21

Friday, June 22, 1990

I was pretty much halfway inside of my home filing cabinet when the phone rang. It wasn't until the third ring that I was able to pull myself out of the cabinet, step back down onto the chair I was using to reach the topmost shelf, and step onto the floor.

"Hello?" I asked, picking up the phone on the fourth ring, half-hanging the handset on my horn as I started paging back through my personal files for the ones I needed.

"Hey boss, sorry, you got a minute?" Joshua's voice came out the other end, and I couldn't help but frown.

"You're supposed to be off already, Joshua" I told him, eyeing the clock. "It's after regular work hours, the courts gave us all the continuances we need, and I'm pretty sure there's nothing so urgent that you need to work overtime."

"Well about that, you know how the police let us get our stuff back so we could keep working? Have you tried starting your computer yet?"

"... no," I said, eyeing my desk. "I have my own separate computer for my home office. Why, is something wrong?"

"Maybe," he said. I heard some rustling in the background, including the unmistakable sound of other cloth dragging on fabric. "Hang on, let me just… alright, that's unplugged. Anyway, I hooked my work IBM up to dial-up, and something odd was going on. The command console kept coming up, but it was gone too fast for me to click on it. And when I did click on it one time, the computer turned itself off."

"Is it a hardware issue?" I asked, even as my thoughts ran through my head. I was trying to remember… the console showing up and being unclickable, why was that so familiar? God, it had been so long since I'd used a computer for anything other than word processing or quick queries on Lexis; what was I forgetting?

"Already checked that. Opened it up to compare to an identical model I have at home, but nothing seemed out of place. Solder and screws look fine, everything's connected on the motherboard, reseating the RAM and the hard disk didn't do anything. It's gotta be software related, since the only difference is that one computer was at the office, and one was in my room at home."

"Alright, I'll take your word for it," I told him. "This is all falling a little out of my wheelhouse, so I'm not sure what to do about it. Do we talk to the cops, see if they have any… I don't know, cyber expert who can look at our stuff?"

Joshua's snort came through the handset loud and clear. "Noa, trust me, if NYPD ever produces someone calling themselves a 'cyber expert' on the stand, I will help you rip them apart. But I do have someone I can talk to, yeah. One of my professors for my master's program is an adjunct, runs a business out of the Merrill Lynch building. If there's anyone who can help figure out what this is, it's him."

"Alright." This was out of my comfort zone. And if you have access to an expert… "Reach out to him, see if you can get us in to see him sometime early next week."

"Gotcha, Prof's got office hours going on now, so—"

"Joshua, is there a reason you're so eager to get overtime pay?" I asked sweetly, to cover up my annoyance. Sam's son was diligent, yes, but he wasn't a workaholic. Was he as frustrated as I was about what had happened to my office? Trying to get some kind of security back, in the one place that he most considered to be his domain?

"O-okay, fine, it can wait I guess." A sigh came over the line, and Joshua started muttering to himself, low enough that he probably didn't realize that one, the phone picked it up, and two, I could hear it. "Just gotta call, swap from dinner to just drinks, maybe the ice rink instead? Does that cost—"

"Joshua!~" I sing-songed, letting the smile spread across my face as I twined the phone cord around one finger. "Does someone have a da~ate?"

The gulp on the other end was all I needed to hear as I leaned forward in my seat.

"What's his name? Ooh, is he a classmate? C'mon hun, spill!"

"Need to call during office hours gotta go BYE—"

There was a thud, the scrabble of plastic on wood, then even more scrambling and scrabbling before the phone line clicked and went dead. I hung it up with a wistful sigh, but couldn't help but smile.

Honestly, if he needed a small advance to take a date out for something special, all he had to do was ask.

I looked at the clock behind the desk of my home office, and sighed, banishing all thought of being a yenta about Joshua's love life out of my mind. The rest of our brief conversation was worrisome – something was notably wrong with my work computers, to the point that I didn't want to even plug them in, not until I'd gotten them looked at. This helped reframe the absolute fuckening that had been my office, especially when put next to the brief conversation I'd had with Cate when we met up last night.

"Oh no, don't get me wrong, it is absolutely antisemitic," Cate told me over a glass of chardonnay, her finger tracing circles on the table between us. "The problem is it's too specific. You know I didn't know what a mezuzah was until you told me?"

"Obviously," I said, taking the mojito from Shelby and slipping her a twenty in thanks, both for my bill and her tip. "It's not like you mention how it earns you brownie points with every observant Jew you meet on the job."

"Yeah, well, just for kicks I asked around. Turns out, most neo-Nazis and white supremacists wouldn't recognize a mezuzah when they saw it, much less know what's inside one. Plus, do you really think your average Confederate flag-waving thug would think of turning one of your… um, how do you pronounce that Jewish Christmas holiday again?"

"Chanukah," I said, making sure to really enunciate. "And it's really not an important holiday, Cate. You goyim just like to look at it that way."

