31

Chapter 31

I, Panacea

Part Thirty-One: Tattletale Saves the World (Part One)

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: This chapter got way bigger than expected. Here's the first half. Whee.]

Tattletale

"Good point." Lisa gave Amy a searching look, picking out a few subtle tells that the biokinetic probably didn't even know she had. "Though I can see you still don't actually like the plan."

"I'm allowed to," Amy said defensively. "I'll still do it, though."

"Because, like Alec, you don't want your everything blown up." Lisa smirked; she felt she'd earned it. "Also, because you don't feel like being ground zero for a Scion tantrum."

Amy rolled her eyes, while Brian widened his. "Mike says once was bad enough."

"That's because he was too busy sniping at alternate-me to actually pay attention to any kind of plan she might have come up with," Lisa said with absolute certainty. She'd met people like that before.

She'd also reduced them to total sobbing wrecks with a few well-chosen barbs, so there was that too.

"He's saying 'maybe', but in a way that makes me wonder," Amy reported after a few seconds. "Though he also says he had you working alongside Accord and Uber, and bitching about it the whole time."

Brian nodded. "That bit, I can totally believe."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "Well, he clearly had a way too elaborate plan that needed a lot more working parts than mine does. Tell me I'm wrong."

"He says he's taking the Fifth." Amy gave Lisa a disbelieving look. "How did you know? I thought your power didn't work on him." They headed back through from the kitchen area into the living room, with Brian following behind.

"It doesn't." Lisa grinned. "I just know how guys think."

"Right." Amy dusted her hands off. "Riley, are you done yet?"

"Almost." Riley ran the brush down Angelica's back legs, then handed it back to Rachel. "Thanks for letting me help."

"Welcome," grunted Rachel. "Dogs like you."

"I'm glad to hear that." Climbing to her feet, she turned to Alec. "I will be back, and I will beat your skinny ass at that stupid game. Just saying."

"Yeah, yeah, sure thing." Alec yawned theatrically. "I'll be waiting."

As Riley was putting her shoes back on, Amy turned to Lisa. "So, who were we going to talk to first? Blasto or Bakuda?"

Lisa considered their options. "I'd much rather talk to Blasto outside his lab, once he's had time to sweat a little. So … yeah, Bakuda."

"Let's do this, then." Amy cleared her throat. "Doorway to Bakuda's holding cell."

Brian and Alec stared as the portal soundlessly opened in the middle of the room.

"Well, I'll be damned," Brian muttered. "You can do that too now?"

"Just don't give that ability to Lisa," Alec snarked, without looking up from the screen. "She's already smug enough as it is—ow!" He yelped and grabbed his ear where Lisa had just flicked it.

"I don't need it," she informed him with great satisfaction. "I'm awesome just the way I am." Then she stepped through the portal, followed by Amy and Riley.

Brockton Bay PRT Holding Cells

Bakuda (aka Alice Takawara)

Everything hurt, even things that Alice didn't think had nerve endings. The pain had been gradually decreasing since she woke up in the holding cell, but not fast enough, and not uniformly. Not for the first time, she cursed her own capability when it came to constructing a pain bomb. That had been a singularly unpleasant experience.

Armsmaster (or someone working at Armsmaster's direction) had been dismayingly thorough when rendering her harmless. When she came to, she had none of the carefully devised backups that had been previously concealed on her person. Worse, her captors hadn't even been careless enough to leave innocuous items like soap, shampoo or even toothpaste lying around.

Damn, what I could do to this place with a tube of toothpaste …

Her hair was kept to a half-inch crop, and there was a complete toss of her cell and full-body search every three days, to locate and remove anything she might be hoarding. And so far, they had found everything. It was considerably irritating.

Staring at the floor, attempting to devise some way to get something past the guards that would let her get out of there, she gradually became aware of voices outside her cell door. This wasn't usual; normally, the only time she saw or heard anyone was during the cell checks. Unusual meant things weren't going to protocol, and that meant she had a chance to do something about her circumstances.

"Yes, we are going to be speaking to Bakuda," said a teenage girl, sweetly but with an edge of steel to her voice. "Yes, you will be letting us in there. If you'd checked your messages like I told you, you'd see we already have clearance."

Another voice broke in; this was one of her guards. "Uh, yeah. Here it is. We're supposed to let them through."

"But that one can't be more than thirteen!"

"I'm twelve." This was a younger girl. "Doesn't matter. I go where Panacea goes."

Panacea? What the fuck is Panacea coming to see me for?

After some more grumbling by the guards, the outer door opened, and three teenage girls—or rather, two teens and one tween—were ushered in. Panacea wasn't, as Alice had expected, in costume. Instead, she wore a T-shirt and jeans, the same as the other two.

