33

Exposure 3

"Glory Girl, I am telling your mother about this." Lady Photon met up with her niece in the air at the intersection that Lisa had indicated. Her kids followed behind, but apparently husband was busy with other things.

"Sure, but wait until after I bust up a supervillain's base," she said while grinning like a maniac. She had a whole lot of pent-up energy, surprisingly, even after the Endbringer recovery effort. I suppose she had the urge to fight something instead of just doing search and rescue. Something that her aunt and cousin could do against Behemoth but not her. She was loathe to admit her jealousy but was being more competitive with Laserdream than normal.

Well, she would get the chance to show up her cousin now. This was Coil's biggest base I could see, so this was where I wanted to draw New Wave's backup. Also, there was at minimum some Tinkertech guns inside for them to find. The other bases were more barebones in comparison. Not only was I confident some nanobots without Abyssal could take them on, there wasn't as much convincing physical evidence in them. Those smaller bases also didn't have the weird force field that disrupted my control. I actually needed New Wave at this one to actually sweep the areas I couldn't.

I formed up Abyssal outside and began the attack. It was a construction site, but construction had been going extremely slowly. Not that I truly understood exactly how the industry went, but I recalled this place being an empty lot for years and it still looked like it had barely started. There was an underground parking garage that was done, but the upper floors of the building were barely started. Very few people were actually working there; I assumed they were acting more as lookouts for Coil than actual construction workers.

I had Abyssal make a lot of noise, with no regard to being particularly efficient or stealthy. Instead of forming him inside the parking area, I made him appear from a dark, shadowed corner by a large stack of equipment. He stepped out with swords drawn, drawing as much attention as he could. I watched as some of the workers froze, some fled in fear. It was most interesting watching the ones who responded… differently.

Abyssal mostly ignored them for now, and instead did a little vandalism all the way down to the bottom floor to expose the hidden door. I mean, I could have carved through almost silently by eroding through the material at the microscopic level, but I preferred to give it some nice strong whacks. That sent concrete debris flying and huge marks on the wall. Easy to find the disturbance, and it did get me through the wall almost as quickly.

Some of those workers followed him, shouting at him from a distance. I still wasn't sure if they were just crazy or disguised mercenaries. What I was sure was that inside the base, there were a lot of un-disguised mercenaries gearing up for a fight.

I wasn't going to let my loud and inefficient methods give them an advantage, though. Inside the base, I kept my bots operating discreetly, primarily focused on sabotaging the Tinkertech rifles and silencing alarms. Bots crept through the armory, creeping into all the most dangerous-looking weapons I could see. I didn't want anyone on my team getting shot by some weird laser they didn't understand. They did keep regular guns as sidearms. Those were even easier for me to disable from experience alone.

As for the alarms, I didn't have time to trace every wire, but there was an intercom and speaker system throughout the base. It was easy enough just to snip the wires for every speaker. The emergency lights were a little trickier, with their internal battery systems but nothing too complex there, either.

My teammates didn't respond to the noise Abyssal was making right away – I guess they assumed the noises and shouting coming from the construction site were, well, just construction noises. After a few more minutes of patrolling around though, Glory Girl finally took notice and decided to investigate closer. I guess I, or Lisa, should have been more clear about secret bases. She was looking at all the complete buildings expecting something weird going on inside, not that a secret base would be in use before it was even finished being built.

Lo and behold, I eavesdropped the foreman radioing something that sounded much more military-like than I would expect from a construction site. Glory Girl's arrival only solidified their roles as mercenaries and not construction workers. They reached for a locked box under a desk, only to find a gun I had previously disabled. No luck for you today, mister.

"Hey! This is a construction zone! Quit flying around here!" the man shouted at Glory Girl while hiding the gun under his safety vest.

"Doesn't look like a whole lotta construction going on here," Glory Girl countered. "Sounds like there's a crime in progress. Let me check it out."

"Yeah, I guess so. There was a weird guy who ran downstairs. Go ahead and take a look," the man said.

Glory Girl looked at him funny, but then proceeded fly down. "Auntie, there's something happening down there, I'm checking it out," she said into her radio.

