Chapter 33

"Let's start with what we know." With a flick, Rebecca switched on a projector. A grainy picture of two teenagers, taken mid-run, appeared on the wall in front of her. She turned to face her colleagues, the rest of Cauldron, and pointed at the taller girl in the frame.

"Taylor Hebert, cape name Weaver, tentatively rated Master 5. A bug controller. Her first appearance was the night of an Empire Eighty-Eight crackdown, after a Brockton Bay Ward was murdered. She captured an Empire Cape and a dozen gang members. She then met with Velocity who described her as, and I quote, 'a socially awkward teenager crossed with a plague of locusts.' This picture," Rebecca gestured towards the projection. "was pulled from a security camera along the Brockton Bay Boardwalk. It was taken almost two months ago."

"Less than twenty-four hours and we are breaking the Truce, Rebecca? For a Master 5?" David interrupted. His hood was down, revealing a skeptical face and a raised eyebrow.

"A fair question." Rebecca acknowledged. She paused for a moment, wondering how best to phrase her response.

"The picture was pulled after running a very basic facial recognition program through Cauldron assets. I was not looking for Ms. Hebert at the time, but I felt it necessary to investigate her after seeing her running partner. It wasn't hard to connect the dots."

David frowned, but seemed mollified.

"As I was saying," Rebecca continued, "she is Weaver, a member of Vanguard, who I'm sure you have all heard of by now." Nods around the room, good. "Now her companion is, obviously, Catalyst."

Rebecca held two fingers up, covering the shorter girl's eyes in the facade of a mask., "It's fairly obvious that she puts virtually no effort into concealing her identity. From ignorance or arrogance, I do not know. The blue highlights in her hair are especially obvious." She lowered her hand. "That being said, it is entirely possible that this is not her original face. We know she is capable of changing the physical features of others, and we have no idea whether she is Manton limited somehow. It would explain why we've found no record of her existing thus far."

Deep breath, conceal irritation at failure, continue.

"Catalyst is tentatively rated as Shaker 12 Striker 9. Now, since Contessa claims," Rebecca glanced towards the fedora clad woman. "to have nothing to do with Noelle Meinhardt's sudden power loss, we should, for safety's sake, assume Catalyst did something when she removed Ms. Meinhardt's extra flesh. With that in mind, I'll be adding a Trump rating to her file just as soon as I can figure out a way to justify it. I don't believe publicizing this facet of Catalyst's abilities will help anyone, and Alexandria has strongly implied to the PRT agents observing Ms. Meinhardt, that her cloning only functions after she has absorbed sufficient biomass and grown to a certain size."

"Agreed." David said immediately. "If it got out that Catalyst can permanently remove powers she would be hounded by every government on the planet. Uh, even more so, I should say. They'd see it as the perfect way to deal with Parahuman criminals."

"Yes, well they wouldn't be wrong." Number Man's dispassionate voice interrupted. "If the girl is capable of removing powers, she is the perfect candidate for law enforcement."

"The girl killed an Endbringer. The girl was both wildly disrespectful of authority and utterly uncooperative with the press." Rebecca reminded him. "Huge power and huge ego is not a good combination for the Protectorate.

She ignored the smirk he threw her way.

"How is the PRT and Protectorate handling the Endbringer situation?" Doctor Mother asked, diverting Rebecca's growing irritation.

"Morale is high." Rebecca conceded. "While many, most, in the organization are disappointed that we had little to do with Leviathan's death, it is still seen as a sign of hope. Catalyst's vanishing act has done little to help, however."

"People need to see their heroes." Doctor Mother said with a nod.

"Quite." Rebecca replied dryly.

"With that in mind," David put in, "I would like to involve Catalyst with Cauldron. Slowly."

Rebecca goggled at him, asking, "David, what part of our interaction with her made you think that is a good idea?"

"The part where she is a teenager who just killed an Endbringer and needs guidance. The kind of guidance I wish we had when we were just starting out. She's around the age you were when you first started, Rebecca."

"I don't recall being quite as antagonistic."

"You had a mentor." David gestured towards Doctor Mother. "Perhaps she requires one too?"

"Rebecca, I'm surprised you are so against this." Doctor Mother interrupted. "Catalyst would be a great asset to us if she can be recruited successfully. Both politically and in the final battle against the entity.

"I don't care if you want to mentor her," Rebecca replied, "but we know nothing about her. We have no history on her, we don't know her habits or her motivations or her dreams. We have always fully vetted new members. Bringing her fully into our organization now, before the threat of Scion is visible and imminent, could backfire spectacularly."

"What Rebecca isn't mentioning," Contessa, finally, spoke up, "is that she asked me for help looking into Catalyst's background and I was unable to succeed."

Every head turned towards the woman in a suit.

"She is a blind spot?" David asked, almost eagerly.

Contessa dismissed him with a shake of her head. "I can see a path to convincing her to help with the next Endbringer fight. I can see a path to knocking on her front door. I can see a path to push her towards destroying several different gangs."

She paused with a frown.

"I cannot see a path to kill her. I cannot see a path to convince her to abandon her team, nor to have her team abandon her. I... suspect that these are things that are not possible for me to achieve, which is worrying in of itself. Likewise, I cannot see a path to discovering Catalyst's past. She has somehow erased it so thoroughly that a method to find it no longer exists."

The group was silent for several seconds. Rebecca had not realized that Contessa's refusal to help had actually been a failure to help.

"Well, that only-" Rebecca started.

"Contessa, is there a path to recruiting Catalyst to Cauldron?" David interjected.

The woman adjusted her fedora with a snort. "One step. Have anyone other than Alexandria visit Redmond Welding in Brockton Bay, right after this meeting, and ask her."

Rebecca wondered if she could slap the smug off David's face if she moved fast enough. Doubtful. She settled for pointing out the obvious, saying, "That path doesn't mention loyalty."

"I cannot see a path to securing her loyalty to Cauldron above all else, however previous paths suggest that she is fanatically loyal to her team, so that is hardly surprising. Just 'loyalty' is too vague a concept to build a path around."

"Enough." Doctor Mother weighed in. "Let us postpone this discussion until we have learned more about her. David, you can give her a soft introduction. Say nothing about our goals or origins. See if you can discover the full breadth of her abilities, specifically how exactly she managed to defeat Leviathan. Pitch it as training for elite heroes, like we've discussed in the past. We'll bring her in more should she seem receptive." She glanced towards Rebecca expectantly.

"I... can live with that." Rebecca allowed reluctantly. "In return, I would like permission to use Cauldron resources on my project with Panacea's clones."

"You want to use my money to fund your mad science?" Number Man asked, squeezing an impressive amount of incredulity into his dull tone. "I didn't realize we wanted our cape army to be insane. How utterly cliché. I'm sure nothing will go terribly wrong."

"It's no more mad science than the vials are." Rebecca answered coldly.

"The vials are inanimate objects, given to people who we have researched extensively." Number Man scratched his chin in mocking recollection. "What was it you said? History, habits, motivations, dreams?"

"I don't require money, only assets, to test the limits of... we're calling them Hive-mind." Rebecca explained, reigning in her frustration. "Every experiment will be done off-site, in isolation, and only with the Case-53's who failed to manifest powers.

"Waste not?" Number Man mused. "Well, I suppose if they aren't doing anything useful anyway..." He glanced towards Doctor Mother and shrugged. "I'm fine with it, so long as precautions are taken. We can talk later about actual implementation."

Doctor Mother nodded, and Rebecca smiled victoriously.

"Very well, now that that is all settled, we should revisit our plans for the Bay. I just finished a very unpleasant conversation with the ENE Director where..."