25

Chapter 25: Collateral 4-1

Collateral 4.1

"…This has got to be way too expensive."

Lisa shrugged.

"Maybe. Depends on what your spending money looks like. Me, I haven't got much else to use it on, and there's only so many clothes a girl can buy before it just gets excessive. Besides…"

She offered me a sheepish smile. "I figure it's the least I can do, after how badly I screwed up."

I frowned and looked down at the smartphone in my hand. The latest model, unless I was mistaken. It probably had more tricks and subtle uses than I knew what to do with, and if I was being entirely honest, I'd probably never use it for anything other than making phone calls. Hell, the only person I could think I'd be using it for would be Lisa, and maybe Amy.

"Still…"

"It's probably better this way, too," she added. "It'll probably throw Coil off if I'm the one footing the bill. Doesn't leave any paperwork that leads back to you and your dad."

A good point, I had to admit. The longer it took Coil to start looking at me or Dad, the happier I would be. Lisa had said as much yesterday, that Coil had no scruples about going after family or jumping straight to assassination. A Bond villain, that was the term she'd used. A megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur and a willingness and ruthlessness to do whatever it took to get what he wanted.

Escaping his attention as Apocrypha was basically impossible, now. Not after Lung. Not after that thread on PHO singing my praises (and still going strong days later). But keeping him from making the connection between Apocrypha and Taylor Hebert? The longer I could manage that, the better. No matter how I felt about Lisa, right now, I could be grateful for that kind of consideration, at least.

The phone itself… I was still a bit iffy on that front. Probably always would be. I'd just have to deal with it.

"Listen," said Lisa, leaning forward a little. "I really am sorry."

My head jerked up and I glared at her sharply.

"Are you?"

She winced. "Okay, I deserved that," she admitted. "I know. I fucked the whole thing up badly. I really didn't mean to hurt you or anything, but…fuck, I couldn't think of a better way to handle it."

"I can think of half a dozen," I told her darkly.

"Okay, I deserved that, too," she said. "But I really didn't… Fuck, Taylor, I was trying to show you what the Boss forced me into. It was a lot easier to show you than to try and explain it all. Maybe I should have tried explaining it first," she added. "But it seemed simpler to do it the way I did. Less room for doubt."

"Less chance for me to say no," I interjected.

Lisa grimaced, worked her jaw a little, and reached up to rub at a spot on her chest just a few inches under her left shoulder — her heart, I realized. She was rubbing at her heart, where the geis bound her.

"Yes," she admitted at length. "Less chance for you to say no. I didn't want to hurt you, but I didn't want to take any chances, either."

I scowled and reached down to grab my mug, then took a long sip of my tea. It didn't taste quite as good as it had just a few days ago.

Lisa's regret was genuine, her friendship was genuine, and her reluctance to hurt me was genuine, but so was her willingness to manipulate me to get free of Coil. I couldn't say I didn't understand the motivation, but that didn't mean I had to like it, either. Not when I was the one being manipulated.

Eventually, I'd probably forgive her. Eventually, I'd probably release her from this geis and be able to trust her again without it. Not now, though. Probably not anytime soon.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"I know," I replied.

At least she hadn't turned on me for no apparent reason, spent two years doing her best to make my life hell, shoved me into a locker filled with used tampons, or… Yeah, Emma was a bad comparison to make, wasn't she?

On that note, I reached into my pocket, wrapped my fingers around the contents, then pulled it out and set it on the table.

"Here," I said, shoving it over to her.

Lisa picked up the necklace, a small thing of gold with a thin chain, and inspected the little pendant that dangled from it. It was nothing complex or particularly ornate, because I'd only had about a day to work on it, but it'd get the job done.

"What's this?" she asked me.

"A good luck charm, of sorts," I explained. "Should block bullets, just in case Coil decides to cut his losses."

Lisa blinked and looked at it dubiously. "This?"

"I only had a day to work on it," I said a little defensively. "I know it doesn't look like much, but I wouldn't bother if it didn't do what I said it will."

I reached down the neck of my hoodie and pulled out a similar, but much larger, pendant hanging from a sturdier chain. Mine, unlike Lisa's, had a purple gemstone on the front and was marked with a rune of protection.