"I'm calling in the Protectorate," Lady Photon replied. "Secret base or not, this is still trespassing and vandalism. We're not going in there without Protectorate support. Glory Girl, are you listening to me?"

Maybe we got lucky, but it seemed like the foreman guy hadn't noticed the other New Wave members, since they had spread out in a search pattern. The foreman must have thought Glory Girl was alone, and when she turned her back, he pulled the gun and pulled the trigger.

Click.

There was too much ambient background noise for Glory Girl to hear the noise.

I jabbed the guy in the calf with a spike made of bots, making him shout involuntarily.

"Huh? Hey, what's… where'd you get that gun?" Glory Girl shouted as she noticed the broken firearm. She quickly tackled him. "Everyone, come to the construction site! Definitely something weird going on! This guy had a gun!" She seemed more giddy than scared at the idea of nearly being shot. She was really amping up for a fight.

I didn't make Abyssal stop. My eyes inside the base told me there was movement. A lot of movement. Even with most of the speakers and emergency lights cut off, they obviously had several backup methods for communication. The mercenaries were scrambling. I kept watch on all the exits as I could find to make sure nobody got away.

Assault and Battery had received the message from the Protectorate, and they were still patrolling the general area. They had progressed further down the street but were still the closest Protectorate members to respond. I just had to make sure that Abyssal actually opened up and revealed the bigger criminal inside the base before the Protectorate members tried to arrest him.

To do that, I switched to a more efficient method of actually cutting through the doors. It was made of reinforced steel, strong enough to stop a speeding tank from ramming through, and probably a lot of heavy firepower. Still, it was no problem for my bots; it just took time.

Glory Girl flew down for a closer look.

"GG! Don't get too close! We don't know what's down there! Shielder, back her up! Laserdream, we're keeping long-distance watch to cover the area. Protectorate backup will be here in only a few minutes."

Still, she had to disappear out of direct sight from Lady Photon, since the actual entrance was down at the bottom of the nearly-complete underground parking lot. I'd probably have to bring that up somehow at the next New Wave meeting… tsk tsk. At least I knew she would be safe.

As she flew down underground, I finally managed to break through the door completely. It was around that time that Assault and Battery met up with Lady Photon. I didn't wait for them or open up the door completely. As soon as I had a slit open for Abyssal, I had the bots pour through the gap and reassemble on the inside.

The area Abyssal was in had several armoured vehicles inside, most of them with the PRT logo emblazoned on the side. It was a very good-looking fake. Heck, calling it a fake might not be accurate, it was probably the exact same vehicle built to the exact same specifications. I hoped that the PRT wasn't in the habit of misplacing eight tons of steel on a regular basis. To be safe, though, I punched through the tires and cut the fuel lines with Abyssal so they couldn't use them.

The mercs had already armed themselves. It was actually pretty impressive, all things considered, to go from low alert to fully armed and ready within minutes, even with the alarm system broken. They were clearly professionals of a higher caliber. They had already taken the heavy weapons from the armory and began doing other things with the computers. Thank goodness I had already sabotaged them beforehand.

At all the other bases, it was a similar story. They must have gotten the word out somehow, since all of them were on alert now. I did my best not to leave a single trace at the other bases, but they were clearly responding to the main base's attack. Though they would find it pretty hard with weapons sabotaged and all the cars in their garage disabled. No need to waste time actually fighting them if they had no way to get across the city anyway.

Abyssal proceeded onwards, increasing the number of bots flowing through the air vents before hacking through the next door. Just before he managed to break through that door, the other bots swarmed in through the ventilation, blinding, tripping, and throwing off their aim. Of those that managed to pull the trigger properly, only one in ten actually fired something, while a quarter of them started sparking and fizzing dangerously in their hands.

The ones that did manage to land a hit on Abyssal, though, did some significant damage. They burned through the bots, superheating them instantly. I didn't know if Glory Girl or Shielder's force fields could stop laser energy. It was better that Abyssal took the hit instead of them. The few that had malfunctioning guns tossed them away quickly and switched to their sidearms, but regular bullets had no effect on him.

