7.11

7.11

Once you got home, you realised your mistake – luckily, an hour spent swimming (an experience you were unlikely to repeat anytime soon; the pool held far less of the mystery the ocean held and instead just had too many people off from school) hadn't caused you to miss Dragon's call.

What could you say? It had been a busy week, there was a lot on your mind, and you were lucky that you hadn't already used up all of your daily questions by the time the phone rang. Saturday's were for the Guild. You knew that, and you'd have to be a little more careful going forward.

'Hello?'

'Hello Penumbra, are you well?'

Dragon didn't give anything away in her tone that spoke to disappointment or frustration, so you surmised that she was either entirely unaware that you'd spent time away from being on call or she was completely understanding of it. Either wouldn't surprise you, but you hoped it was the former.

You had done the reading over the last week. There wasn't honestly that much material worth remembering: while you were grateful that Dragon's files had contained information on all of the people and movements you could be asked about, the reality was that most of the data you had been given was entirely irrelevant to you. You didn't really know whether budget estimations and yearly profit reports was ever going to have a single impact on a question you could ask, and that was even if you remembered it. Most of the information you needed was in the few paragraphs that had preceded lists of details, and Dragon could probably have saved herself some time by not sending everything over.

Not that you were going to say that, however. Far be it from you to question the procedures of the Guild that you weren't even a full member of, and just because you didn't necessarily need the information didn't mean you didn't appreciate it. It was nice knowing that you were being trusted with things that were fairly high integrity. Nothing in there seemed to contain anything truly expository about the internal mechanisms and proceedings of the Guild, let alone identifying information or sources, but that didn't mean there was no value in them at all. The right kind of Thinker could probably extract something untoward from them and sending you anything was a measure of implicit trust from Dragon. You weren't going to let her down.

'Are you in a position to answer some questions for us? Something rather urgent has come up.'

'Of course, what do you need?'

The consideration of something urgent had piqued your interest, and you found your hand drifting towards your painkillers. Taking them too often wasn't something that interested you, the loss of sensation too much for you to really withstand comfortably, but you had already asked yourself too many questions in the morning to go through an entire session with Dragon unscathed. You'd need some relief.

Luckily, Dragon's explanation gave you enough time to break out the blister pack from your utility belt, draped over the chair of your desk, and take one of the chalky tablets.

'Armsmaster and I have been working diligently for several years to develop a system that we can use to monitor and predict the comings and goings of S Class threats. Understandably, the more of them we can measure with these systems, the freer our usage of other resources. This includes thinkers such as yourself, among other things. Thus far, our systems are far from perfect but have allowed us some measure of confidence in our safety from certain threats. Nilbog, Sleeper, in particular; those who stay in one place.'

Following along, you stayed silent. No need to interrupt her.

'For more mobile threats, the system is not quite so well honed but it still gives us a general idea. Of course, this system stays in touch with the Endbringers insofar as is possible. We track their locations, their levels of activity, and while it isn't always possible, we attempt to predict when and where they are next likely to make an attack.'

Throat dry, you swallowed. Instantly, you knew where things were going. You had been thinking to yourself about Endbringers recently, passing some of the information you had through Percentile to the PRT and the Protectorate whenever you could. Changes in responses to your questioning, ideas about empowering the Triumvirate – hell, even ideas of using Overcharge on villains, if necessary. Whatever you could do.

Because you knew that there was some kind of attack due. The thought had crossed your mind, traitorous and grim, time and again. It had been long enough. While nobody could predict exactly how long there would be between attacks, it was never longer than around three months, not since the emergence of the Simurgh. It had been three months since Canberra. Every moment without another one of them was just borrowed time, and the thought had apparently not been reserved for you alone.

'There's one coming?'

Your voice sounded smaller than you had intended, but you didn't want to try for a stronger version.

'We can't be certain. Endbringers are, by their nature, much harder to predict than anything else. It would be impossible to say exactly where and exactly when. It would be impossible to say which of them, though given recent history the Simurgh is not a strong candidate. However, activity has increased among all three recently and there is reason to expect some kind of movement either from Behemoth in Northern Africa or from Leviathan along the East Coast of the United States within the next week. The Guild is interested in attempting to explore the limits of your questioning on the Endbringers.'