Alice had never met Panacea up until now, and probably wouldn't have recognised her without the heads-up, but once she was clued in, it was obvious. The healer had a haunted look in her eyes that told anyone in the know that she'd been at the sharp end too many times. It was mirrored by the younger girl, while the blonde with the green eyes seemed to view the world as her personal target for sharp wit.

None of which explained why they were there.

As soon as the door behind them shut, the one blocking entry into the cell proper opened up. Panacea stepped forward with the other two following behind. She gave Alice a once-over as she entered the cell, with a gaze far more penetrating than anyone that age should've been able to muster.

"Bakuda," she said bluntly. "You're in a ton of shit. If you hadn't already figured that out, of course."

"Wait, wait," murmured the green-eyed girl. "Are we already doing good-cop-bad-cop?"

"Fuck the good-cop-bad-cop play," Alice retorted. "What do you want from me? Because nobody gets in with this kind of clearance to play stupid games."

"Before we get to that," Panacea said, folding her arms, "I did want to ask if you knew how bad things were for you."

Alice grimaced. She'd been trying not to think it through, but … yeah, no matter how she folded it, it was going to be pretty bad. "I was going to try for a plea bargain."

"The DA's already knocked that off the table and into the trashcan," the wannabe good-cop said. "Oh, we've met before, very briefly. Tattletale. I'm the one who suckered you into that trap, and I'm the next best thing to psychic. I know what you're thinking before you do."

"She's also irritating, but we work around that because when she's right, she's very right." Panacea gave Alice a hard stare. "You're never going to get a plea bargain. You put bombs in the heads of schoolkids. If you ever walk into a courtroom, there's exactly one place you'll be going once you're out of here."

Tattletale put her hand up alongside her mouth, as though she were passing on a secret. "Spoilers," she said in a stage whisper. "It kind of rhymes with Murdercage."

"And she totally deserves it," the younger kid said, staring at her with eyes that were far too old for her face. "Even now, she's not feeling any kind of remorse. She thinks she should've gotten away with it."

Alice tried to meet the kid's gaze, but couldn't. It was creepy as fuck, and chills kept running up and down her back. "Yeah, well, I should've."

Tattletale smirked. "If it wasn't for us meddling kids and our little dogs, huh?"

Panacea closed her eyes for a moment, as though in pain, and shook her head. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Alice. "Ignore them. Here's the deal. You get to have your plea-bargain and go into stock-standard ordinary supermax, against the protests of the DA."

"He was planning a run for the state Senate, on the strength of having put you and Lung into the Birdcage," Tattletale added mischievously. "Now he's going to have to settle for just Lung."

Playing for time, Alice looked at the kid, who shrugged as if to say, I have nothing to add.

It sounded plausible, even probable. In Alice's limited time in Brockton Bay, Tattletale's rep had basically been 'smartass bitch who knows more than she should'. If anyone was plugged into what was going on behind the scenes, it was her.

"Okay, assuming all that's true, what do I have to do to get this plea-bargain?" Alice was definitely willing to entertain a deal, though she did want to know all the fine print before she signed up for it. Not doing that was how she'd ended up in Brockton Bay in the first place.

Panacea smiled for the first time, but it wasn't a happy smile or nice one. "It's very simple. We want you to build us a few bombs."

Alice snorted and rolled her eyes. "I'm going to need a lot more detail than that. Just saying."

Tattletale ticked points off her fingers. "One, able to be launched from a howitzer tube. Two, has enhanced effects against anything even remotely lifelike it encounters. Three …" She paused, looking at Panacea. "What was that thing he said about the size of the explosion?"

Panacea rolled her eyes. "Let's say, hypothetically, we don't actually need the planet anymore."

"Whoa, okay, no." Alice put her hands up and leaned back into the wall. "I'm already Birdcage bound. I don't need a kill order on top of that." She didn't even want to know who 'he' was.

"No kill order. This is not a trap." Panacea eyed her for a moment, then sighed and looked back at Tattletale. "You're our villain whisperer. Why am I not getting through to her?"

"Well, duh." Tattletale's smirk widened. "You're using the wrong words. In villain-speak, 'this is not a trap' translates as, 'this is totally a trap, dumbass'. Also, you're not offering to pay her."

"We're keeping her out of the Birdcage," Panacea protested.

Tattletale rolled her eyes. "Ah, yes. Holding back a punishment. That's not a positive. That's a lack of a negative. Not the same thing."

"I never got paid," the kid remarked.

"That's because you were Mastered all to hell and gone." Tattletale turned her attention to Alice. "Listen up. Villain to villain, they're on the level here. You're not the only Tinker we're looking at for this, but you're the best one for the job. I figure we could secure you a nice tidy pension once you get out of supermax, where you never have to earn money ever again, and can spend your retirement making small, fun bombs for shits and giggles. And in return for this, all you have to do is make us three or four mega-fuckoff doomsday devices, absolutely guaranteed to shred everything—especially anything living—within a thousand miles or so."