If there was one thing I had to thank this whole fiasco for, it was forcing me to stop experimenting and just finish these. I'd started mine several weeks ago, but I'd spent a lot of time and effort just messing around and seeing what I could do. Now that there was a very real threat to my life in the form of Coil and his mercenaries, having a charm that blocked bullets seemed a whole lot more important than finding out whether I could also use it to turn myself invisible or give myself x-ray vision.

"I know you didn't buy this," Lisa said. "It doesn't have any markings to denote the jeweler, for one thing. How did you make it?"

"Alchemy," I answered shortly. "Transmuted a few things."

"Like what?"

"Whatever I had lying around."

Lisa blinked, stared at me for a moment, and then she started laughing. "No way!" she said. "A few paperclips and some spare change? Into this?"

I felt my cheeks flush a little. "It's what I had on hand. It's not like I had a lead pipe or something just sitting in the basement."

"No, no, I'm not criticizing or anything," she assured me. "Just…wow." She went back to inspecting the pendant. "Most precious metal on the planet, most Tinkers would have trouble synthesizing even small amounts of it, and you can make some from a few paperclips and a quarter or two."

She laughed again.

"Your powers are such bullshit."

I felt, it seemed to me, irrationally pleased at her praise. I was supposed to be angry at her, though. Upset at her betrayal. Not happy that she was praising my work.

"Anyway," I said. "It's a rush job, and I haven't exactly tested yours or mine, but it should block most bullets. I…don't know if it'll block anything else, but it might work on lasers and stuff, too."

Lisa looked back at me and started to put the pendant on. "Lasers?" she asked.

"Anything that's 'fired,'" I clarified.

"That's pretty broad." Once the clasp was fastened, she pulled her hair up and out of the way of the chain so that it rested against her neck. Then, she looked down and fidgeted with the pendant until it rested just beneath the notch at the base of her throat. "Bullets, lasers, missiles…"

"Ah," I said, "probably not missiles…"

Lisa blinked. "Not missiles?"

"Missiles have an area of effect," I explained. "They're not hitting you, exactly, so the pendant can't block them."

Lisa looked down at her new pendant again. "Holy shit, really? So, as long as it's a projectile that's fired and it doesn't have an area of effect like a missile, this little thing will protect me from it?"

"It should."

"Damn." Lisa grinned. "If you started handing these out to the police or the PRT, they'd bend over backwards to keep you on their side."

I grimaced and looked away. Yeah, they would have, wouldn't they? Maybe it wouldn't have been a bad idea, and it certainly would have made me quite a bit of money, but I still wasn't feeling very charitable about the PRT, right then.

"Oh. Right. Yeah. Sorry. Didn't mean to bring up a sore subject."

"It's fine," I said, even though it really wasn't.

I still wanted to know. Had they known and left me to suffer? Had they not, and Sophia was pulling the wool over their eyes? No matter which one it was, I wasn't sure I could forgive them for it.

"Anyway," said Lisa, "let's talk about something else."

An awkward silence fell between us and persisted for several long moments. In the background, I could hear the distant sounds of tea and coffee being brewed and the low, quiet chatter of a few of the other guests who were seated at the other tables.

"So," I said, for lack of anything else to say, "your teammates…"

Lisa snorted. "Are currently pissed at me," she told me. "I was wrong about a lot of things, yesterday, and Grue in particular has been chewing my ear off about it. I've been hearing it for miscalculating the Wards' arrival time and missing Panacea in the crowd so much that I could probably recite it all in my sleep, by now."

The vindictive part of me found that inordinately satisfying, that she was suffering for her bad decisions, after the betrayal. The part of me that cherished the friendship we'd made over the past week, the part of me that longed for that friendship and didn't want to let it go no matter what, sympathized.

It probably said something to her desperation that she'd gone ahead, even when it had turned out the way it did, even when it had risked turning me against her forever. I still wanted to be angry about it, but it was becoming a little harder as I realized more and more just how desperate she really was.

That didn't mean everything was okay, though. There was a…a distance, now, between us. A gap, a wall. I didn't know if it would ever be fixed. I still didn't know if I wanted it to be.