"Fine, no Christmas scarf for you this year," she said with a smile. I glared over the rim of my drink. "Anyway, as I was saying. Those candlestick holders for Hah-nookuh—really?" Cate asked as I cringed.

"Your pronunciation is awful. Also, it's called a menorah. Seriously, you've lived among New Yorkers for how long, and still don't know these things?"

Cate rolled her eyes. "As I was saying… it's too creative. Too artistic. Odds are, this wasn't actually a neo-Nazi group, or anything similar." Cate slid her wine glass to the side, and looked me dead in the eyes. "Somebody did this because they knew it would hurt you. Throwing off the trail for even one day was just a bonus."

Not a fun conversation.

Hell, I'd been unsettled enough by it that I skipped trivia night. And of course Cate called after and crowed that she won 'funniest wrong answer'. The one time I wasn't there! The one time!

Ugh.

Early signs pointed to this not being neo-Nazis, yes. That hadn't stopped me from calling the synagogue, my rabbi, my dad, and anyone else I thought needed to know that something may be going on. Everyone, that is, with one very glaring exception.

Because the last thing I needed was a goddamn Hunter on the warpath in the middle of Manhattan. Erik didn't hear anything from me until after Cate had soft-confirmed that no, it was probably not Nazis. In fact, he didn't hear from me until this very morning.

And that was because I had the Sabbath as a shield. No, Erik wasn't all that observant himself, but he still understood that people clung to the tradition in ways that he didn't see fit to do so himself. (Just one of the many things Auschwitz took from him. It was fascinating to juxtapose my father with Erik – my father reclaimed the traditions as armor and out of spite, whereas Erik tossed off the trappings while holding fast to the identity)

What this meant is I didn't have to worry about Erik beating down my door in a frenzy, demanding I tell him everything. And with sundown still a little bit away, I had time to cook, turn the TV and hall lights on so I had stuff to listen to during the Sabbath, and—

My door began to vibrate.

I sighed. Of course. Of course he couldn't – no, no. I was going to give the benefit of the doubt here. Studiously ignoring the way my door continued to vibrate, I pulled out a notepad, a big ol' felt-tip pan, a broom, and a duster. The notepad and pen went on the kitchen table, the broom and duster next to it.

… look, I know somebody's going to ask. When I said the door was vibrating, I meant it was vibrating. The same way my pager would vibrate when it went off. And when the door did that, there was exactly one person it could be.

I walked over to the door, used a jacket hanging by the door to cover my hand, turned the knob, and opened the door.

A silver-blue blur whizzed into my condo, the wind passing in its wake sending my hair flying up into my face. I reached up with a hand to pull the hair away from my nose and lips, then closed the door, hung my jacket back up, and walked back to the table. A few sheets of paper were already filled out in the fifteen to twenty seconds it took me to finish up at the door and get over there, so I sat down at the table and started to read, frowning as I went.

Conclusion: yes, Erik was being nosy, even though the way I acted was enough to tell him I didn't want him butting into things. But there were other concerns on top of that, concerns that weren't Erik's at all, which my poor visitor spent most of the time on.

Once I'd finished reading the notes left for me, I wandered into the kitchen and went over to the fridge and freezer. From the freezer I pulled frozen carrots, broccoli, peas, and snow peas, and put them on the counter. The fridge, meanwhile, coughed up soy sauce, eggs, chicken thighs, leftover jasmine rice from Chinese takeout, shallots, garlic, ginger, and green onion. While I opened up the bags of frozen veggies and took out the amount I thought I would need, the sound from the rest of my home slowly faded from a dull roar to a simple shuffle, and then all the way down to just the quiet click of the closet door opening, then closing.

Followed, of course, by the sound of a chair being pulled back from the table, and a sigh from the person who now sat in it.

The rest of my frozen veggies went back into the freezer while the others sat on some kitchen towels. With everything more or less readied, I walked back out to my dining table, and sat down opposite the young man who'd paid me a visit.

"Feeling a little better?" I asked. He nodded.

"Thank you," Pietro Maximoff said with a smile, as he fiddled with the felt-tip pen I'd left out.

I'd had the opportunity to meet the majority of Erik's… companions, I suppose I would call them. My opinion on Raven was self-explanatory. Mortimer… needed a few lessons in manners, but was shockingly more approachable than I'd initially expected. Erik himself was generally pleasant.

Then there were the twins. Wanda and Pietro.

Wanda scared the ever living daylights out of me. Every time I'd seen her, that girl had been… the only way I can describe it is not all there. She didn't so much look at people as much as she did look through them, her eyes fixed on some point that we could neither perceive nor interact with. And the one time I'd been in the vicinity when she'd tried something with her powers, it left me violently ill – something about whatever it was she did, neither my powers nor my magic liked it one bit.

And then there was Pietro.

Neither Maximoff twin had the greatest control over their powers. Whenever her powers went awry, Wanda was very much a danger to herself, others, and the environment around her. Pietro, on the other hand, had a very different problem.