Your heart froze. An attack was always bad, but the closer they got to home the harder it was to ignore it. You knew that it wasn't exactly the heroic mindset, but distance made things abstract. Tragedy from five thousand miles away was still awful – the scenes you'd watched in video, witnessed in photographs, burned into your mind – but they were awful concepts. Vicarious suffering, no matter how intense, was still vicarious.

Attacks on the United States made your bones hurt with the intensity of the chill. The East Coast, more so.

'I don't know how much I can help, but I'll try.'

That was all you could offer.

Contrary to your expectations, Dragon had very few questions about the Endbringers themselves. Apparently she had heard reports of your claims that overcharging Lung would work to overcome Endbringers as well as that Eidolon apparently wasn't returning results, and had a handful of additional questions regarding parahumans you had barely even heard of, and another handful of questions intended to act as a referendum on the accuracy of her and Armsmaster's system.

Overall, you were able to conclude that for reasons neither of you could really work out, Chevalier's likelihood of being able to drive off an Endbringer was particularly high, though not as high as Lung's, and that her systems were as accurate as she thought them to be.

Unfortunately, attempts to reveal whether their prediction of an incoming Endbringer was correct – or which Endbringer it would be – resulted only in inconclusive results. It was not a surprise, but you still didn't appreciate it.

Head throbbing intensely, you almost had half a mind to take the second painkiller of the day – the one that would put you unconscious – but you refrained. With no plans and no obligations, you could sit in a dark room and still be somewhat productive even if you hurt. Pain was just pain, that's all, and you were getting a little more used to it than you had been even a few months ago. Winslow had been worse, which served as a reminder to be grateful that it was just a migraine and not something more targeted.

When Dragon finally hung up, you slumped back onto your bed with a definitive thud.

Tension had been brewing for days, and now that you knew that everyone else was on high alert too, the chances of relaxation were slim to none. Any moment could be interrupted with the warning, and while you had passed on the call to fight the Simurgh back in February – for very good reasons, as far as you were concerned – but refusing again was not on the cards. Leviathan or Behemoth posed enormous problems, that much was obvious, but neither of them had the corrupting mental influence that the Simurgh had, and when it came to physical conflict, there weren't many parahumans in the world more equipped for it than you, for better or worse.

At least your helmet had a re-breather. You didn't much feel like getting drowned or coughing on smog and fumes.

Without much motivation to move, and a head that was steadily reminding you why you had taken painkillers in the first place, you weren't sure how much time went by. There was every chance that it had been an hour or more when you finally had a reason to budge – it certainly felt like it, though there was the possibility that things were dragging for other reasons.

Beeping, you picked up your phone and took a look at the display. Even with the brightness turned low, you squinted.

'Scrivener?'

Opening the message took only a second, and you were surprised at how extensive it was. Nothing too serious, you thought, scanning over it, but still, for someone who rarely reached out first it was nice to see.

Having already agreed to let you scan his power, he was mostly just interested in the time and date. A few messages back and forth and it was arranged. Thursday 19th​ worked well for both of you, aligning with schedules and not requiring anyone to do more hours than anticipated.

As the conversation began winding down, you felt the sudden urge to extend your hand a little further. You'd hung out with Anchor before, and while you got the feeling that she was by far the most outgoing member of the Atlanta Wards, that didn't mean that the rest of them were complete icicles; Scrivener had already shown a penchant for joking around and he'd been nice enough when you reached out to him on PHO before making the move to the Southern city. It couldn't help to try reaching out to him too.

Penumbra: Would you be interested in hanging out after? Lunch, maybe.

Scrivener: sure, in the canteen though, for security stuff

Scrivener: not ditching the mask yet, sorry

You couldn't blame him – you weren't planning on ditching the mask yet either. While the possibility of getting to that stage at some point sounded appealing (you were a more reserved person, but you couldn't pretend that unmasking to Alec and Rachel hadn't been nice, and knowing that they were people who you could trust gave you a warm feeling inside) you knew that was a little way away. A few more missions together first, at the least.