"Oh," I said lamely. "And…none of them are willing to…"

"No," Lisa replied simply. "Like I said yesterday, Coil gives each of them something they want. Grue gets help with getting his little sister away from his druggy mother, Bitch gets the money and the space to feed and care for her dogs, and Regent gets the freedom to do whatever he wants. None of them would want to give that up just for me."

She leaned forward. "It's all about points of control, see. As long as he seems like their best, or even only, option and doesn't do anything to break their faith, none of them is gonna risk losing what he gives them. And if they do decide, hey, maybe some of this shit doesn't smell that great, he can twist it around to leverage them back to his side — Grue's sister becomes a hostage, Bitch's dogs are threatened, and Coil tells Regent that maybe he'll let slip to Regent's twisted, messed up family where he is and how to find him.

"That's the game he likes to play," she went on. "He'll start with the carrot, tell you he can give you what you want, tell you he can make your life easier. For you, for example, he'd probably promise he could get you a good lawyer to sue Winslow, promise he'd pay for the whole thing, if only you worked for him. If that didn't work, he'd probably move onto something like getting the Dockworkers employed on a major construction project."

I could see that sort of thing working on me with frightening ease. How tempting would it have been, if I'd had an anonymous benefactor promising to take care of all my problems at school, if only I agreed to do a few jobs for him? After listening for what seemed like my whole life to my dad venting about the dearth of jobs for his people, for the Dockworkers, how easily would I have caved if that same benefactor promised to make my dad's life easier?

Too easily. If I'd gotten a different power, if I'd gotten something that was darker, less heroic, something that didn't scream, "hero!" in every way, all it might have taken was a little nudge. Less, if I'd found out about Sophia beforehand.

"If that didn't work and he wanted you really badly," Lisa said, "he'd start with the threats. Like, wouldn't it be terrible if something were to happen to your dad? Wouldn't it be just awful if he got mugged on the way home and things just went wrong? If he were to be caught up in a shootout between the ABB and the E88? And nothing like that would ever happen if you just decided to work for him. In fact, he'd guarantee that nothing like that would happen if you worked for him."

I swallowed thickly.

And if the promises of fixing all of my problems, fixing all of dad's problems, hadn't done it, that certainly would have.

"That…"

She gave me a grim smile. "Yeah. Of course, once he got his claws in you, he'd string you along, just to keep you in his pocket. The lawyer would take weeks or months to find, and he'd tell you it was because he wanted the very best, and once he did get a lawyer, the case would move at a glacial pace — the paperwork, he'd say. These things take a lot of time, because the bureaucracy is slow. He'd make it sound so reasonable."

It didn't sound like it right then, but I could imagine it would if I hadn't had Lisa to warn me off, to tell me exactly what kind of scumbag he was. The me from back in January would likely have been easily fooled, so desperate had I been to just have someone on my side.

"And when at last his promises finally came true, you'd decide to stay," Lisa concluded. "Out of gratitude, and because the money was good and the jobs weren't that bad. That's why he's Coil; once he's got you, he slowly and steadily tightens his grasp until you don't even want to escape."

After a moment, she leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Sorry. I started talking about some really heavy stuff, again."

"No," I said. "No. I, uh. I asked."

At that moment, I heard the bell at the door jingle, and after glancing at my watch to check the time — three-oh-three pm — I twisted around in my chair to look back. There, at the front of the shop, was a short, mousy girl with a familiar tangle of brown curls, and her head swiveled as she looked around the shop.

I thought about waving, but as her head turned around again, Amy's eyes locked with mine, and she started back in our direction. Absently, I noted what looked like a backpack slung over one shoulder, so she'd probably come here directly from school.

"Hi," Amy mumbled when she reached our table.

"Hi, Amy," I replied, and then I turned back to Lisa, who looked as though she'd been slapped in the face with a fish.

Maybe it was a bit petty, to think of it as revenge for all of the surprises she'd dropped in my lap yesterday, but I could take some pleasure in the absolutely gobsmacked expression on her face.

"Amy, this is Lisa," I introduced. "Lisa, this is Amy."

"Um, hi," said Amy, a little shyly. Yeah, I'd kinda just dropped this on her, too, hadn't I?

Lisa just sighed.

"I deserve this," she muttered, almost as though she was trying to convince herself. "I know I deserve this. I know I do. But fuck, I wish I didn't."