Because Pietro was an anxious young man with what I could only guess was undiagnosed ADHD, and his powers compounded on that in a bad way. When he sped up, if he got wound up tight enough, he couldn't slow back down, not easily. Sometimes, he needed to go run halfway across the country, just turning over things in his head, thinking over his problems. Sometimes even that didn't help, and he wound up spending a relative eternity in the breadth of an instant, trying to find some way to get his head in order.

Not long after Erik introduced us, Pietro had the bright idea that since I was someone new, someone to be held at arm's length to Erik's extracurricular activities, I was somebody he could talk things over with. Somebody he could trust. Pietro's first attempt lasted fifteen seconds.

That was how long it took me to realize that I couldn't understand a goddamn word he was saying, pull out a pad of paper and a felt tip pen, put them flat on the table, and point to them. Five seconds later, I had multiple sheets filled out… and Pietro was back to practically buzzing in place.

So I went to the closet, pulled out a broom and duster, and wrote on the pad that if he was going to wear a hole in my floors, then the least he could do was make sure they were clean first.

Not even two minutes later, Pietro managed to slow back down to normal speed. Turned out, something as simple, brainless, kinetic, and almost meditative as cleaning? Yeah, that helped him pull himself back to the present enough to shift down a few gears.

"So, all of this," I said, fingers tapping the pages he'd written out for me. "I'm fine. A little spooked, but otherwise fine. I know I waited to tell any of you, but you know Erik. Do you honestly think he would have sat tight and let the system play out once he heard how things went down?"

Pietro shook his head.

"Exactly," I said. "As for the rest of this…" My eyes scanned back over it, and I sighed. "I need to cook before the Sabbath starts. Feel free to stick around. Talking to friends and family during the Sabbath, even about important and heavy stuff, is still perfectly allowed, and something tells me you could do with a bit of relaxation beforehand."

"I am not needed until tomorrow," Pietro said, spinning the pen between his hands.

"Excellent!" I said, standing up from my chair and walking into the kitchen; from the sounds, Pietro followed me in. I grabbed my kettle, filled it up, and set it to boil. Then I grabbed some nice chamomile from the cupboard, pulled out two mugs and infusers, and spooned a teaspoon into each. "And before you say anything?" I added as I turned around to face Pietro, and leaned against the countertop. "No, you're not imposing on me. Of course you're welcome, so long as I'm not already busy."

I went from leaning against the counter to wrapped in a hug within the space between blinks. Once I collected myself, I leaned into the hug, making sure not to shove my horn into Pietro.

"Thank you, Noa," he said, voice heavy. "It is… nice. That I can talk to you. No judgment. No pressure. Helpful," he finished, accent leaking into his words more heavily.

"It's my pleasure, hun," I said, nudging Pietro so he'd let me go. "But I really do need to cook – and of course, I'll feed you too. How does chicken fried rice sound?"

Pietro blurred into motion again, stopping me in my tracks as his blur obscured my vision. Moments later, the ingredients were cut, my frying pan was on the stove, the dinner table was set, and Pietro sat there with fork in one hand and knife in the other.

And best of all, he'd gotten all of the table and kitchenware from the meat cabinets, not the dairy ones.

I could only shake my head at his antics as I turned on the stove, got oil in the pan, and set about waiting for it to heat up. Ten to fifteen minutes of prep work, done in thirty seconds.

Best kitchen assistant. Ever.

Sunday, June 24, 1990

Joshua called me on Saturday morning to let me know he managed to book me an appointment with his adjunct prof at 8am Monday, and to bring my office computer with me. Which complicated things, because an IBM PS/2 weighed twenty pounds, and was bulky enough that I couldn't just throw it into a backpack to carry. Which resulted in me scheduling a car to pick me up at 7am, because Manhattan traffic was a bitch and a half.

But that was a concern for tomorrow Noa. Today Noa had an errand to run – namely, getting all of my motions for continuances in the postbox closest to their respective courthouses, so they would arrive with more than enough time to spare. The various judges and opposing counsels I'd had to inform about the goings-on had all been very understanding, thankfully. But while that did give me leeway, I didn't want to have to actually use their good favor, which meant making sure everything was on time.

Running around Manhattan and Brooklyn on a Sunday worked up an appetite, though, which had me dipping into Kaplan's Diner for a pick-me-up around one o'clock.

"Noa, honey!" Rebecca Kaplan, the best deli and diner proprietress in all of Manhattan (and I would fight people on this!), bustled over to the door practically the instant I walked in. "Oh it's like we haven't seen you in forever, where have you been! I swear to God, you work too hard, never have time to feed yourself, you're all skin and bone still!"

I couldn't help but giggle a little.

"You know me, always seven irons in the fire," I said, eyeing the menu. "How are things? Heard you had a close encounter nearby."

"Ach, you know how those men in tights are," Rebecca said, waving off my concern. "Always busting things up, leaving their schmutz around. But we had ol' Ben Grimm come in the other day, got a great big thing of rugelach. Haven't been able to make enough since!" I shared a laugh with her at that; hell, I couldn't blame people. Kaplan's rugelach was fantastic. "Anyway, what're you havin', the usual?"