Abyssal rushed forward with no regard to the damage being dealt to his body. I had more bots in reserve. I opted to slam through the groups of mercenaries for quick takedowns through sheer speed and weight. I disabled the rest of the weapons and used the bots to hold down the mercenaries like they were encased in concrete. I couldn't completely destroy the guns; I needed to leave evidence for the PRT.

The Protectorate capes had received the quick summary from Lady Photon, and they were following Glory Girl and Shielder into the parking lot.

"Are we going in?" Shielder asked his cousin.

"Hell yeah!" She rushed up to the slit that Abyssal had opened up, gripped it hard, and tore the whole thing off in a steady strong pull. The empty parking garage echoed with the sound of shredding metal and shattering concrete. The others managed to catch up to her as she was tossing the mangled door off to the side.

Assault caught up first. When he got to the secret parking area, he had to stop and look at the PRT trucks. "Puppy? Did we go to the wrong parking lot, or…?"

"Assault, don't call me that on the job. Secondly… I'm going to call this in," Battery said.

Meanwhile, I had Abyssal rampage deeper into the base, forcing them to split their attention. Every locked door, I smashed open. I disabled each mercenary as I went, disarming them and tossing them into the hallway. I sent some additional bots into their bloodstream to knock them unconscious or even numb some of their nerves for some temporary paralysis. Sometimes they managed to get a shot off, to no avail. Others lay in wait around corners only to collapse before Abyssal even reached them.

At the sound of gunfire, Shielder immediately went to the front and created a barrier wide enough to cover the group. It wasn't really necessary, though. The mercenaries near them were all down, and for the ones still fighting, none of the shots were actually pointed towards the heroes. Abyssal was continuing to work his way further into the base.

Shielder and Glory Girl took point. "Damnit, leave some for me…" she muttered after finding only unconscious mercenaries on the ground. She picked up a bit of speed to try to catch up to Abyssal.

"No rushing," Lady Photon said. "Keep together and watch our flanks." The heroes moved a little faster than before but cautiously. Abyssal had to stop to work on the next reinforced door, which let them catch up. The damn base was sectioned off with bulkheads, each closing off as they retreated further and further in. Emergency sealing mechanisms limited the number of bots in each sector, so I still had to bust through before putting up a real fight. I had enough to observe what was there, though.

What surprised me was that they didn't seem to be gearing up for a last stand. They were retreating further, deeper into the base that was protected by that security field. When Glory Girl arrived, she gleefully asked, "Hey, buddy! Need some help with that?"

She flew up to the door. She reared a fist back and throw a massive, full-body haymaker at the door. The entire building seemed to shake as the reinforced door, already damaged by Abyssal, dented and blew off its hinges.

However, the rumbling didn't stop. In fact, there was a larger explosion and shaking, followed by a blast of air pressure that knocked all the non-fliers off their feet.

Glory Girl turned to the others. "That wasn't me."

"Yeah, well, we gotta find out who it was," Assault said. "Let's go."

Damnit. I had been looking for pre-made escape tunnels, but I hadn't found any with my bots. I hadn't expected them to use the explosives to literally blow a hole through the floor to create an on-demand escape route. People were dropping down into the city's storm drains. I couldn't see where the hole was due to that disruption field, but the few bots I had in the sewers found some familiar-looking mercenaries running away with Coil.

I probably could have covered it in better detail during the planning phase, but the bots I had in the sewers had been washed away while I was in Spain. I was more concerned with covering the visible surface of the city where criminals normally hung out. While I had enough in the sewers to see and scout, it wasn't enough to stop them right away. The good news, though, was that I had enough bots outside to swarm into the sewers to catch them on short notice.

While the heroes picked up the pace and rushed further ahead to investigate the explosion, bots flooded the storm drains.

I got a phone call from Lisa. At the hospital, I excused myself and headed to a bathroom. "Hey Lisa, what's up?" I asked.

"Can you let me know what's happening?"

"A few mercs escaped. But eight of them have been cuffed, Assault and Battery are taking stock of illegal Tinkertech weapons and the fake PRT gear. I'm rounding up the ones who escaped. I think it's going to be a pretty clean op overall."

Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. "Is that everything? No Coil?"

"He either escaped into the sewers or he's behind that area my bots can't enter. The heroes should be in there soon. I'll catch up to the ones in the sewers in a minute."