"Um, okay," said Amy, sounding affronted.

Lisa turned to Amy and plastered on a smile. "Hi, Amy. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but this particular little surprise is one that Taylor here decided to drop on both of us, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's actually done anything to deserve it."

Amy shifted.

"Deserve…?" her brow furrowed and she stared at Lisa, scrutinizing her. "Wait a minute. Hold on. I recognize that voice — you're Tattletale!"

"Guilty as charged," said Lisa, grinning her trademark grin.

Amy whipped around to stare at me, now. Betrayal and anger were written on her face, and under the black bags that circled her eyes, splotches of red were beginning to fill her cheeks.

"You lied to me," she accused. "You are with them. Vicky was right — you are a villain —"

She was making to leave, starting to back away and turn towards the door, but I reached out, quick as lightning, and snagged one wrist.

"Let go of me!" she hissed, snarling. "I'm going to call Vicky — you were helping them escape —"

"Amy," I cut her off, "I wasn't lying."

"She really wasn't!" Lisa added unhelpfully.

"I said that it's complicated," I went on, ignoring Lisa. "I said that it had something to do with my powers. I asked you to give me a chance to explain. Will you?"

I could see the war play out on Amy's face, and for several long moments, I waited for her to make her decision. I wasn't really sure myself what she'd choose, whether she'd really give me a chance to explain everything, and to be honest, if I had been in her position, I probably would have just left.

But Amy scowled, jerked her arm free, then walked around to sit on my other side — next to me, rather than Lisa, who she was still regarding with barely concealed hostility. Her bag slid off her shoulder and was dropped unceremoniously to the floor, where it landed with a heavy thump.

"Five minutes," she promised sourly. "Then I'm gone and calling Vicky."

For a few seconds, we sat there in silence, then I shot Lisa a meaningful look. Luckily, she seemed to understand.

"Guess I get to kick us off, then," she said. "Okay. So, it starts out like this…"

She launched into an abbreviated version of the story she told me, about being on her own, about pickpocketing rich guys just to scrape by, about being pulled aside and being given an ultimatum by a mysterious voice on the other end of a telephone. She skipped over several points, and I noticed especially that she made no mention of her Trigger Event, but she covered all of the important parts.

"…and trust me, his retirement plan sucks," said Lisa. "No medical, no dental, and the death benefits don't even include a proper burial."

"I thought Coil was small time," murmured Amy. "Hell, as far as I know, the PRT isn't even sure he has powers."

Lisa snorted. "That's part of his plan. The longer he goes without notice, that's the more time he has to build up his base and line up all his ducks. He likes having everyone underestimate him. It means he gets to sit back while the other gangs tear each other to pieces, then he can swoop in and finish off whatever's left when the time is right."

Amy chewed on her bottom lip, then turned to me. "And what does all of this have to do with you?"

"I made Lisa a promise, yesterday," I said. "At the bank, when she took me to the back offices and explained all of this. I said I'd help her escape from Coil."

"And since Coil has moles and influence in the PRT, that meant helping me escape from the bank," Lisa added.

"A promise?" Amy asked incredulously. "That's it? You fought Vicky over a promise?"

"Hey, now, it's not that simple," said Lisa. "You ever read the Harry Potter books?"

Amy blinked. "Yes," she replied impatiently, "and?"

"The Aleph versions?"

"Yes."

"Remember at the beginning of the sixth book," asked Lisa, "when Snape makes that Unbreakable Vow?"

A considering look began to dawn on Amy's face, like she wasn't sure where this was going but she might have an idea. "Yes."

"That's what Taylor did," said Lisa. "She and I exchanged an Unbreakable Vow, of a sorts. I promised never to betray her trust again, and she promised to help me escape Coil."

Amy's brow furrowed. "And what happens if you break it? You die?"

"No," I said quickly. "Nothing that extreme."

Lisa laughed.

"Nothing that extreme, she says." She grinned that grin again. "No, Amy, breaking it won't kill either of us. What it will do is strip the guilty one of her powers. That's what it does in the legends, right, Taylor?"

"That's how a geis works, yes," I answered. "When they're broken, the one who broke them loses his supernatural strength and abilities."