Messaging back, you confirmed that you were okay with it, and a few more pleasantries were exchanged before you threw your phone back down on your bed and pressed your eyes shut, the heels of your palms digging into them. One of these days, you were going to find out what was causing the headaches and you were going to punch it very hard.

Coming up with a way to fill the rest of the day was difficult. It wasn't late – the sun was still up, after all, and would be for a few hours – but it was far from early. You weren't going to go out on patrol, and while you had ideas on investigating the missing statue of Miss Freedom, Scrivener's opening comments still residing in the back of your head, you figured that was probably a job best left for a day when you had questions remaining on Percentile. Tomorrow, maybe. With no patrols scheduled, you could head out and see if Percentile could help at all, and get some field experience with whatever strange Psychometry your new power was.

The limits of it weren't clear, but a brief search on the internet for what it was made things clear, and just trying it a few times revealed its effects with some more clarity. Power testing for real understanding was still on board, but trying it out on the Capitol's dome made sense. Even if it didn't really get you anywhere, it wasn't like you lost out from trying.

With that set for the next day, however, and any questions you still had towards Burroughs and the Runners deferred until your brain stopped trying to escape your skull, there wasn't much to do.

Meandering downstairs, you made a sandwich before taking it back up to eat at your desk. The tinkertech medications that helped keep your headaches under control had a side effect of causing some nausea if you hadn't eaten, so shoving bread down your gullet in a dark room made for an appropriately gremlinoid response to the entire situation.

Roath had made you agree to do some kind of PHO public outreach, so with nothing else really left available to you, that seemed like the logical course of action. While actually doing it was out of the bounds of possibility (both in practical terms and in the limits of your capacity in the moment) it didn't take long to log on to PHO, hissing like a vampire at the light burning your retinas, and send a message to the admins. Getting something arranged made a lot of sense, and while you were damned if you were going to let Alec and Scrivener have anything to do with the organisation of it, you still needed some oversight.

Rather than doing a running Q&A, you proposed something where a period for questions would be opened up and then you could respond to everything in a much more direct and less confusing way. Maybe the lack of spontaneity would disappoint some, but for a first introduction to the community you felt like structure could be a benefit.

Follow ups would be easier to manage, and who knew, maybe you would even risk a free-for-all like your first time in Brockton Bay once you were in the swing of things. Making it a regular occurrence, or at least a semi-regular occurrence, made a lot of sense. The obligation wasn't there with Brockton Bay. That was your home, you were moulded by it, and in turn, you felt like it already knew you; Atlanta was very different, and if you wanted that same level of rapport it only made sense that you had to extend the olive branch.

You were just hoping that there were fewer conspiracies than last time.

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but everyone needed to dream.

Sunday, 15th​ May

Before you left your house to head over to the Capitol building, you had a change of heart. You were still going to go, of course, but you weren't sure how long it was going to take you and while the Capitol itself wasn't entrenched in anyone's particular territory, you knew that Inheritance clearly had some kind of interest in the place, so there was a risk of getting piled on.

While you weren't looking for a fight, and you weren't particularly scared of most villains either, having a team behind you tended to make things easier.

Messaging Rachel and Alec hadn't taken long, something you could do while getting breakfast, and the two of them had agreed to meet you at the Capitol building. Part of you wondered whether they would be travelling together; convenience aside, you couldn't really imagine the two of them voluntarily sharing space all that often.

They were a strange couple. You'd wondered more than once what the dynamic must have been for the Undersiders. While you'd only met Tattletale briefly, and had never really met Grue at all, the mixture of personalities seemed almost tailor made to grate up against one another. Maybe it was something overtly professional, but you weren't sure how you felt about the idea of that. For some reason breaking the law together felt like it needed more trust than just going on a mission.

You couldn't just put in a complaint to HR if something went wrong with your little thieving gang.

Still, those days were over and you weren't really shackled to them. There were other gangs and groups that took up a lot more of your mind.