"Actually, how's the kreplach?" I asked. I could go for some of that right now.

"It's fresh!"

"Well, put me down for a bowl of matzah ball with kreplach," I said.

"Noodles, matzah, kreplach, coming right up!" The bell attached to the door rang as it opened, and Rebecca looked over my shoulder at whoever came in. "Be right with ya, hun!"

"Of course," a familiar voice said from behind me. I blinked, and turned to see none other than Erik Lehnsherr himself doffing his hat, once again dressed rather warm for the weather outside. "Afternoon, dear girl."

"How is it you always know when I'm here?" I asked Erik with a raised eyebrow.

"I am quite good at what I do," he replied without missing a beat, then looked over my shoulder at Rebecca. "Madam, if I could trouble you to put in another of what the young lady is having, and I shall cover our bills."

Rebecca looked between the two of us, and then turned a rather questioning gaze on me.

"Noa, darling, I wouldn't have thought!"

"He's a family friend," I said, my voice deadpan as I cut that line of thought off at the knees.

"From the midwest?" she asked.

"Europe," I clarified, with a meaningful shrug of my left shoulder. Understanding dawned instantly, and Rebecca fixed her smile back on.

"Alright, you two find a seat," she said while handing me a table card with the order number on it. "I'll have your food out to you shortly!"

"Thanks again Rebecca!"

With that, I led the way to my favorite booth in the place – second from the back wall, with a window view, and a straight shot at the small TV set the Kaplans kept in the corner and tuned to the local ball game whenever it was on. The Yankees were out of town for a road series, so the game on display was the Mets, thankfully. Let's go Mets, all about the Mets, gotta have them Mets.

"So," I led off as I set my purse down in the booth and slid in, Erik taking a seat across from me. "What's the occasion."

"Can I not simply visit a friend?" Erik asked. I leaned forward with elbows on the table, laced my fingers, and rested my chin atop them, my silence the only answer Erik received. "I am allowed to show concern, my dear."

"And you already sent Pietro round," I said with a raised eyebrow. "Although, I should thank you for that. It was nice having a handy Sabbath goy for once."

"Your adherence is quite adorable—"

"Here we are!" Rebecca Kaplan rolled up to our table, twin bowls of piping-hot Jewish Penicillin in hand, loaded to the very brim with chicken, noodles, veggies, matzah balls, and kreplach. It smelled absolutely incredible, and one of these days I would have to ask how they got such large matzah balls that stayed light and fluffy – my own go-to recipe couldn't keep them so airy without staying small. "Enjoy you two!"

"My thanks," Erik said with a nod, and Rebecca walked away with a titter. A few shakes of salt found its way into his bowl before even tasting, but I held my tongue; after all, I went for several shakes of black pepper myself. "As I was going to say, I had been meaning to stop by regardless of Pietro's assurances. And for a different reason than your 'current events', Noa."

"Uh-huh," I said. "So?"

"Tell me your thoughts," Erik said, in between spoonfuls of soup.

"You'll have to be more specific," I said, taking a bite of kreplach myself to give myself more time to answer. Mm, though, Rebecca was right, the kreplach was really good today, wow. "About what, exactly?"

"I believe that in this instance, the correct phrase would be 'about whom'," Erik said with a chuckle. "And the who, my dear, is Charles. Tell me. Is he still all I said he was?"

Oh. Oooooh. Oh, I can't believe I'd forgotten! With all of the hullabaloo this past week, it had slipped my mind that Erik would want to know about my conversation with his old friend.

"The impression I got was that… well, that he's a good man," I said, not mincing words. "Very intelligent, to an almost intimidating level. Well read, well spoken, conscious of his audience." I sighed lightly. "Though for all he shared about helping people through tough times, I can't help but wonder what manner of hardships he's actually experienced himself. Obviously there is his physical condition," I gestured towards my own legs as I said this, "but he also has sufficient finances that it's less impactful than it would be for most. At the same time, though, it probably helps him empathize with other differently abled people."

"It is one of the specialties of his school," Erik said with a nod. "Even the residences are fully accessible to one of his condition."

"Have you been there?" I asked, slightly suspicious, but Erik shook his head.

"Not I," he clarified. "Raven. On at least two occasions, she has visited, disguised as the parent of a disabled child, searching for a school."

"And she didn't get caught," I said, a bit of disbelief leaking into my tone.

"No." Erik tapped his spoon on his bowl, and cut up his matzah ball as he continued. "Despite his prodigious talents, Charles is careful in their use. He would not so much as attempt to brush the mere surface of one's mind without permission. 'Tis a lesson learned from accidentally partaking of another's trauma, of witnessing horrors for which he could hold no context."

I nodded, processing the multiple layers there. Reading between the lines… Professor Xavier used to hold far less discretion over the use of his telepathy, until a chance encounter with the darkest corners of Erik's mind taught him otherwise.

