Maanyo

Neither of Aar's companions liked rain. As the storm drove down around them, sheets of water obscuring Aar's view of Chicago, Reason grumbled something profane, and The Girl's forehead creased. But Aar closed his eyes and relished the moment. It hardly rained in Somalia, and the feeling of standing within water, coolness washing over his face and hands, relaxed him.

"It's a block away," The Girl said, her voice clipped. The three heroes had left their Project Phoenix taxi a couple blocks back, electing to walk the rest of the way to avoid suspicion. Reason and Aar were relative unknowns, but The Girl—Irene, as she had insisted Aar call her—had worked with high-profile clients for years now. She obscured her mouth and chin with a red wool scarf, eyes surreptitiously scanning the crowds that jostled their group.

A week and a half had passed since Ms. Sato had disappeared. Concerned staff members were requesting information from external entities, and private channels had provided a handful of leads. According to Irene, the investigation team had sifted through myriad claims before settling on the trustworthy few; these included a report from a Project Phoenix affiliate in New York, a file compiled by a Japanese private investigation firm, and a record from the Chicago Police Department of multiple call-ins corroborating Ms. Sato's description. Project Phoenix had sent groups to follow up, one of which was Irene and Reason.

Aar had not been assigned to Irene's group originally. In fact, neither he nor the Beat had been assigned to any group—their skills, an investigator had informed them, would not be necessary. That had not prevented Aar from volunteering. His priorities had changed since the mission to Vancouver; he could be of service, he knew now, but his devotion to Project Phoenix's noble goal had solidified, causing him to seek out even further usefulness on the team. This meant developing his soft skills, learning to work better with people and operate in the political tangle of superhuman affairs. With their unique strengths and variety of experiences, Aar's fellow heroes had lessons to teach him, whether they realized it themselves or not. Officially, Aar had come to Chicago as "backup", but he would gain more from watching Irene work than he would give.

Before long, Aar, Irene, and Reason had halted in front of CPD Headquarters. The building was not nearly as impressive as Project Phoenix's, its brown-brick walls rising two stories at most. Two flags hung in front of the door, one American, the other what Aar presumed to be the state's.

"No point standing around," said Reason, and she strode toward the open glass door. With quick glances to her left and right, Irene soon followed, leaving Aar to pick up the rear.

The inside of the building was suitably bureaucratic. Reason was standing before a wide reception desk, where Irene had begun to unwind the scarf from around her head. Another open door stood behind the desk; through this, Aar could see a large room filled with computers, people in business clothing flitting from one end to the other. His gaze was distracted by the voice of the smiling receptionist in front of him him:

"Project Phoenix, I assume?"

Aar blinked. This man, clothed in a crisp white shirt and red tie, should not have known they'd come from Project Phoenix. Irene had mentioned they'd need a code word to get into the back, for discretion's sake.

Aar glanced at Irene, who was rewrapping her scarf around her face, though her cheeks had turned noticeably red. Had the receptionist identified Irene? She was recognizable in certain circles, though she hadn't been publicly affiliated with Project Phoenix, as far as Aar knew. Perhaps the staff had sent word of who would be coming.

At a word of affirmation from Reason, the receptionist stood from his chair and said, "Right this way." He began to stride to Aar's left, where a closed door led out of the lobby and deeper into CPD Headquarters. Reason and Irene trailed after him, but Aar hesitated. The lack of a code word had disoriented him, and he stared at the open door to his right, where CPD workers sat at computers. Now he noticed something new—the door had been propped open with a doorstop. Someone was deliberately exposing this area to the lobby, but why? Could it be a show of transparency? Aar assumed the CPD would want to hide their inner workings, but perhaps he misjudged them.

Then Aar noted that the lobby was completely empty.

Hastily, Aar took a few steps closer to the computer room. "Excuse me?" he said. In the corner of his eye, the receptionist and his companions stopped, but Aar ignored them, speaking into the crowded computer room regardless: "Hello? Anyone?"

None of the workers looked up. No one turned, no one answered; activity continued as if he had never spoken.

"Please don't bother them," the receptionist called from across the lobby. Aar looked at the receptionist for a moment; his expression was stricken, his arm outstretched as if to physically stop Aar. "They have work to do."

"Maanyo," Reason hissed. Irene beckoned with one finger from the hand at her side.

Several possibilities existed. The workers could be ignoring Aar. Or the workers could not heard him, though he had spoken only feet from the closest ones. Or—

"Maanyo," Irene said. Her voice was flat, tired. "Please."

With a last glance at the computer room, Aar turned and advanced toward the receptionist. At this, the receptionist's face transformed, a smile practically splitting his cheeks. "Excellent," he said. "Please, come with me."

