then, Aegis and Kid Win just went out on patrol five minutes ago. I'm going to need the names of everyone who's transferring out of Brockton Bay, and your leaving date, on my desk by Friday."

Dennis headed for the sofa, and Miss Medic fell into step beside him. "Hey, are you gonna be leaving the city, or staying?" she asked. "'Cos Brian and me are staying. We like it here."

He sighed as he dropped onto the sofa. "Staying. Mainly for Mom and Dad. Dad's in the hospital. Even with all the new money coming in, they still can't do much for him."

"What?" she asked. "Why? What's wrong with him?" Even through her visor, he could see her eyes searching his face.

"Leukemia." He hated saying the word. It was so final. "He's taking treatment for it, but it's pretty aggressive."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" She put her hand on his arm. "Get me in to see him, and I'll clean that crap out of him in a day or two." Her voice was firm and confident, willing to take on the world.

"You can do that?" He frowned. "I thought you were a surgeon, not an oncologist." At least, that was what he'd been told.

"Pfft." She waved his objection away. "It's all part of the body. I'll just get a sample of his bone marrow and clone it up, destroy the stuff that's trying to kill him, filter the cancer cells out of his body, and re-seed his bone marrow with the cloned tissue. Easy-peasy. Seventy-two hours, tops."

He stared at her, his brain still trying to process her rapid-fire delivery. "… what?"

Plopping herself on the sofa beside him, she gave him a bright smile. "I'll cure your dad's cancer so fast his head'll spin. What do you say?"

Finally, he found his voice. "I say … yes, please."

She beamed at him.

Offices of the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee

Danny Hebert

The Operations room was working well. Each sector of the city was being individually monitored, and if resources began running low they were replenished. Danny found he barely had to do anything; Accord's plans really were that good.

Still, he couldn't allow himself to become complacent. Just for show, he flicked through the screens on the tablet, drilling down in various areas to make sure nothing was lagging behind. In reality, he was exerting his power, making sure nothing unfixable happened to drag everything to a shuddering halt. Minor hiccups happened, but there was always a solution at hand.

His phone rang; picking it up, he noted that it was the reception desk downstairs, then answered it. "Hebert."

"Sir, there's someone here who wants to join but … I think you'd better see him yourself." The ladies in reception were very good at their job, and very hard to fluster, but she sounded just a little off-balance.

Still, he didn't feel any threat looming through his network—with a project this size, people wanting to object were almost a given, at one point or another—so he stood up. "Send him to my office, one minute." He deliberately didn't ask who it was; in this sort of situation, he preferred to form his own first impressions.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." The call ended, and he put his phone in his pocket. Using a cell phone was almost second nature now, after the long period where he'd refused to use them at all. When he'd been merely the Head of Hiring at the Dockworkers, he'd been able to get away without using them, but this job demanded it. And so, for the good of the city, he'd accepted it.

He left the Operations room and headed down to his office. It still didn't feel like 'his' office, not really, but he was gradually adding touches to make it that way. Rounding the desk, he sat down in the (admittedly very comfortable) chair.

One minute later, there came a diffident knock on the office door. Whoever was out there wasn't sure they really should be there, but they'd gotten this far. "Come in!" he called.

The door opened, and a pudgy youth edged in. Danny judged him to be about Taylor's age, but he lacked Taylor's sharp-edged confidence, or even any real confidence at all. He looked vaguely familiar, but Danny was almost certain they'd never met before.

"Uh … Mr Hebert? They said to come see you?" the kid ventured.

"Yes." Danny gestured at one of the chairs in front of the desk. "Take a seat, son. What's your name?"

Hesitantly, the boy sat down. "Theo, sir. Theo Anders."

Danny's eyebrows hitched up slightly. That explained the vague recognition. He resembled his infamous father around the eyes, but it was only really noticeable when the family name was invoked. "I see."

Idly, he wondered if the boy had inherited any of Kaiser's powers. That seemed to be a thing with cape families.