Though by no means convinced, Alice was more than a little intrigued. She raised a finger. "I have questions."

Tattletale grinned and ticked off points on her fingers. "No, we're not going to use them here on Earth; no, we're not going to tell you where they're going to be used; yes, our authority does come directly from the Chief Director of the PRT; and no, I don't know of any other bomb Tinkers, but if you decide to be unreasonable, we'll simply have to make do. You were just our first port of call."

Alice put her finger down again. "Then I'm going to need a document signed by the Chief Director saying that I'm allowed to build this shit. Also, access to my workshop, and all the tools I need to build stuff."

"You'll get it." Panacea tilted her head. "I notice you're not negotiating to get Lung released."

"Fuck, no. He's the reason I'm in this fuckin' cell."

"Good point." The healer put her hand out. "Nice doing business with you."

Reflexively, Alice shook it, then she paused and gave Panacea a hard look. "Wait, did you just use your powers to make sure I wasn't planning to pull some tricky shit or something?"

Panacea stared right back. "Yes. Wouldn't you?"

Tattletale chuckled. "She's got you there."

Alice had to admit, it was true.

Boston PRT Interrogation Room

Blasto

Rey Andino had no idea what was going on. He'd been chilling in his hideout, not even prepping to do any crime (yet), and Alexandria had kicked the front doors in and taken him into custody. It hadn't even been a fight. Fights involved being able to hit back.

Now he was sitting on a cold hard metal seat, handcuffed to a cold hard metal table, wondering where his due process had vanished to. Though he was certain there were people behind the mirror on the other side of the room (it wasn't even a cliché by now) nobody had spoken to him since he'd been secured in the room, much less asked him any questions.

When the door lock clicked open, he didn't know whether to be overjoyed or terrified. It had been made quite clear to him some time ago that if he ever made self-replicating creations, there was a pre-signed kill order that would go into effect immediately. Is that what this is about? Have they got the idea that I've done something like that? He hadn't, but he also knew how hard it was to prove a negative.

The three people who walked in only served to raise his level of confusion. Three girls; two teenagers and a kid. A vaguely familiar frizzy haired brunette, a blonde with the smuggest look he'd ever seen on someone who wasn't high as fuck, and the aforementioned kid; all of whom looking at him like they were the adults and he was the child here.

The smug blonde cleared her throat. "I suppose you're wondering why we had you brought here."

It was absolutely a line, and he knew damn well she was winding him up, but he had to bite anyway. "Okay, who the hell are you, and why am I even in here? And where the fuck are my Miranda rights?"

"Introductions are in order, then." The blonde pointed to herself. "Tattletale, Thinker extraordinaire." A gesture to the frizzy-haired girl. "You may have heard of Panacea. And this is Riley. She's our muscle."

Riley meandered around the table, stopping close enough to reach out and touch him if she felt like it. "'Sup."

This was weird, and getting weirder by the second. Whoever this 'Riley' really was, her steady gaze was freaking him out. "What the fuck is going on? Why am I here? I wasn't even doing anything!"

"No, no, that's true." Tattletale leaned against the table, hands clasped in front of her, while Panacea took the seat across from Rey. "You've committed no crimes recently, and in fact you're not officially under arrest. You're just in custody, for the specific purpose of listening to what we've got to say."

"Specifically," Panacea went on, as though they'd rehearsed this, "whether or not you'd be able to clone a specific person from genetic material. Or rather, make a whole bunch of clones of the same guy."

"Uh, sure, I guess," he said doubtfully. "I'd need more cloning tubes, though."

"Assume they'll be supplied on demand." Tattletale steepled her fingers in front of her. "Can you see any problems with doing it?"

He frowned, knowing that he was going to screw things up but not seeing any way out of it. "Yeah, two. First, if you're trying to clone a celebrity for, I dunno, your own private shirtless softball team, the clones won't be the real guy. They won't have his memories, for one thing. And if I'm cloning from a cape, it'll be even dicier. Without specific circumstances, they'll be unlikely to end up with anywhere near the same powers."

Tattletale's grin reminded him of a shark. A friendly shark, one that had decided not to eat him quite yet. "That's okay. We've got that covered."

A Small Roadside Café in the Midwest

Cranial

Not for the first time, Lil wondered exactly what they were doing here. The message had come to Toybox, filtered through a series of cutouts designed to strip out any tracking software. It had been simple: Job for Cranial and Dodge. Face to face meeting required first. Your choice of location. Not overly surprising in itself, but the signature line had startled her: R Costa-Brown, PRT.