I wasn't quite sure it had the same effect on, well, parahuman powers, but it stood to reason it would. There wasn't a really good way to test it, though.

Amy had a strange, complicated look on her face. "Just like that?" There was something like consideration in her voice, a kind of longing. "Make a vow, and if you break it, you lose your powers for good? It doesn't hurt you or kill you?"

"No."

"Then I —"

"Whoa, now," Lisa interjected. "That's not all there is to it. Sure, the geis itself won't kill you for breaking it, but that isn't how all of those legends ended, is it? All of those heroes who broke their geises —"

"Geasa," I corrected.

"Geasa," Lisa continued smoothly, "died tragically afterwards. The geis itself didn't kill them, but all of the misfortune that they suffered came from breaking the geis."

I shot her a look and she shrugged, grinning at me. "I didn't have much else to do last night, so instead of listening to Grue chew me out for the hundredth time, I did some research."

"That sounds a lot like superstition," said Amy doubtfully.

"Maybe it is," Lisa replied. "But while I'm pretty sure breaking the geis wouldn't kill me immediately, I wouldn't put it past it for a bus to run me over or a stray bullet to take me out while I'm walking down the street — probably, if it's all true to form, three to nine days afterwards."

That…was an oddly specific timeframe. When I looked back in her direction again, Lisa gave me another shrug. "The Celts and their obsession with the number three," she said, as though that explained it.

It…didn't, really. That wasn't how those myths tended to work.

"O…kay," said Amy. She looked a little lost. "I'm not sure… What does this have to do with your power?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but Lisa beat me to it.

"Haven't you realized?" she asked. "Then again, I guess the PRT and the Protectorate are keeping it a pretty closely guarded secret, so it makes sense that you wouldn't know. I know there's been some speculation on PHO, though."

"Know…what?"

Lisa grinned broadly. "Have you heard about that new hero that PHO has been flipping out about for the past few days? The one that beat down Lung all by herself and left him, you might say, half the man he used to be?" She gestured towards me. "She's sitting right next to you."

I felt my cheeks warm and a looked away, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

"Wait, what?" Amy turned to me, surprise written across her face. "You're Apocrypha? That Apocrypha? Seriously?"

"Yeah," I said awkwardly.

Before, with Armsmaster and Miss Militia, it'd felt great to receive that praise, that adulation. Now that the rush of it had worn off, it felt…strange. Like that A+ in second grade math that your parents wouldn't shut up about, even six years later. Maybe a little undeserved, too, which was really crazy and really stupid if I thought about it. I mean, I'd beaten Lung, didn't I deserve to feel good about that?

Except the glow had worn off and it felt like a footnote amongst all the other crazy shit that had started happening the past few days.

"But I thought," she started, then she winced, looked around — checking to make sure no one had heard her, I guessed — and continued, "but I thought your powers were just a minor Brute and Mover combo! How did you… I mean, I healed him, that night. There's no way you could've done that to him like you are now!"

"Same way she could turn a simple handshake into a binding magical oath," Lisa answered for me again. I scowled. That was really starting to get annoying. "Her power lets her access the skills, abilities, and equipment of heroes from myth and legend. Guys like Beowulf, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Hercules, Siegfried… The geis was Cúchulainn, right?"

"Aífe," I corrected. "She's where the martial arts come from, too. They're the techniques that were taught to the heroes from the Ulster cycle."

Amy looked like she was having trouble wrapping her head around what she was hearing. "So," she started, "just by using your powers, you get a Brute and Mover power and the ability to make special, magical oaths that people can't break unless they want to lose their powers?"

"And probably die," Lisa added with a levity and humor that seemed ill-fitting to the situation. "I feel like I have to make sure that's clear."

"I mean, I guess?" I hedged, ignoring Lisa entirely.

I still didn't have an answer myself. I had a feeling that the answer probably was Aífe and her martial arts — a gut instinct, rather than a rational, well-reasoned logic — but I had no way of really knowing. I hadn't even noticed the stuff Amy had been talking about. I hadn't felt any stronger or faster than normal in my day to day life. No glasses broken from accidentally gripping them too hard. No suddenly keeping pace with moving cars. I hadn't been doing anything blatantly superhuman since I first started learning with Aífe's Noble Phantasm.