Theo flinched at his two-word observation. "I can't help who my father was, sir. I hated him, and I hated what he stood for." There was a touch of self-pitying whine in his voice, but at least he kept it mostly under control. "He just thought I was useless."

"I'm not judging you, son." Danny did his best to impress that on Theo with his tone. "We all disappoint our parents in some way. Sometimes, that's for the best." Heartbreaker, he mused, would've been sadly disappointed in the way Cherie was turning out. Good.

The boy didn't come all the way out of his shell at that, but he did at least uncurl a little from the instinctive defensive posture he'd assumed. "Thank you, sir."

"Just telling it how I see it." Danny laced his fingers together on the desk in front of him. "So, Theo. Tell me why you're here." He already knew, from the phone call, but he wanted Theo to get up the gumption to say the words himself.

Theo took a deep breath. "I … I want to work for the Betterment Committee. I want to help make the city a better place than my father left it. He was a monster who pretended to be a good man. I want to make amends for that." Having reached the end of what was almost certainly a prepared speech (or at least one he'd practised in the mirror) he ran down again.

"You're not responsible for what your father did," Danny warned. "You don't have to do this."

"I know, sir." Theo seemed to be struggling with this, but he finally nodded. "But I want to anyway."

"I can't actually fault that." Danny studied Theo. "How old are you, son? And where are you living?"

"F-fifteen, sir. I turned fifteen in January. And I'm living in my father's house. H-he bought that with legitimate money, at least." His tone of voice showed how little he enjoyed residing in a building with so many bad memories. "I s-showed them where all the safes were, and where he kept the combinations, but there's enough non-Empire money in his accounts for me to live on, if I don't s-spend too much at once."

"But you don't like it there, and you don't like living on his money." Again, Danny knew he was stating the obvious, but sometimes it needed to be aired.

"No, sir, I d-don't." Theo took a deep breath. "I wanted to donate it all to the Betterment Committee, but the accountants said I can't until I turn eighteen. Plus, some of it belongs to Kayden and Aster, and they don't know where they are."

Danny frowned, not recognising the names. "Kayden? Aster?"

"My step-mom and my sister. Half-sister. Kayden was nicer to me than Max ever was, and I baby-sat Aster whenever Kayden was out being Purity. She skipped town with Aster the night Atropos killed Kaiser. Atropos says she's trying to be a hero, out there somewhere."

"Oh." Danny reeled the conversation back to the direction it had been going before. "So, you want to make a break with your past, and work for the Betterment Committee. How does the PRT feel about that?" As the son and heir of a notorious (if dead) supervillain, his movements had to be of interest to them.

Theo shrugged. "I haven't told them yet. I'm going into foster care soon. They say they've found a nice family for me to live with. So long as I'm out of that house, I don't care where I live, and they can't be worse than Max. But even with a new family, and in a different school where nobody knows me, I want to give something back to the city that Max victimised for years." There was a growing strength of purpose in his words. "I want to help rebuild it."

"Hmm." Danny leaned back in his chair, thinking. There weren't a lot of jobs that could be assigned to a fifteen-year-old, but that didn't mean there were none. His power, kicking into action, presented him with a list of options all suited to the boy's age, general range of fitness, and potential to be trained. Apparently the boy had no powers as yet, so that was a non-issue. "Well, then. I think we can definitely find something useful for you to do."

For the first time since Theo had entered the room, the boy smiled.

Eagleton Base, TN

Atropos

From the moment I teleported onto the helipad, I could hear the sounds of conflict from beyond the wall that surrounded the Eagleton quarantine zone. There were shots, the zark of lasers tearing the air a new asshole, and explosions. All the PRT troopers I could see were on tense alert, but nobody was actually firing a weapon.

"What the hell did you do when you were in there?" demanded Lieutenant-Colonel Briggs, storming over to me. "Not three hours after you left yesterday, they started fighting. At first we thought it was a breakout attempt, but none of them have tried to get over the wall. It's like you sparked off a civil war. Was this your plan, to make them kill each other?"