So she and Dodge were, but not alone. They had Pyrotechnical on guard in the back of a rented van outside, and Dodge had a device on standby that could snatch them both out of danger if things went entirely pear-shaped.

Not that she expected anything of the sort, but it was far better to be safe than sorry.

"More coffee, hon?" The waitress paused by their table, coffee pot at the ready.

"No, thanks." Lil shook her head. The coffee wasn't bad, but if she drank any more she'd have the jitters all day, and Dodge rarely drank the stuff. "Though I'll have a slice of that pecan pie, if you don't mind."

"Coming right up." The waitress hustled back behind the counter.

"I didn't know you liked pecan pie," Dodge observed.

"It's not my favourite," Lil agreed, "but Costa-Brown has until I finish it before we get up and leave. We've already been here for thirty minutes, and that's half an hour we could've been Tinkering. If this is some kind of power play, I'm not playing."

The tinny bell over the door jangled as three kids entered. Lil wasn't good at ages, but the older ones might've been sixteen or seventeen, while the younger one was about Dodge's age. They started along the diner toward where Lil and Dodge sat.

"That's funny," murmured Dodge. "Where'd they come from?"

"Huh?" asked Lil.

"There's been no cars for the last five minutes. Where'd they come from?"

Before Lil could come up with an answer, the trio had reached their table. "Hi," said the tall blonde as the shorter kid slid into the seat and moved up until she was opposite Dodge. "I'm Tattletale, and this is Panacea and Riley. Pleased to meet you."

Lil had zero idea of what was going on here. She'd never heard of Tattletale, but the frizzy-haired girl could maybe be Panacea. As for Riley, she was just another kid, and Lil didn't generally associate with kids if she could help it. Dodge was the exception, but he knew his business and was a savvy operator.

"Nice to meet you too, but I don't think we're the people you're looking for," she ventured cautiously. "You see, we're meeting someone very important—"

"Nah." Tattletale, if that was who she really was, shook her head confidently. "Costa-Brown might've reached out, but we're the ones with the plan, so we're presenting it." With Riley and Panacea in place on the seat, she sat down on the end.

Costa-Brown's name absolutely got Lil's attention. She narrowed her eyes behind the sunglasses she was wearing to make it harder to get details of her face. "What's this about? Why have you contacted us? And who the hell are you, that you can overrule Costa-Brown?" Because everything she'd ever heard about the Chief Director of the PRT indicated that the woman wouldn't lightly delegate such a meeting to three teens.

"It's a very, very long story," Panacea said, her tone flat and uncompromising. "Suffice to say, there's an extremely important thing that we've got to accomplish, and your tech is essential to its success."

Lil hesitated. "Just how essential? What is it that you want us to do? What are you even trying to do?"

"Well, we're trying to save the world," Tattletale explained cheerfully. "What we need you to do is implant a given set of memory patterns, as well as a specific personality, into a bunch of clones of the same person. Once they're grown, of course."

Panacea looked at Dodge. "And we understand that you're good at pocket dimensions. Do you think you could come up with something that closes openings between universes? Shuts them down?"

He frowned. "Universes or pocket dimensions? There are differences, you know."

She waggled her hand in the air. "Call it … a pocket universe. Created and maintained by powers. If there was a hole between that and Bet proper, could you rig up something to close the hole? Make it so that anything on the other side had to re-open the hole to come through."

Dodge pulled a complicated-looking calculator from his pocket and started tapping the buttons. "Well, it shouldn't be too hard … if I reconfigure the G and P dimensions, I should be able to get something that works reasonably well …" His voice trailing off into a mumble, he kept crunching numbers.

Lil took the opportunity to dive into the conversational gap. "You want me to implant the same memories and personality into multiple copies of the same person? Are you talking about trying to make clones of a cape trigger in a certain way? Because it's been tried before, and never turned out well." She would've added something along the lines of how the PRT was likely to frown on such experimentation, but then she recalled that it was Rebecca Costa-Brown who had arranged the meeting in the first place.

The kid spoke up for the first time. Her tone wasn't loud or boastful, but it was still filled with a certain amount of surety. "That's because it wasn't me trying it."

"And who are you, again?" asked Lil. With an attitude like that, the kid was guaranteed to be a cape, but that didn't narrow it down at all. "Hero, villain, rogue?"

Just then, the waitress got back to the table with the slice of pecan pie. "Oh, hi!" she said to Tattletale. "Is there anything I can get you and your friends?"

Tattletale and Panacea shook their heads, but Riley nodded. "That pie looks nice," she ventured. "I'd like a slice, please."

The waitress beamed. "Coming right up!"

"You know, I could've given you my piece," Lil said. "I was just going to eat it to pass the time." She paused. "And you never told me who you were."