While you were getting in costume, you couldn't help but turn over thoughts about the Runners in your mind. Inheritance may have had more to do with the day's investigation, you'd already resolved to take down the smaller, potentially more vulnerable group first, and Burroughs still made the most sense as an initial target. Whether his chemical tinkering had anything to do with their drug trade or whether it was entirely separate, you didn't know but you didn't really want to find out in the field either.

The idea of checking on your helmet's filters came to mind. As far as you knew, they were still working fine, but you'd not had to use them since you fought Fog and if his corrosive powers had been enough to damage even your own body, however slightly, there was a chance you might need to look into some kind of maintenance on the helmet. The possibility of improving the thing crossed your mind, but no immediate ideas were coming to you.

Too distinct from your own specialty, or just something that you hadn't spent enough time on yet, you couldn't be sure, but you weren't going to dwell on it too heavily for the time being. Dragon could always have some ideas; if there was anyone who would have had the experience dealing with a range of villains, it would be her. Next phone call you could always ask for some hints and advice. Hell, given Rhizome's proximity to the Guild, you could even see if there was a way for you to be put in contact with the costumer. Ambitious, maybe, but not a bad idea.

Closing your helmet down on your head, you took pleasure in that feeling of restriction. It was strange, you thought, that you had initially gained your powers by being trapped but now there was nothing that made you feel more secure than fastening the helmet down tightly and becoming Penumbra. It was a symbol that you had become more than that scared teenager, and that you had graduated from the amateur with the thin, flammable mask into someone who could actually make a change.

It was debatable whether the helmet, with its screen, its new voice cancellation software, its communications, and its scanner, was the most utilitarian part of your gear (the utility belt held many of the same things, in some way or another, along with a bunch of other bits and pieces) but it was definitely the one that you were most proud of. Rhizome would always have your thanks for that.

With it on, you began running a few questions through Percentile. With considerations of the Runners in your head, and Burroughs in particular circulating in your thoughts, there wasn't much to be done about it. Either the questions were going to get asked, or they were going to annoy you for the rest of the day. When you had other things to be getting on with, it was best to just get them out of the way.

Chances that Burroughs has a central base that he uses for all of his tinkering?

0%

You allowed the corner of your lips to drop. That wasn't really what you expected.

Chances that Burroughs keeps all of his tinkering supplies in one place?

95%

A pretty solid chance, then. Maybe that meant he generally did but sometimes forgot, or there were a few things that had to be held elsewhere for whatever reason. Why wouldn't that be called a base, though, wherever it was that his supplies were?

Chances that Burroughs' tinkering supply storage location is mobile?

100%

Now that was helpful, though you still weren't sure why a mobile base wouldn't be considered a central base. You weren't sure whether it was something anyone in the PRT or local Protectorate knew; it seemed like the sort of thing one of them might have figured out, but it hadn't been in any of the papers you were initially given by Cinereal, so there was an outside chance that it was a new discovery. In either case, you were going to pass it on the first opportunity you got.

Exiting the house, you left Dad to his project. Woodworking left abandoned on the kitchen table, he was washing and refurbishing the truck with the sort of dedication you hadn't seem from him for a long time. How much success he'd get making it presentable when the rear had been crumpled in years ago, you weren't sure, but you wished him an awful lot of luck making the best attempt at it that he could. Even the fact that was trying made you feel optimistic for him; that he had time now, without having to kill himself working for the Dockworker's Association was only part of it.

Dad's improvement over the last few months was one of the things you were proudest of. If you were to have asked him, you would wager that he'd be pretty proud of it too. Whatever the reason, and no matter how much you could understand it, he had been pretty useless for a while and it was nice to have him back.

As you took off into the skies, you heard an aborted curse from below immediately after a clank, and you couldn't help but laugh. Hopefully he wasn't going to need a trip to the hospital at any point.

Some assurance about Burroughs in mind, you made a bee-line to the Capitol building. You had never been before, but consulting maps hadn't taken long and one of the wonderful positives about travelling by air was that basically everything was in a direct line from everywhere else. There was almost no danger of getting lost by taking a wrong turn or confusing one street for another. Simply beginning in the right orientation meant that you ended up at the place you wanted with very little to trouble you.