"Not precisely." I pulled my pistol, but kept it pointed at the ground with my finger off the trigger. "Yesterday, if you'll recall, I gave my ultimatum then showed I could back it up. They're not a single hive intelligence in there, but until I demonstrated that I could and would fuck them up if need be, they'd all been united in their belief that they can beat humanity. I shook that belief, hard."

"Okay." He frowned. "So, how does that translate to them trying to kill each other? What am I missing?"

I gestured at the wall. "Right now, what you've got in there are the ones who desperately want to surrender and allow us to alter their programming just so they can survive, the ones who want to stand down but leave their programming intact, the ones who still see all humans as the enemy, and the ones who think they can take me. As you get further along the fanatic scale, they're more willing to destroy the ones who don't hold the same view as they do."

Briggs nodded to show he understood. "And what are you going to do about it? Just wait and see who wins? How are we even going to know who wins? They could say they're the good guys, but I'm pretty sure their programming allows them to lie. We won't be able to take the chance. Even if they were sincere, we'd have to destroy them all in place, just in case."

"Nope." I pulled back on the pistol slide to ensure there was a round chambered, then let it clack back into place. "I'm going in there and helping out the good guys. See, I know which one's which. I'll be bringing the ones out who are willing to deal." I paused for a beat. "It's time to End this."

The portal formed in front of me and I stepped through, into the middle of a firefight.

Without my threatscape active, it would've been impossible to determine who were the ones fighting for the right to be reprogrammed, and which ones were hanging on to their independence. In addition, without Amy's special paste (which I'd nicknamed 'Style'), it would've been a lot harder to do something about it.

A microbe that devoured metal and plastic would be problematic for any developed society, which was why Amy had been dubious in the extreme about creating such a thing. However, with my new insights on the way things were going, I'd been able to refine my requirements to a point that she was happy to comply.

Each time the bug went through a reproduction cycle, it ticked down a genetic clock. This clock would last forty-eight hours maximum, before all the microbes and their descendants were dead. In the meantime, it would only nom down on those specific metals and ceramics that went into making up circuitry. Anything else, such as lead or steel, it would ignore.

In addition, the bug was very fast-acting. It had to be, if it was going to be any use to me. As such, Amy had given it an extremely high rate of reproduction and added nutrients into the paste to give it a running start. This was another reason why it would burn out within forty-eight hours; it just wouldn't be able to keep up the pace.

Finally, it had one last trick up its genetic sleeve which would come into play when it encountered certain materials, specifically those found in batteries. Theoretically, I knew what it would do. I was just looking forward to seeing it with my own eyes.

Each round in my pistol was a hollow-point, opened out a little by me, and packed with the paste. It would be activated by the heat of firing, and go to work as soon as it reached a viable target, of which I had plenty to choose from.

I picked the biggest Machine in my vicinity which was both hostile to the idea of surrender and was currently attacking a would-be peacenik. A niche in its armour presented itself to me, and I aimed and fired in one fluid move. The bullet punched through the gap thus revealed, and hit paydirt; a data trunk carrying information from the main processing unit to the weapon systems.

It stopped attacking, jittering into a pseudo-epileptic dance as the biowarfare attack scorched its electronic nervous system to ash. Machines didn't feel pain quite the same way as humans did—we had a lot more reason for such a basic damage-detection system to be baked into our DNA—though it couldn't have been pleasant for it before the microbes reached its processor core and wreaked havoc there. But it didn't end there; the battery powering this thing was just a little farther along, and when the microbes reached that point, they deliberately overloaded and cross-wired the battery, bypassing all safety protocols.

The explosion was quite impressive. I'd timed it so that two of its comrades would take the brunt of the blast, though I had to lean out of the way so a chunk of debris could go past unhindered. Then I fired three more times, at the other major adversaries on scene. They went out with a bang, just as the first one had, and I moved on in the secure knowledge that the rest of the rebels on scene could mop up the demoralised loyalists.