"And he's not… retaliating? You're sure there's nobody about to barge into the house?" she asked.

"I've disabled the guns and vehicles in his other bases," I told her. "In fact, I see a whole lot of people being very confused. Nothing near my house. You're safe for now."

"Huh. This almost seems too easy," Lisa said.

Speaking of which, I needed to focus on the group again. The mercenaries were giving little resistance. It seemed like they were mostly throwing smoke grenades and flashbangs, and were barely using their guns. I suppose they had cottoned on to the fact that their expensive futuristic guns were little more than sparkly toys at the moment. Some of which exploded in their own hands. They were depending more on their well-understood, trusty and low-tech weaponry, most of which still wasn't working very well either.

The communications and computer rooms were utterly destroyed, and it wasn't my fault. It seemed that the escape explosives were tied to some evidence-destroying safeties as well. The armories, unfortunately, were almost utterly destroyed. Some of the sabotaged Tinkertech had violent modes of failure. Thank goodness I didn't tamper with the fire-suppression systems, but it would still take a skilled Tinker to recover any real evidence from them.

The final bulkhead protecting the secured area was brought down by Glory Girl and Laserdream. Because whatever was generating the disruption field was still running, Abyssal still couldn't enter, but I could hear them explore the inner area. He didn't need to be in there anyway, I wanted him to focus on finding the escapees.

"There's a kid in here!" Glory Girl shouted, her voice echoing down the now-empty halls.

Glory Girl came floating out with a little girl in her hands.

"Oh my god, what has the poor girl been through?" Lady Photon said with a gasp.

I couldn't do a full diagnostic on her. Not while all eyes were on her, being carried by Glory Girl. I managed to sneak a few bots in there to take a look.

There were multiple injection sites on both arms, the most recent one was only a few hours ago. The puncture wound still hadn't had enough time to heal. There was bruising on her wrists and ankles, most likely from being tied down. I found some bed sores. Inside the body, I found a small skull fracture that was partly healed. Her blood chemistry was off by a bit, I could quickly tell she was dehydrated. I felt sick just trying to imagine what this little girl went through, and I almost didn't want to try a more thorough scan because I was afraid of what I would end up finding.

"I'm going to get her to Ames," Glory Girl said.

"Wait! We need to bring her to the PRT," Battery said. "There might be additional evidence on her clothes or on her body before it gets contaminated. She'll get the proper medical care, don't worry. We'll phone for Panacea if we need her."

The backup from the PRT – the real PRT – had arrived along with the other emergency services, so Glory Girl dropped her off there. I had to get my bots out of her system then – sure, I didn't have consent back then, and I didn't want the PRT to start investigating why my bots were inside of her already.

Meanwhile, underground, I had enough bots gathered to cut off Coil and his personal escort. With a large mass of bots both in front and behind, they had no possible escape route. In the darkness of the sewers, my bots had an even easier time taking them down. Even their advanced gear, like thermal nightvision goggles didn't help them at all. My bots didn't have body heat, and the light they absorbed simply made it look like endless darkness. They knew something was wrong and took a more defensive position around Coil.

I picked them off easily one by one. Even for professionals, having their teammates silently disappear against an invisible enemy was enough to cause them to panic. When their weapons didn't work, their radios didn't work, and they couldn't see… it would be hard for anyone to keep calm. I yanked them away one by one, knocking them unconscious and muffling their screams as I dragged them away from the group.

Now the debate was whether to drag them out into the street, or back through the sewer to the escape-hole they created. My bots failed about a hundred feet from that hole, so I couldn't toss them back up into the base with Abyssal.

"Hey, I think I figured out what that explosion was," Shielder shouted. I could only hear him because his own voice was echoing through the halls, though I heard it a little in the sewers too. He must have been near the hole.

"Damn, they escaped? Let's get down there, they might not have gone far!" Glory Girl said, having returned already. This time, they were all in agreement.

All of New Wave floated down into the hole. I noticed the faint glow of Shielder's shield ahead as they floated towards the villains I captured. I deliberately rearranged my bots to make them slightly more reflective to catch his attention.

"Everyone, eyes front! I see something!"

Laserdream readied her blasts, fingertips glowing at the ready. It also provided the team a bit of extra light in the dark tunnels.