And that's precisely what happened. It wasn't a long flight, with your wings buzzing along at their most irritating, a high pitched whine that reminded you a little of wasps at a picnic. Air rushed past you in thick waves, slightly humid, and even through your helmet you could feel the stifling warmth of the air slowly give way to the breeze as your momentum drove the currents into a spin. Were you lower to the ground, you were sure that your slip-stream would have left a lovely, if turbulent, dip in temperature.

The Capitol building came into view relatively quickly, at that speed. A large structure, the trademarked dome atop it shining in the sun, it was evident long before you were even close. From a distance, the dome, clearly missing something from its apex, was nevertheless shiny and bright, the sun glinting off it with a kind of gaudy aesthetic that elsewhere may have been crass but in the context of the greenery around it and the austere white stone of the building proper simply looked regal.

As you grew closer, you couldn't help but grimace.

Clear shine gave way to a pitted appearance, and once you got close enough to necessitate slowing, you could see the emerging disaster that was there.

The dome, covered in gold in most places, had huge chunks missing. Sections the size of your palm had been torn away and never replaced, and they became more and more numerous the closer they got to the very peak of the structure, where the statue of Miss Freedom had clearly been torn away. It looked scabbed and blistered, the rock that had been hidden beneath torn up. Either they had never tried to repair it, or the repairs had gone almost as disastrously as the theft, because it was a mess.

Landing nearby, you looked around and were pleased to see Skýla and Regent already on the scene, standing near a black PRT vehicle. You wondered whether the driver was going to hang around or leave, but the question was answered as the two began moving towards you and the vehicle's engine came back to life, before reversing and peeling away.

'Hey,' Regent spoke first, the humidity clearly not playing well with his thin silk shirt which pressed in places to his chest. 'Bit warm, no?'

You rolled your eyes and simply grasped the few shadows that came over the group via the Capitol's height and plunged the temperature down. It couldn't do much for the humidity, and there'd be no using it when you got to the top of the dome, but it was something.

'Thanks.'

'You're welcome. You two okay?'

'Can't complain,' Regent replied. 'Well, I could - '

'We're fine. Are we heading up?'

You smiled as Skýla completely cut Regent's monologue off. That was one of the things you appreciated about her; however gruff her demeanour might be, it wasn't usually even intended to be rude. It was just direct. She knew how she felt and didn't feel bad about it, and she understood that communication was the only way things were made clear. Regent was a pest, she didn't want to deal with it, so she didn't. Despite the fact that it didn't meet most people's social standards, there was an elegance to it, and you admired it intensely.

You had two options, as you saw it. Either you could go inside and ask permission to go up, which might take a long time to acquire and could even be denied, potentially wasting everyone's time. Or, you could simply treat it like any other building and, in standard parahuman fashion, go up there anyway without permission and simply ask forgiveness if such a thing was ever needed.

The latter seemed much more appealing, and so it was the latter choice that you made. Reaching out an arm to each of them, you wrapped your grip around their waists as gently as you could without risking security and allowed your insectile wings to buzz back into life, taking you into the air.

Flying with other people on board was always a little strange, but you had done it a few times by now, particularly with your unit, and it was something that you were getting used to. Rachel being in human form and therefore not needing to be carried simply by the hand made things much easier, and though you weren't quite as agile with passengers as you were without them, it wasn't very difficult just to head up in a straight line.

From above, the Capitol building was built like a large plus sign with the dome emerging from the centre and rising up above the rest. Whether they were there from attempted repairs recently or simply abandoned from the initial inspections after the theft you weren't sure, but some rickety scaffolding surrounded the base of the dome, the main body of which towered some metres above the flat rooftops of the quadrants on each side.

Setting your team down on the scaffolding kept them high, and luckily the wooden panels held everyone's weight.

You spent a moment, close up, looking at the dome. Angulation meant that you couldn't take it all in from below, but the damage was getting harder and harder to ignore.

'Looks like shit.' Regent said.

'Worse.' Skýla added, and you couldn't really push back.

What had appeared palm sized gaps from a distance were now clearly a little larger than that, and the scratches and gouges that had been taken from the dome's rock and the surrounding stone upon which it was built were as thick as your finger. Whoever had done the damage had either been completely unwilling to be delicate, or completely unable.