I hadn't even noticed while fighting Glory Girl. It'd felt like I was moving at normal speeds and just going through the motions of those techniques. Nothing special or extraordinary. Nothing anyone else wouldn't have been able to do, if they'd been learning what I was.

Except apparently it was.

Amy stared at me for a long moment, as though waiting for me to throw up my hands and shout, "Gotcha!"

But when I didn't, her brow furrowed.

"Do you not realize how ridiculous this sounds?" Amy asked. "Magical oaths that can take away your powers if you break them, getting superstrength and superspeed as a side effect of using your main power, learning martial arts from a mythological heroine — that's not the real world, that's the plot of a crappy, sixties comic book!"

It…really kind of did, I had to admit. If I looked at it that way, it seemed like the sort of thing I might find in some of Dad's old X-Men comics that he had stowed away, collecting dust, in the basement. It probably said something about how strange my life had become in the past few months that comparing it to the height of comic book absurdity wasn't a completely silly idea.

But…

"Thirty years ago," Lisa told her, face flat and serious, "a naked, golden man popped up out of thin air, flying around like gravity was nothing more than a suggestion. Since then, people have been showing up who can do some pretty incredible things. Tinkers, who can build stuff straight out of the hardest of hard sci-fi. Breakers, who can say 'fuck you' to the laws of physics. A man in spandex who can shoot lasers that do things lasers shouldn't be able to do. Asian warlords who can turn into dragons. Teenage girls who can bench press a tractor trailer or manipulate any form of biology she can get her hands on."

Calmly, casually, she took a sip of her coffee.

"We talk about parahumans and their powers as though there must be a scientific explanation," she went on. "We haven't found one. After thirty years, we're no closer to being able to answer how powers work or where they come from than we were when they first showed up. The only reason we don't call them magic is because no one believes in it anymore, even though, for all intents and purposes, that's what it is. Can you really say what is and isn't possible with them?"

For another long moment, Amy stared at Lisa intently, unblinking, and I thought she was going to try and respond, but then she shook her head disgustedly and started to stand, hefting her bag up over her shoulders.

"Whatever," she said, turning to me, now. "If you feel like actually explaining this stuff to me instead of…whatever this was supposed to be, let me know. Until then, I'm out of here."

She started to leave, but my hand shot out and snagged her wrist as she passed by me.

"Amy," I said when her head swiveled back my direction, "don't tell anyone? About the promise and about Lisa?"

Her brow furrowed.

"If I don't promise," she said sarcastically, "are you gonna make me swear one of those magical geises of yours, too?"

"No," I replied simply. "Those are only for people I can't trust."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lisa wince, and I felt a little vindictive thrill at it. In front of me, Amy blinked for a moment, surprised. "Oh," she said. Then, she frowned and let out a sigh through her nostrils. "Fine. I promise I won't tell anyone about any of this stuff. Okay?"

"Thank you."

I let her wrist go — as I'd said, no geis.

For a few seconds, Amy hesitated, looking like she was going to sit back down, and there was something strange in her expression. Then, she scowled, turned away, and left. I watched her go silently, wondering how I could have handled that better, how I could have managed that in a way that would have ended better, but I couldn't think of anything.

Maybe if I'd actually done the explaining myself? But Lisa had done a much better job of it than I imagined I ever could. If it'd been me, I'd have messed the whole thing up even worse.

Not for the first time, I thought of Emma, and I hated her for how she'd ruined me. It seemed that, even when she wasn't present, she sabotaged every friendship I tried to start.

And there wasn't anything I could do about it.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

When you think about it, Taylor's powers really do sound a lot like bullshit, don't they?

Onto the news: not that I didn't expect it from the get-go, but continuing Essence won the poll by a wide margin. Trailing at a much distant second was starting Recursive Wisdom, which I did not expect. I honestly expected Project: Nietzsche to occupy that role.

With that in mind, I'm going to try and blitz through another 40k words for Essence and get at least four chapters of Recursive Wisdom done before December. No idea how successful I'll be. As a result, depending on where I am by Wednesday, I may set us to an every other week schedule for the duration - one chapter this week, one chapter two weeks from now, and back to normal in December. I'll let everyone know what I decide by Thursday at the latest.

As always, read, review, and enjoy.