As they approached, I made sure they could see Abyssal standing over the bodies before dissolving him away. It made them even more cautious, but it was obvious enough what had happened without needing to hang around.

"Well, let's haul these guys up so that the PRT can arrest them properly," Laserdream said.

"Is that… Coil?" asked Lady Photon, upon seeing the man in the black skintight suit. The white snake pattern had been marred by the sewage I dragged him through. Oh well.

"What? Damn, I wanted to punch out the big bad guy!" Glory Girl whined.

"Glory, what did I tell you about restraint? He probably doesn't even have a Brute rating," her aunt chided her.

"It would be a light punch…" she muttered in response.

As New Wave hauled up the would-be escapees, the Protectorate capes were still finding more.

"Let's see… what kind of drug is this? There's a ton of medical shit here. Was he giving it to that little kid?" Assault actually sounded angry for once. "I think it's Chilla. It's a drug made by a chemical Tinker in Mexico working for the cartels. I, uh, used to know a guy who… knew about it."

"Bag it and tag it," Battery said. "The doctors and DEA can figure that one out."

"Hey Battery! Abyssal just took out a whole bunch of mercs!" Laserdream said as she dumped another body down near them. "Gonna have to make two or three trips, there's a lot of them."

"I think this is Coil, too," Glory Girl said, throwing the costumed body down along with another.

"Hey, careful. He could still get out on brutality and assault if he wasn't personally part of the fight. Look at him. He looks like a twig," she pointed out. "If you want someone to fight, go punch one of the mercenaries."

"Please don't," said one of the mercenaries lying on the ground.

"We're out of mercenaries to punch, anyway," Assault said as he pushed another handcuffed mercenary into the hallway and made him sit beside the others. "Got another handcuff? I'm out."

"Forget handcuffs, we're going to run out of paddy wagons," Battery said, shaking her head.

"There's a perfectly good extra van out there," Assault joked.

"That's evidence, not a toy," Battery said.

I let the heroes finish the clean-up. Our job was done. I let Lisa know, too.

"Looks like we've caught Coil, all the mercenaries are caught," I told her. "Quick and clean. The other bases are essentially disabled too. Maybe I'll use Abyssal to lead the PRT to them later."

"Wow. That seemed easy… I never expected things to go so well."

"Well, I gotta go. I expect the little girl's going to arrive at the hospital at some point, and I have actual work to do. Call Glory Girl and talk with her," I said to Lisa. I hung up, having spent more than a reasonable amount of time for a bathroom break. I was expecting an important patient to come in soon.

I kept waiting at the hospital. I didn't know what evidence took priority over the girl's health. I wasn't expecting to be called myself, since Panacea could probably fix everything herself. Still, if she got pulled out of the hospital to the PRT building, I would end up covering more of the emergency room.

I waited. And waited. Working with Dr. Crissom half-heartedly, my mind was constantly waiting for a phone call for Panacea. I wanted to know what happened to that little girl and how she was doing. I know I technically didn't have the right – she wasn't my patient. But damnit, we had saved her life and I wanted to make sure she was safe.

I was being really bad now, eavesdropping on the receptionist phones with my bots. Eventually, I heard it.

"Hello, Brockton Bay General Hospital, how may I direct your call? PRT? Oh, of course. Yes, certainly. I'll make sure of that, yes."

Finally.

What came over the speakers was not the call I had expected.

"Code orange. Code orange. All staff, prepare for code orange."

So… not Panacea. What the hell was it now? Code Orange was for mass casualties. The last time there was a code orange was with Bakuda… surely there wasn't another mass bomber running around, was there? I quickly scanned around with my bots across the entire city. I didn't see anything drastic. Sure, some chunks of the city had yet to return to my view because too many bots had been devoted to taking down Coil's bases. But I hadn't seen anything. It was still just a regular day, as far as anyone else was concerned.

What was the PRT warning the hospital about?

Author's Notes:

Sort-of-spoliers-not-really: designing a clusterfuck is kind of a clusterfuck in and of itself. It's something I've messed around and changed on multiple drafts, and I think I just need to accept the fact that "perfect chaos" is an oxymoron.