Given the depravity Erik had survived… I didn't even have to guess what memories taught the Professor to be more careful.

"That does explain why you weren't worried about him finding out you were still around," I said. "Although. You know, you never said why you don't want the Professor to know about you."

Erik didn't answer immediately. He looked up, a strange emotion in his eyes that I couldn't quite place, spoon held limply between his fingers.

"... Charles was her godfather." Erik's brow furrowed, the skin around his eyes tight as his eyes narrowed. "I trusted him with the safety of my child. And I still do, because… I have another daughter, in Charles' care."

I looked up.

"I had a tryst with her mother during the late seventies – the revelry after a successful hunt. I put it out of my mind, and thought nothing more of it, until I felt something, five years ago." Erik's spoon stabbed into the kreplach. "A plane crash. And a child in the middle of it, completely unharmed. Protected in a manner ever so familiar."

"She had your…" I trailed off, not voicing the last word. I just waggled my fingers in question, to which Erik nodded.

"Once I found her mother's body, and remembered that night, I knew," he said. "I knew she was mine. But after – after Anya, I… I couldn't…" Erik's spoon shook in his hand.

And so did mine, as the TV set in the corner fuzzed out.

I reached my right hand across the table, and Erik took it gently in his left. He closed his eyes, his breathing long and slow. The rattling of our spoons ceased, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the TV go back to normal.

"My presence… being close to me took everything from Anya," Erik said, looking at his grainy reflection in the back of his spoon. "It is safer for Lorna that I not be near her. But with her mother and stepfather gone… the only one I trusted was Charles."

"Even after you two's falling out?" I asked softly.

"Especially after," Erik said. "I have zero doubt Charles knows she is mine. And even so, by his side is the best place for her. The safest. The… the happiest."

"Charles asked me to host some seminars at his school," I said suddenly, drawing Erik's gaze. "To make sure none of his students wind up in St. John's shoes. When I'm there, if I see her, do you… should I…" I trailed off, unsure how to phrase it. What was I even asking, anyway? Hey, do you want me to talk to your daughter, who you've been a deadbeat dad towards and probably doesn't even know you're alive, and find out how she's doing for you?

"No," he said. "The less involvement I have, the better. One daughter has already paid the price for my existence. Simply… simply see that she is happy," he said. "Let me know that I made the right choice."

Nothing else needed to be said. I understood.

God help me, but I understood.

Monday, June 25, 1990

So, despite initially being told that Joshua's adjunct professor had his office in the same building as Merrill Lynch, that was… not quite accurate. His professor's office was a couple of blocks south.

Specifically, it was overlooking Rockefeller Plaza.

I had absolutely zero clue how Joshua knew this place as "the spot with the Merrill Lynch building", and not as Rockefeller Plaza. That was a question for another time, such as when I wasn't wheeling twenty plus pounds of computer and whatever padding I could give the damn thing around in a suitcase.

"You know you're not getting out of answering this one," I told a rather embarrassed Joshua, who was shifting back and forth in the other corner of the elevator. He had a wheeled suitcase and a backpack – the suitcase with both of his work computers, the backpack with Sophie's. "I mean, really Joshua. I'm a Midwesterner, and even I know it as Rockefeller Plaza."

"I 'unno," Joshua shrugged, his cheeks red. "Dad always brought us to his meetings at Merrill Lynch, and then we'd go across the street after. Guess I just remember it as Merrill Lynch first cause we always went there first."

Hmm. Yeah, I could see that.

"Fair enough," I said with a shrug, as the elevator dinged onto the eighteenth floor. "Which way?"

"Last door on the left." Joshua pulled his suitcase out of the elevator, and I followed him, silently bemoaning the nuisance of pulling a suitcase across a carpeted hallway (while wearing heels!) before he stopped me and took the suitcase from my hands. While I was thankful for the assistance, times like this reinforced just how annoying it could sometimes be when you were as small as I was.

Most of the nameplates beside the doors we passed were the exact kind of fare I expected to find from a building looking out onto Rockefeller Plaza. Accounting firms, a couple boutique law firms, an architecture firm, a high-end interior designer (whose name I only recognized because it got featured in the Bugle a couple months back). The door at the end of the hall, however, bucked the trend.

Lachland MacIntosh

Enterprise Computing Solutions, LLC

"Do Not Mention The Fruit"

I couldn't help but do a double take at the unexpected quote on the nameplate, along with the utter lack of attribution. Was it a note to people who were going to hire him? Why would… wait, no, duh, Noa. Stop thinking too hard. MacIntosh.

It was self-explanatory… God, I was much too used to thinking in circles, or assuming everything was more than it was at first glance.

Joshua knocked on the door while I was busy with my introspective self-castigation, and I wasn't paying enough attention to catch what was said from behind the door. A good fifteen seconds later, the lock turned, the door opened, and I looked up at the man of the hour.

… and up. And up.