'You're not wrong,' you said, trying to see if there was an angle to climb up. You didn't mind flying and setting down on the dome from above, but if you didn't have to leave your team behind it would have been nice to take them up further with you. 'I can't see a way for you guys to get up. Regent, if you take the south side and Skýla, you take the North and keep look out, I'll head up. We're not expecting visitors, but if someone shows up hit them hard and fast. Containment foam or just knocking them off the building is good.'

It felt harsh, but you didn't want a repeat of the Octave scenario, and you knew there were masters in Inheritance's employ. There was no use giving them an opportunity when you didn't have to.

Luckily, neither member of the team questioned you.

'Aye aye, captain.' Regent said, moving around. He had a few small containment foam grenades attached to his belt, and another two strapped on either side of his staff; you got the feeling that he would have taken the first opportunity even without your instruction. He liked the stuff too much.

Skýla simply nodded, stiff as always, and kept her position, already being close to the right location.

You took off, not wasting any more time. It was already past afternoon, and though you hadn't arrived extremely early (with no rush, the morning took as long as it needed to) it was still surprising how much daylight had passed since your arrival.

Ignoring the damage you saw, you touched down on top of the dome. It was large, much larger than it looked from below, but somehow still felt small enough to be vulnerable. It was strange, standing somewhere like that – it was like you imagined going to the top of the Statue of Liberty to be. Suddenly you were inside the landmark, which wasn't really how it was supposed to work.

Surreality aside though, you had enough heroing experience to recognise a wreckage when you saw it, and the dome was very much in a state of disrepair. Whipping off a glove and tucking it into your belt, you knelt down and prepared to engage your psychometric abilities at scale for the first time. Maybe in a perfect world you would have had the ability to get power testing first, but you already felt like your first month in Atlanta had been surprisingly unproductive, despite the arrests. You wanted to get the ball rolling.

Pressing your hand flat against the dome and taking a moment to secure your footing, the gentle arc of the thing just stable enough for your boots' aggressive grip to catch when combined with your powerful legs providing the downward force, you reached in and allowed yourself to be taken.

In a way, it felt like the opposite of Power Hand Kill. Whereas that felt like you were pouring out, a gate being opened, Psychometry felt a lot more like opening a doorway and letting things in. Instantly, you felt your senses go dull under the weight of information, the kind of distant sound of voices underwater or the sight of visions between glimpses of sleep.

Rain. Heat. The sun, days and days of it, boiling hot. Birds, wind. The dome was famous, it was well known, but it was also inaccessible, and you were grateful that it didn't get much in the way of direct history other than simply exposure to the elements; you were able to handle that, and you allowed the memories and images to flicker through your head without grasping on to any of them, without getting any closer. There was no sense of time, not really. When things went by you could feel, in a sort of abstract way, that it had happened months ago, or even a year, but there was no import attached to the idea.

Workers had been there. They had tried to fix the roof, but the damage was too extensive. The spot you were standing on had been largely repairable, much of the gold restored, but there had been holes in the roof elsewhere deep enough to make it through the exterior of the building and they'd been forced to focus on structural integrity rather than aesthetics. Budget wasn't available for more yet. You felt a twinge in the back of your head. You were back a long way.

Holding on further, you let the weeks and months bombard you like rain. You submerged yourself in the deluge. More repairs. The feeling of being under power tools, the thudding of material. You felt as though you almost knew how to use the tools, if you just reached out a little further, but you held back. The scaffolding had been higher then, smothering. Rain, sun, wind. Another twinge. You must have been back a long time. It was nearly too much. Just a little further and you were sure that you would see it.

Rain, sun, wind. Darkness in night. Then you were split – two places at once, no, four. Not in pieces, in whole; the entirety of you divided like in a fun house mirror, but less like reflections and more like you just existed in different places at once. Panels slicing. A man, large. No sight, no sound, obscured in the blackness and panels. A cackling, refracting through the splits. No idea where it began. Then a weight, as though something had been added – going in reverse, you'd seen it be put back, rather than taken. Rain, sun, wind.