Riley gave her a direct look. "You'll be a lot happier not knowing who I used to be. Just take it as given that I know more about the mechanics of trigger events than any person living."

That, right there, sounded ominous as fuck. Fortunately, Lil had made somewhat of a living ignoring the itchy-back-of-neck feeling of being near a scary cape. The second rule of Toybox was, "we get paid" after all, (the first rule was, "don't do anything that might piss off the Triumvirate", while the third rule was, "never accept any job to do with an Endbringer") so she didn't care how ominous they were, so long as their money was legal tender.

Though if she was being honest, she'd never been intimidated by a middle-schooler before.

So she did her best to shut down her curious streak—how many kids of that age had amassed the experience as a cape to be able to make such a statement with that kind of authority, anyway?—and nodded agreeably. "Okay, then. So, um, who's going to be paying for all this?"

Tattletale grinned. "I was assuming that you'd pay for your own coffee and pie, and we'd pay for Riley's." Her grin widened at the expression her flippant comment engendered on Lil's face. "The PRT should be good to cover your prices. We'll let you know when and where we need you, and they'll pony up the cash. Sound good?"

Lil had honestly heard of worse arrangements, but there were still a few details to be worked out. "So, uh, the specific memory set and personality …?"

Panacea spoke up, her voice firm and measured. "We'll send you the requirements for the memory set. As for the personality, we'll need it to be a little bit narcissistic, empathetic enough to want to save the world, but with a mean streak a mile wide. The sort of asshole who finds an acceptable target, sinks their teeth in, and never, ever lets up."

Lil shivered. She'd met a few people like that in her career, and it was never a good idea to get on their wrong side. The idea of creating someone like that—worse, several someones—seemed deeply wrong, and unfair to inflict on the universe as a whole.

"Here's your pie, sweetie." The waitress placed the plate on the table and skated it a little toward Riley. "Just sing out if you need anything else."

"We'll do that," Tattletale assured her. She waited until the woman had moved off, then returned her attention to Lil and Dodge. "So, is it possible in concept?"

Dodge frowned. "Well, I could make a generic broad-spectrum door-slammer keyed to the local space-time fluctuations, and tune it in via the phi-alpha wavelengths—"

Lil held her hand up to interrupt him. "She just needs to know yes or no."

"Sorry, sorry, it's just that the technical aspects are so interesting." Dodge took a deep breath to pull himself back from the edge. "Yes, it's definitely possible in concept."

"I think so, too," Lil agreed. "It's absolutely doable." She was certain about that aspect, though not necessarily the rest of it. Long-dormant ethical standards, awakening from their slumber, were starting to blink and look around. "But I have to ask … just how necessary is this?"

There were many things she was willing to turn a blind eye to, but creating a bunch of potential capes with that particular mindset gave her the feeling that she was swimming in deeper waters than she was entirely comfortable with. Even the fact that the PRT was (most likely) underwriting it didn't make her any happier; viewed from the outside, the PRT occasionally pulled off stunts that weren't the most ethical. The very existence of the Birdcage bore that out, in spades.

(She was aware of the legislation that made the Birdcage legal; however, as civilisation got more and more complicated, 'legal' and 'moral' had ended up with only the vaguest of relationships.)

Tattletale met her gaze, the bottle-green eyes suddenly as hard and sharp as flint. "Utterly. There is literally nothing more important to the well-being of the world."

A chill ran down Lil's back. The ominous feeling she'd had before was now jumping up and down, shouting for her attention. "What … what is all this supposed to accomplish?" she asked through suddenly-dry lips.

"Sorry." Tattletale didn't look or sound at all sorry. "Need to know only."

And that was all there was to that.

The Streets of York, United Kingdom

Kevin Norton

"A few pence for the most powerful man in the world?" Kevin rattled his cup at the passers-by. It was getting dark, now, but if he could get just a little more money he could buy a nice treat for Duke before they went scavenging in the fast-food dumpsters for himself.

As usual, most of them avoided his gaze and hurried on, as if just being near him would contaminate them with poverty and homelessness. One or two lingered and dropped coins in his cup, but never many, and they still didn't want to meet his eyes. Doing a spot of good to get over their guilt.

What they were feeling guilty about, he didn't care, but everyone had a load of guilt on themselves these days. It was the way of the world. Everyone was walking wounded, and only a few of the wounds were visible to the world.

"A few pence—" he began again, before Duke growled. He looked around to see what his faithful companion was responding to, and nearly tripped and fell when he saw the three girls standing not six feet away. Unlike the passers-by, all three were looking at him intently, which was probably what had triggered Duke.

"Hi," said the tall blonde with the messy hair. "You'd be Kevin Norton, the most powerful man in the world. We've heard a lot about you." Oddly enough, she had an American accent.