And then I had to take a step back, because I physically could not look any higher up, and I still hadn't gotten to the man's face.

"Och, laddie!" The absolute giant in front of me extended a hand and clapped Joshua on the shoulder, whereupon I realized that his hand was probably bigger than my head. "Ye're early agin!"

"If you're early you're on time!" Joshua said, parroting something he'd absolutely heard both me and his father say time and time again. "Professor, this is my boss, Noa Schaefer," Joshua said, turning to me. "Her computers are the ones acting funny."

The giant stepped out of his office, and I had to take another step back just to keep his face in my field of view.

Lachland MacIntosh was an absolutely enormous specimen. I was normally bad at guessing heights, but at this distance, I could say with confidence that he was probably pushing seven feet tall, and was half again that wide. The man was built like a lumberjack by way of dad bod, clearly visible muscle straining at sleeves that would otherwise have still been baggy, even on a man his size, and the beginnings of a middle-aged gut sat slightly heavy on his front. Various doodads and knicknacks stuck out of the pockets of his cargo shorts, few of which I recognized beyond the wire cutter, and my mind only now caught up to the fact that I'd heard the distinctive thwick-thwack of flip-flops when he stepped out of the office.

Looking Lachland in the eye, I saw an incredibly cheery smile, with better teeth than I would have expected from a native of the British isles. He had a big, bristly beard of red hair, flecked through with small bits of gray, and long, bushy ginger hair held back with a tie at the base of his neck.

If Santa Claus were Scottish, I wanted to believe that this was what he'd look like.

"Pleasure to meet'cha," Lachland MacIntosh said as he extended a hand in my direction. I took it with a smile while mentally stamping down hard on the shock when my hand was barely big enough to grab two fingers on his. "Ye the one the lad says is havin' a mite of computer problems?"

It spoke very strongly to the man's professionalism that while I could still hear the thick Scottish brogue trying to creep into his words, Lachland managed to speak in perfectly comprehensible, if heavily accented, English. Given what I'd heard when he greeted Joshua, that had to be something that came with practice.

"I am," I said with a nod. "Though Joshua knows the nature of the problem better than I do."

"Well don' just stand there! Come in, come in!"

Well, an invitation was an invitation. I followed both Lachland and Joshua into his office space, and took it in.

My initial first impression was that the contents of this space would almost quintuple in value in the next few decades. A shelf along the wall with the door held at least one of what had to be every single non-Apple personal computer sold yet, though I counted three different Commodore 64's among their number. Beside each device was a large folder labeled with the computer's model number, the year of release, operating system, and a few other things I couldn't quite recognize. It was meticulously organized in chronological order, even if the handwriting on the folders was somewhat messy.

Hanging from a wall was a large tartan, which I could only assume was for clan MacIntosh. Next to the tartan hung a Scottish flag, and next to that was a set of framed commendations with IBM's logo on them. Accompanying those were photographs of Lachland with multiple other, much smaller men, some in what were clearly lab spaces, others outdoors, one directly next to what had to be a sign outside of IBM's headquarters.

A closer look revealed just how much emphasis there was on IBM. And suddenly, the quote on the front to not mention "The Fruit" made so much sense.

"Alrigh', lad." Lachland sat himself down on what looked to me like a recliner, and wheeled his desk into position in front of it. "Tell me the details."

And so Joshua did. He said pretty much exactly what he'd told me: that the computers were acting funny when connected to dial-up, that trying to figure out what was wrong just made them crash, and that comparing with an identical model didn't show any hardware issues.

"Hmm…" Lachland stroked his beard. "Give me one o' them."

"Right, give me a minute!"

Joshua kneeled down next to the backpack he brought and unzipped it, pulling out the IBM PS/2 Sophie used at her desk. Alongside that, he pulled out the power brick, and a cord for a monitor. He deposited the computer tower directly into Lachland's waiting hand, whereupon the man set it next to the four (four!) other computers on his desk, and waited for Joshua to plug it in. Then Lachland hit the power button, and he gave a brief explanation as we waited on the multi-minute boot cycle.

"So, yer problem is happenin' when ya connected to dial-up, eh?" he asked, to which Joshua nodded. "So what we're gon' do is fake a proper dial-up connection, 'n connect the computer to a small local usenet. This," Lachland rested a hand atop yet another computer in his office, one that I'd tuned out, "is set up ter look like a larger network, and will return errors suggestin' full packet loss."

"So in layman's terms," I said, turning that over in my head, "you're going to tell the computer it has a full dial-up connection, and watch what it does?"

"Exactly! Jus' need to get this… oi, lad, plug in tha' line for me, aye?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, on it!" Joshua took the offered phone cord from Lachland's hand and plugged it into the back of Sophie's computer. Following that, Lachland entered a few keystrokes, and clicked a few things on a second mouse he'd procured from… somewhere, I hadn't been paying attention.

Then, with an incredibly dramatic press of the Enter key, the computer began to sing us the song of its people.