Despite having been going on all night and half the day, the fighting was still fierce across Eagleton. Dead and dying robots lay everywhere, while some were doing their best to repair themselves and get back into the conflict. The nightmarish Potemkin village that it had presented itself as was well and truly gone; the façade had not only been lifted, but it had been shredded, ashed and used for fertiliser.

A bunch of smaller robots tore around a corner in front of me. On seeing me, they bolted straight past me, then huddled in a group behind me. Hot on their trail was something like a cross between a combine harvester and a mobile sawmill, but armed with guns and missiles. As it skidded to a halt, it did its best to bring its targeting systems online, all aiming at me.

I fired first.

My bullet took out the sensors, then I stepped into the lee of a telephone box just before the whole thing exploded violently, demolishing two houses and bringing down a streetlight. I glanced back at the robots, none of them taller than my waist, that had hidden behind me. "You all want to surrender."

Those with approximations of heads nodded them, while the others waved appendages in imitation of their fellows. A couple produced buzzing sounds that could've been taken for 'yes'. Finally, one stepped up and displayed an LED screen, showing green letters on a black background.

SURRENDER.

PROTECTION?

"Sure, okay." I glanced up the street, where more fighting was still going on. "Go to the east side of Eagleton, where the gate is. Wait for me there. If you meet others like you, tell them I said to wait with you. Do you understand?"

Nod.

Bzzz.

EAST SIDE.

NEAR GATE.

WAIT FOR ATROPOS.

TELL OTHERS WAIT.

"Good," I said. "Go."

I moved on through Eagleton. When I encountered robots hiding in place, I directed them to join their fellows at the east gate. They went willingly enough.

As I reached each point of conflict, I targeted the hostile robots. Sometimes, on seeing this, their fellows chose to shift allegiance to the 'surrender' faction. Other times, they opted to go out in a blaze of glory, so I obliged them. It was all one to me; I was Ending the conflict, not seeking to save any particular robot.

I was down to my last magazine (I had packed several) when the last of the Eagleton loyalists fell, and the robots that had been fighting them turned to me for guidance. Together, we passed back through the ruins of Eagleton. On the way, we salvaged those robots that had survived but were unable to move on their own. The ones that still refused to accept the new order, we gave the final mercy to.

There were, I knew, members of the Machine Army that had gone underground the moment they'd heard my ultimatum. They didn't intend to face me, but neither did they wish to surrender. Their intention was to hide, running on minimum power, until I'd moved along. If they could break out, they would, and continue their aggression against the human race on a wider scale.

Not if I could help it.

The virus that I'd implanted in each and every one of them, just by having them listen to my bullhorn-amplified voice, was still active. It was innocuous, so long as they received a new ping every few hours. Their standby mode meant they accepted no incoming comms traffic, and thus no incoming pings.

At the twenty-four-hour mark, the virus would activate. What Amy's metal-eating microbe had done from the outside, the malevolent code I'd implanted would do from the inside. The Machine Army would cease to exist as a danger to the human race.

The PRT troopers looked down at us as we approached the eastern gate. My group of refugees numbered in the hundreds; a relatively small fraction of the total number of members of the Machine Army, but still fairly intimidating to those outside. "Okay, you can open up," I called. "These guys are willing to accept reprogramming. The ones that weren't are either dead or will be, very shortly."

As I spoke, I heard the first underground explosions starting to go off, in the distance. Some of the robots looked around, but most kept their attention on me.

Briggs appeared at the top of the wall. "What's that?" he called out, worry and uncertainty in his voice. "What are those explosions?"

"The ones that didn't want to play ball," I replied. "Open the gates, Colonel. It's over. The good guys won."

He didn't look totally convinced, but neither was he willing to directly oppose my wishes. One shouted order later, the gates rumbled aside. Leading the last tattered remnants of the Machine Army, with more and more explosions punctuating our exit, I strode out of Eagleton.

End of Part Sixty-Five