Kevin blinked. This was not how the conversation usually went, given that it usually didn't go at all. "I … you can't be from social services. Are you doing some sort of charity work?"

"In a very broad sense," her frizzy-haired companion said. She was also definitely American. "We have a request for you, and we're willing to pay for it. Riley, diagnosis?"

The smallest of the trio, also blonde but with her hair in ringlets, frowned as she looked him over. "Hepatitis, chronic malnutrition, a laundry list of minor complaints that would be settled by a week of good care. To be honest, the dog's in better shape."

"What?" He blinked, startled all over again. "How did you—how could you possibly know that? How old are you?"

"Twelve." The little tearaway stared him down with the authority of someone twenty years older and a hundred pounds heavier. "I've been a cape since I was six."

He shook his head. Nothing was making sense anymore. "Who are you people? What do you want from me?"

"The golden man," the frizzy-haired girl said. "Zion. You're the one who talks to him, and occasionally he listens. You want to pass on that responsibility." She stepped forward. "I'm Panacea, the healer. You may have heard of me. I'm willing to give you a total reset, fix all your health problems."

Kevin had definitely heard of her, but he'd never paid much attention to the news about her. How much could one girl heal, anyway? And it wasn't like she'd ever come across the pond to heal one Kevin Norton of all that ailed him.

Except that she was right there in front of him, offering that very thing.

"But why?" He was still lost in the fog. "What do you get out of it? Do you want to be the ones to talk to him?"

"Not us," Panacea—if it was really her—said. "But we'll bring someone to you, soon. Someone who knows exactly what to say, and will make sure that the golden man doesn't hurt anyone by accident, and that everything that needs to be done, gets done."

"And if I say no, you won't heal me?" He could see where this was going.

Panacea snorted. It was the first 'teenage' thing he'd seen her do. "Hardly. I'll heal you anyway. And Lisa here's going to set you up with enough cash to get you and Duke a place to stay together out of the rain, at least for a while. And when we bring our friend to you, you can take him to see the golden man, okay?"

By now, Kevin's head was spinning. "You're going to heal me and give me money? Just to introduce your friend to the golden man? The one I haven't spoken to for years?"

"But you keep wanting to go back to where you used to talk to him, don't you?" It was the tall blonde. "Just to see if it's still there. Well, once our friend is ready, you can go back and do what you need to do. Do we have a deal?"

He made up his mind, and pointed to the frizzy-haired girl. "If she's really Panacea, if she can really heal me, then we've got a deal."

"Absolutely." Panacea stepped forward. "I presume I have your permission to heal you?"

"You've got it." He looked down at his filthy hands. "Maybe I should wash—"

"Yes, you should, but it doesn't matter right now." She reached out and took his hand, her clean skin pale against his grime. "This might feel a little strange."

'Strange' wasn't the half of it. The aches and pains throughout his body just … stopped. His nervous system felt like someone had just flushed a few gallons of ice water through his veins. Even the grucky feeling in his mouth went away.

When it was over, he was standing taller and feeling about twenty years younger. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd been healed of everything that was wrong with him. Duke, sensing his mood, looked up at him and whined.

"It's fine, Duke," he said, and ran his hand over his dog's head. "It's going to be just fine." Tears filled his eyes as he tried to assimilate the fact that he had another chance now, that he wasn't going to be dying in a few years to leave Duke all alone in a cold, cruel world.

"This card's got a hundred thousand US dollars on it." Lisa held it up, then handed it over. "The sticky note on the back's the PIN code. It should work in any major ATM. I figure you should be able to stretch that out quite a ways."

Quickly, Kevin pulled the note and card apart. He tucked the card into an inside pocket of his shabby jacket, then stared intently at the note to memorise the numbers. He felt like someone had just handed him the Crown Jewels, except that he could spend this money. "I can, yes." There were rooms for rent that he knew of; cheap, but they didn't care if Duke slept beside (or on) the bed.

Panacea looked at him steadily. "So, do we have a deal? When we bring our friend, you'll introduce him to Zion?"

Kevin knew there were details they weren't telling him. Why their 'friend' should be the one to talk to Zion in his stead, and not them, for one thing. But Panacea was a hero. He'd seen her on TV through shop windows. Heroes wouldn't lend themselves to something that was underhanded or malicious, would they? And besides, it wasn't like anyone could hurt the golden man.

"Yes," he said. "We have a deal."

Chief Director Costa-Brown's Office

Panacea

Even on a good day, it was possible to see that Rebecca Costa-Brown was not a woman used to unbridled success. Amy knew she was Alexandria, and proof against virtually all manner of damage, yet the stresses of the job weighed heavily on her. She eyed the group before her, then focused on Amy. Or rather, on Amy's involuntary passenger.