Dial-up was a wonder for the time, but it had its downsides. One of those was that it used up your phone line, which was why I was so insistent on having multiple in the office. That way, when internet use became more prominent, I wouldn't have to worry about not being able to answer the phone while also running a search on Lexis.

The other major downside was the noise. Dial-up had a very distinctive sound, because your computer was quite literally dialing a phone number. The phone line, and what it could transmit, was your vector for data. Did I know why they made that sound? No. But it was distinctive.

"Alrighty, jus' about there – hmm."

Lachland's previously jovial expression faded away as he stared at the screen. His fingers reached down to a drawer and pulled out a pair of reading glasses on a lanyard, the type that separates in the middle, and he pulled them on.

"C'mon lad, ya ken what's wrong wit' ye…"

More keystrokes and mouse clicks, even a couple of taps on the monitor and PC tower resulted as Lachland's brow furrowed further and further. This was followed by more murmuring from Lachland, more keystrokes and mouse clicks, and the process repeated itself.

A couple of minutes passed before Lachland stood up and unplugged the phone cable from the back of Sophie's computer, then turned it off and unplugged everything else. Then he stood up from his chair, walked over to the computer he'd apparently set up as a dummy usenet, and turned on a monitor connected to it.

"I ken wha's happening 'ere," he said, what I could only assume as a bit of his Scottish brogue slipping into his words. "Aye, I seen it before. Ye got some calls ter make, lass."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Calls to who?"

Lachland gestured for me to walk over, and pointed at the monitor. I stepped closer, staying far enough back that I could still read the monitor, even with contacts in.

"Four months back, a computer outta the Baxter Building," he said, mouse cursor over a line of white text on a black box. "Seven months, Stark Industries. Eleven months, Bristol Myers Squibb. Thirteen months, Nasdaq. Aye, the list goes on," Lachland said. He shut the monitor off, and handed the computer tower back to us.

"You've seen this exact thing before, then?" I asked, just to be sure. "At least five times?"

"Aye," he nodded. "A virus, ya ken. Sends information over dial-up. It dinnae send everythin', not all at once. A bit at a time."

A computer virus. One he'd seen on at least four other computers that he'd mentioned.

There was only one through line I could reasonably think of that connected all of these.

"It's corporate espionage," Joshua said, beating me to it.

"Aye, lad," Lachland said with a grave nod. "We know what it is. Just not where it came from."

"We do now," I said, realizing that things had just gotten very, very complicated. Something told me that today was going to be a very long day. I unzipped my briefcase and pulled out my wallet. "Mr. MacIntosh, if I leave you a business card and contact information to forward on, can you get in contact with each of your clients whose computers have been infected with this virus, and have them contact me?"

"Aye, that I can." Lachland extended a hand, and I deposited both my business card and one of Sam Lieberman's in there.

"The top one is mine, but the bottom one is who I want them to call later today," I said. "I leave the computers with you for now, yes?"

"Until ye think it's all sorted, lass," he said.

"Right, thank you." I put my wallet back in my briefcase, zipped it up, and hung the strap back on my shoulder. "Joshua, can you get everything sorted here, and just make sure you fax a copy to me later? Invoice, notes, all of that?"

"Of course," he said with a confused nod. "Where are you headed?"

"Uptown a tad," I said. "Central Park West." Once I clarified, Joshua's mouth opened in a silent "ah", and realization came to light in his eyes. "Mr. MacIntosh, it was a pleasure to meet you and I'm sorry to cut this short so abruptly, but time is of the essence and I need to get many balls rolling," I said, extending a hand towards him to shake.

"Think nothin' of it," he said, taking my hand with characteristic gentleness before shooing me out with a wave. "Now off with ye! Get!"

I gave a quick smile as I turned and left, my thoughts racing.

The elevator back down to street level felt like it moved at a glacial pace, but it finally dinged open, and I moved to the side of the building's reception desk, where the payphones were. I pulled it off its cradle, slid in a quarter, and dialed a number I knew by heart.

"Lieberman here," a bored, wonderfully familiar voice answered. "Make it quick, I'm busy."

"Well I need you to stop being busy and clear your schedule, Sam," I told him. I could hear the creak of his chair, and imagined him sitting up straight in my mind's eye. "The big one just hit, I need all hands on deck."

"Give it to me straight, Noa," Sam said, all traces of boredom gone from his voice. "What am I looking at here?"

"You were absolutely right," I told him. "I barely even got to take the screws to him, and he fucked up, Sam. He didn't just fuck up hard, I think he's just screwed the whole kit and caboodle."

"Details Noa, details!" Sam cajoled.

"Corporate espionage," I said. "So brazen and on such a massive scale that I don't think there is any coming back from this."

There was dead silence from the other end. Then, I heard the sound of desk drawers opening, a pad of paper dropped on a desk, and the sound of the top coming off of Sam's favorite expensive pen.

"The Palm at noon," he said. "I'll set the table for four. Call your friend with the feds, call your buddy at the Bugle. And Noa? Be careful."