Inhaling audibly, you pulled your hand back and fell back. If it weren't for your wings, still steadily existing on your back, you might have fallen. There was little strength left in your legs and it was going to take a moment to get it back, but the phosphorescent flickerings of the Fairy Wings were immune to whatever the particular wave of fatigue you were experiencing was.

Years had gone by, you were sure of it. You'd have to check exact dates. Your head ached, but luckily it wasn't quite so bad as you were used to from Percentile; whatever headache Psychometry caused had clearly been mitigated by the fact that much of the time was shallow; few events, little significant. You dreaded to think if you had tried something similar on a regular street, where bodies and minds were constantly roving and adding.

What had you even seen? It was difficult to work out, something you wanted to get home and write down and try to piece together. Seeing things the way you had, in so much depth, had a way of overwhelming your mind and while you knew instinctively that the image would solidify over time, in the moment it was still wavy and weak. Confusing more than anything. In need of assimilation.

You flew back down, settling on wobbling legs on the scaffolding before giving up and deciding to just sit.

'You okay?'

Skýla moved beside you, clambering down until she was sitting too.

'I'll be fine, I just need a moment.'

'What happened?'

'New power. I can see into the past now, sort of. I wanted to see if I could find out exactly how the statue went missing but it was a long time ago. Took a lot out of me.'

'Hm. Rough. Maybe you should sleep when you get home.'

'Maybe I will.'

The companionable silence didn't last long before Regent came around the side of the scaffolding, apparently hearing the sound of conversation and completely unable to resist becoming a part of it.

'Nobody being attacked? Good. Find out anything interesting?'

You explained the same thing as Regent walked over and found himself sat on your other side, feet hanging from the scaffolding. You weren't sure how good an idea that was, the slightly splintered wood perhaps not strong enough to sustain all of your weight together, and even if it was you were sure that Regent's shirt wouldn't appreciate the treatment.

Silence hung over you all for a few minutes as you caught your breath. Apparently Regent was willing to give you a moment to recover. The headache was already starting to recede but your legs still felt a little weak. Nothing too serious but you had a good idea of how much you could take now before it started having a more physical impact on you, which was good to know. Power testing would appreciate it, if nothing else.

The sun was still in the sky, but starting to descend. You didn't check the time but if you had to guess, it would have been early afternoon, around three or four.

Shaking you out of your thoughts, your helmet's communication system dinged loudly and you picked up.

'Hello, Penumbra here.'

'Penumbra, it's Dragon.'

You felt your stomach seize.

'Today?'

Dragon's voice, synthesised just enough to tell you that it was still coming through some of her electronics but high enough in fidelity that you could hear he reluctance in it, felt as though it took a year to respond though it was surely only a fraction of a second.

'Today.'

You managed to stop yourself from making a sound, and you felt proud enough about that.

'Where? Who? How long do we have?'

'Leviathan, we think. We're expecting touch down in potentially as soon as an hour. Maybe ninety minutes if we're lucky. In Brockton Bay.'

The words gutted you instantly, your spirit bleeding out through the slats in the scaffold beams.

Actions Remaining:

- Work on designing some kind of restraint method with your tinkertech

- Work on your tinkertech in this order: suits (2)

- Focus scanners on internal scans/biological scans/brain scans

- Hold a Q&A with the Atlanta community, preventing Regent and Scrivener from 'helping'

- Make small video recorders that can be carried by animals

- Hang out with Scrivener outside of work (Thursday 19th May)

Lots of things in this one: our second meeting with the Guild, some thoughts about upgrading our filter, some slightly unclear conclusions on Burroughs and his laboratory, a date set for Scrivener's scan and a deal for hanging out after, and a visit to the Capitol where we found some hints about the statue theft, though the memories are going to take a moment to settle in coherence (hint: that's an Interlude coming).

Oh yeah, and Leviathan's here. Uh oh. What do we do? Are we attending? What kind of approach are we taking? Are trying to convince anyone else to go with us? If not, what do we do if they want to go with us? What do we tell Dad? Do we warn Vicky? What do we do?!