"So, all negotiations have gone well?" Implicit in her tone was the willingness to be totally unsurprised if things had gone badly at any point in their venture.

In Amy's inner eye, Mike shrugged and gestured in Lisa's direction. "Don't look at me," Amy translated. "She's the one with the plan. We're just getting behind it and pushing really hard."

"Everything looks good so far, touch wood." Lisa leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on the genuine oak desk. "Have the materials to build the extra cloning chambers been delivered to Blasto?"

"Yes, but the man is not thrilled with his treatment at our hands." Costa-Brown's expression became even more forbidding than it had been before. "Had I known he was going to be relaxing with a joint and a glass of cheap alcohol, I may have been a little less overbearing in my approach."

Lisa spread her hands. "However, given the problems you ran into when you last took on a Tinker in their base, I can certainly see the need for extra caution."

"Exactly. You understand." Costa-Brown switched her attention back to Amy. Not once, Amy noted, had she looked directly at Riley. "And Bakuda? You can trust her to build your doomsday bombs without any treachery?"

This time, Mike was shaking his head and scissoring his hands over one another, probably to indicate 'not just no but FUCK no'. Fortunately, Amy had already figured that one out.

"Security and I both agree that that's a hard no. So, I will be checking in on her before and after each time she goes into the lab, and making damn sure she's not pulling any shit on us. The slightest hint of deception, and I'll disable her ability to lie in any way at all."

One perfect eyebrow inched upward. "I thought you couldn't do brains. Or rather, didn't do brains."

"I don't, not as a matter of course." Amy took a deep breath, noting the correction. She probably knew all along. "However, I've been learning that hardline approaches often lead to bad situations. There are degrees of 'doing brains' that I have fewer problems with, and ensuring that a mad bomber doesn't blow up the city I'm currently living in gives me zero problems whatsoever."

"Good to hear it." She looked back at Lisa. "Are there any other issues that need to be dealt with?"

"Just one," Lisa said. "You no doubt know the account attached to the card I gave to Mr Norton. If the PRT could slip another ten thousand into it each time it drops below ten K, that would allow me to sleep just a little better at night."

"Easily done." The almost disdainful sniff told Amy that paying for one homeless man's daily expenses wouldn't even be a line item when it came to the PRT's budget. "Was there anything else?"

Lisa glanced at Amy and Riley. "Did we miss anything, guys?"

Amy shrugged. Mike didn't seem to have anything to add. Riley was already shaking her head.

"Good." Costa-Brown bestowed a smile—acerbic and brief, but a smile all the same—upon them. "Keep me posted."

Lisa, the wild and crazy thrill-seeker that she was, did what no other cape in the history of the PRT had likely done in Costa-Brown's presence, and threw finger-guns. "You got it, boss."

Costa-Brown just shook her head. "Get out of here."

"Going."

A Few Days Later

Blasto's Base

Tattletale

"So … how's it going?" Lisa, with Riley at her side, strolled in from the back of the base. She'd called ahead to say she was coming over—she wasn't an idiot—but now that she had access to the 'Doorway' command, things like front doors were a mere suggestion to her now.

"What the fuck?" Blasto, soldering goggles pushed up on his forehead, turned from his workbench and glared at her. "Don't you fucking know how to knock? I could've been doing something delicate! I could've been in the bathroom!"

"Dude. Chill." Lisa raised her eyebrows. "The PRT is bankrolling this particular venture, and I'm the inspector to make sure you aren't half-assing it."

He didn't bother arguing with that, but then he nodded toward Riley. "And what's the creepy munchkin here for?"

"I'm also here to make sure you're not half-assing it," Riley replied. "Also, you might think that's an insult. Where I've been, what I've done, being called 'creepy' misses the mark by several miles. So thank you for that."

Lisa had to admit, she was pulling herself together after the rough and ready total-therapy stunt Amy had put her through. She was still a bit clingy, but she was able to leave Amy's side for a few hours at a time without falling into a helpless mess. It was a work in progress.

"Well, I'm not. Half-assing it, I mean." Blasto gestured at what he was working on. "Just putting the last one together. They gave me enough parts for twenty."

"And how's the actual cloning going?" asked Riley. "You are working on a viable version so you can get straight into it once all your clone tubes are ready to roll, right?"

"Jesus Christ, I never knew ball-busting was a superpower," he muttered, then put the soldering iron down. "Yes, I'm working on getting a viable clone. Yes, I'm about done. Come see."

As they followed him to another part of the workshop, Lisa glanced around. Even with her power working at full capacity, she couldn't see anything that added up to duplicity on Blasto's part. It seemed the stint in the interrogation room had given him the required incentive to not play fuck-fuck games (as one of the PRT troopers had said within her hearing, making it her new favourite saying).