The line clicked dead. I hung up the payphone.

Then I picked the handset back up, slid in another quarter, and dialed another number.

Ten hours. That's how long it took to get home that night. That's how bad it all blew up.

I called Cate. I called Jameson. All it took was the right two words to get both of them to drop everything and show up.

A brief conversation over lunch turned into a much longer discussion in a conference room at LL&L, complete with both Lewin and Loeb trying to have me removed from the premises until Sam shoved it down their throats how idiotic that would have been with John Jonah Jameson himself right fucking there.

The calls started coming in around three in the afternoon. General counsel for far too many companies on the S&P 500 all walked in around four. Chinese takeout arrived somewhere between six and seven, and the very beginnings of details firmed up enough around eight that the high-end discussions could give way to me calling Ben Parker and giving him an extremely abbreviated summary of the shenanigans we were dealing with.

Finally, at around ten-thirty at night, I exited the limousine in front of my building. I opened the door, walked up the two flights of stairs to my condo, tapping the mezuzah on my doorframe—

The mezuzah zapped me.

I flinched, reflexively kissing my fingers regardless of the shock, and stared at the mezuzah. It was glowing a dull yellow.

"Red means something inside is actively dangerous," I remember Stephen telling me about a year ago, after he set up the spell. "Orange means something inside has a chance to become dangerous – think someone who came intending to talk, but they have a gun. Yellow means it's not a threat, but it's something or someone you don't know."

Somebody I didn't know was inside my home. Not a threat – but I hadn't ever had the magic trigger like this before. I didn't know if it operated off of whether it was a threat to Stephen, or a threat to me, and those two metrics were wildly different.

I swallowed hard and, with shaking hands, unzipped my briefcase, then unlocked the door. The mystically augmented mezuzah Stephen gave me floated out from my briefcase and over my shoulder, the Hebrew lettering glowing a soft white.

The lights were on in my condo. I heard the sound of a baseball game playing on TV. The lights were off in the front hall.

"H-hello?" I called out.

"In here," a familiar voice called out, and I almost sagged in relief. It was Erik. "You had unexpected company. I handled it."

"Unexpected company?" I closed the door behind me, keeping my heels on no matter how badly my feet wanted them off after how long this day had been, and walked down the hall towards my living room. "What do you mean unexpected – oh."

Erik sat on my armchair, a beer in one hand, a small cylinder of metal floating over the other.

And along the back of my sofa lay the unconscious bodies of three large men, dressed in balaclavas, bulky jackets, and heavy gloves. A kitchen towel spread out along the floor held the implements they'd come with – tire irons, sledgehammers, and several wickedly sharp knives.

"H-how long have they been knocked out?" I asked, concerned. I knew from litigating enough wrongful death cases that a person being knocked out for longer than fifteen to thirty seconds generally meant they were a dead man walking. And these three men showed no signs of rousing soon.

"Not knocked out," Erik said, pausing to take a sip of his beer. "Asleep. It is a small trick I learned from Charles, actually." The rod of metal spun in his hand. "The right spot and a little interference, and they are sound asleep. Until they are well rested, or physically woken up. I would say they have…" He looked at the clock on my wall. "Between two and four hours."

"Okay," I said with a sigh, sagging with relief that I wasn't about to have three corpses on my floor. "Okay, alright, uh… okay." My mind was racing a mile a minute. I needed to… what did I need to do? Call the police? Call Cate? Call Sam too, maybe Jameson? Wait, shit – if Osborn had sent thugs to my home, what about the Parkers? If Peter was home they would be fine, but what if he wasn't? I needed to call, make sure—

"Noa."

My attention turned to Erik, who was now standing up next to me, and with one hand on my shoulder. I put one of my hands, and when I raised the other, saw it was shaking. God, I was a bit of a mess right now, wasn't I? There was just too much to do, I needed… what?

"Noa." Erik turned me to face him. "Before you call the authorities, these men need to be restrained."

Restrained? I thought to myself. Okay, they need to be tied up. So, with something like a phone cord… but my phones were plugged in, and my cords definitely weren't sturdy enough for that. I needed—

A thought crossed my mind, and I felt my cheeks grow hot.

"Noa?" Erik asked.

"Stay right here," I said.

With Erik's confused stare at my back as I walked to the bedroom, uncaring of the fact that heavy footsteps in these heels might damage my floors. I opened up my closet, reached all the way into the back corner, pulled what I'd thought of out of a bag I kept back there, and bundled it up.

Then I walked back out to the living room, and tossed about thirty yards of slightly faded red silk rope into Erik's hands.

Erik looked down at the rope.

Then he looked back at me.

"Don't you dare so much as say even a single word about this to anyone, Erik Lehnsherr," I told him as I crossed my arms, my face growing hot with embarrassment as he unwound the rope, an amused smile slowly crossing his features before I couldn't look him in the eye anymore. "D-do you understand me? Not. One. Word."

Erik's laughter was the only response I received.