The clone in the tank looked like every other picture of a foetus that Lisa had ever seen, so her power didn't have much to go on with. However, Riley was in her element. She examined the nutrient flows going in and peppered Blasto with questions, some of which apparently pushed his expertise to its limits.

"Okay, are you satisfied?" he demanded at last. "How does anyone fucking stand you for more than five minutes at a time?" It seemed he wasn't a member of the 'aww, kids asking questions are cute' brigade.

Riley froze, her face paling dramatically. Before Blasto could notice this, Lisa stepped in. "Because she asks the questions we need answers for," she explained smoothly. "And we've all seen what happens when someone doesn't make damn sure everything is up to spec, all the way."

To her relief, he turned his attention fully to her. "Are you saying I do shoddy work?"

"I don't know if you do!" she shot back, willing to argue all day if it gave Riley time to regroup. "But this, right here, is the most important thing you're ever going to do, so we are going to be checking, and asking all the questions under the sun, until you deliver. Is that totally understood?"

"But it's so fucking annoying to have a grade-schooler acting like she knows more than I do about nutrition and shit!" he burst out.

"Well, let's face it. She fucking does." Lisa gestured at the building around them. "We're coming to you, to ask you questions in your base, because it's less likely to disrupt what you're doing. Now, if you keep arguing with us, Director Armstrong could decide that it's more convenient to drag you in every time he wants to check on your progress. And we'd still require that you deliver on time. We can totally do it the other way, if you'd prefer. Your choice."

He tried to stare her down, but in the end he had to look away. "What else do you want to know?"

She wasn't done. "Before we get to that, you need to apologise to Riley for treating her like an annoying kid."

"But she is an—"

Lisa cleared her throat meaningfully.

"Fine. You know what you're doing, kid."

It was about as grudging an apology as Lisa had ever heard, but she knew it was the best they were going to get.

Riley drew in a shuddering breath, rebuilding her façade as Lisa watched. She didn't look directly at him as she spoke. "More than you'll ever know."

Undersiders' Hideout

Panacea

As the Doorway opened into the main room, Amy looked around from a discussion she'd been having with Brian about the difference between hand-to-hand combat at ground level and when the combatants could fly. She was not even a talented beginner at either one, but she'd seen Vicky in action more than once. Brian, on the other hand, had never had to take on a flight-capable opponent but was considerably skilled in the ground-bound aspect. It made for an interesting exchange of views.

"Oh, hey," she said as Lisa and Riley stepped through the portal. "Bakuda's still not trying anything. Mainly because she knows I'd catch her out. How'd you—whoa, Riley are you okay?"

"No, she's not," Lisa reported through gritted teeth. "Blasto is an asshole who needs his butt kicked across his lair and back again."

"Why, what happened?" Amy was on her feet by now, and going over to Riley, whose face was drawn, with tears standing in her eyes. "What did that bastard do?"

Riley grabbed her, clinging tightly as Amy rubbed her back in slow, gentle circles. Examining Riley's mental state, she subtly increased serotonin production, then just held her comfortingly while it took effect.

Lisa growled, deep in her throat. "Riley was giving him the third degree about how he feeds his clones and ensures their health, and it was clear she knows more about that sort of thing than he does, and then he snapped at her and asked how anyone stood her presence for more than five minutes."

"Sonovabitch." Amy could tell Mike was just as pissed as she was. "I should go there and—"

"Not a great idea." Lisa made a cut-off motion. "I already read him the riot act. If we keep badgering him over this, he might just say fuck it and dump the whole deal."

"Mmm." Amy grimaced. Lisa was right, of course. "Riley, how are you feeling?"

"Better, now I'm back here." Riley's voice was muffled but understandable. "But he's a dick. He knows how to do his stuff, but he can't stand that someone else might know more. Especially a—a kid."

"Whoa, none of that." But Lisa's voice was warm and parental rather than harsh and judgemental. "You're not just any kid. You're the expert on this sort of thing, and Blasto needs to learn not to let his precious fee-fees get hurt over it."

"Exactly correct." Amy hugged Riley tighter. "We all know Blasto's a dick. But right now he's useful. So we're gonna let him be useful, and as soon as we're done with him, we never see him again. Never talk to him. Never even think about him. Sound good?"

Riley drew a long, ragged breath, then let it out again. "Yeah. Sounds good."

"Excellent." Amy let Riley go, and gestured at the big-screen TV. "So, how do you feel about kicking back and watching one of Lisa's pirated chick-flicks until you feel better?"

"Can we watch the one where Mouse Protector makes a cameo?"

"Totally."

"Hey, I'm in the middle of a game here," Alec protested.

Lisa locked eyes with him. "Save it."

For a miracle, he didn't even try arguing. "You got it."

[A/N: Next half will follow shortly.]

End of Part Thirty-One