Reason and Irene flanked the receptionist as he pushed through the closed door on the left. Aar paused and, in the second before following them, reached into his pocket, pressing the button on the device hidden within.

Then he entered.

The group was presented with not a large room like the one Aar had seen before, but a long hallway. Harsh light flooded the passageway, and the colorfully-patterned tile of the lobby gave way to a plain beige. They passed closed doors on either side, walking behind the receptionist to the back of the hall. There the receptionist opened a door on the left, stepping back so that the threesome could proceed inside.

Unfortunately, Aar received little opportunity to observe the room in which he found himself. It was small, with a desk at the back and a gray-mustached man sitting behind it; the air smelled of greasy food, as if someone had just eaten a takeaway meal inside. Any further detail was lost on Aar, because he was distracted by a buzzing noise that he soon sourced to an operational taser.

Reason fell first, rendering her unable to protect the others. A shadowy figure pressed the taser to her side, and she swore as another figure bludgeoned her over the head with something long and metallic. In half a second, pain exploded through Aar's limbs, and he screamed, knees buckling as he collapsed; he stared into beige tile, and then he stared into blackness.

/

They had become hostages.

The woman in front of them was unsympathetic to their physical ailments. Red hair fell to her shoulders, and glittering green eyes stared at them beside a hawklike nose. Her expression was affectedly neutral; only when Aar's mind began to clear, the fogginess fading, did she strike him as familiar.

Aar's hands were tied behind his back. The ropes bit into his wrists, and any struggle only drove them further into his flesh. His legs, too, had been secured somehow, presumably by a rope or cable tied to the legs of his chair. Attempting to scoot the chair did nothing, as it seemed to be welded to the ground. However, Aar's head was free, and he scanned the room without hesitation. The floor and walls were a blank gray color, and fluorescent light shone through the musty air. The Girl was tied to a chair to his right—yes, the chair had been cemented to the ground—and beyond her was Reason, also secured. While Irene blinked and stirred, Reason's head tilted against the top of her chair, unmoving.

The room's only other feature was the woman who stood before them. Seemingly satisfied with their level of wakefulness, she began to speak:

"Project Phoenix." Her words were gravelly and deep, unsuited to her small frame. "Well, three of you, anyway. Three's enough."

"You're a Hart," Irene said, voice surprisingly even for having been knocked unconscious. "You look like him."

The woman didn't respond, only stood motionless for a moment. Finally, she spoke: "You have information." This time, the Project Phoenix heroes waited for her to continue. "You're well-connected. You have data on facilities around the world—security information, personnel. This is data I'd like to see."

"No," said Irene, tone the same as if she'd been asked the time of day.

"I already contacted your boss. Well, whoever's functioning as your boss now—it's handy, knowing that Ms. Sato's gone missing. If I hadn't intercepted your call, I'd have had no idea."

What an effective investigation—not only did these people not know where Ms. Sato was, but they were also ready to eliminate three more Project Phoenix members.

Aar continued to stare at the woman before him, even as she focused fully on Irene. With her possible relation to Hart, Aar wouldn't doubt that she was superhuman, and intercepting a call from Project Phoenix would've given her ample time to orchestrate a kidnapping. If she'd had the power to overrun the entire CPD facility, she probably would have done so; but Project Phoenix hadn't heard of this woman before, meaning her power was likely low. Perhaps she had access to part of the CPD Headquarters. Perhaps she'd intercepted the Project Phoenix heroes without the CPD knowing, in their own building, even. Perhaps the reception space had been soundproofed, or illusioned, or something else that required an open door in the—

"I've asked your superiors to send the information I want," the woman was saying. "If you give me something good now, off the top of your head, I might let you go early. Until I'm satisfied, though, you're staying here."

For a moment, Irene sat in silence. Then she said, "Don't lie to me."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't want information. You've had ample opportunity to commit this sort of crime in the past, and I've never heard of you. There's a reason you're acting now."

"Enlighten me." The red-haired woman crossed her arms over her chest, cocking her head to the side.

Irene continued: "You look like Hart. You're related to him; you're close to him, or you were, before we shot him through the head." The woman's fingers curled against her black business pants. "You're angry we killed him, and you want us dead. Does that sound right?"

The woman turned on her heel and began to walk. Her paces sounded throughout the room, resonating from her black stilettos; then she turned again and strode back to her original position. Her expression was still somewhat neutral, but creases had developed at the corners of her mouth. "Why haven't I killed you?" she asked.

If Aar were willing to contribute, he would have posited that this woman genuinely wanted the project's information. Irene, however, pursued a different theory: "You only need leverage. You do want to hurt Project Phoenix, I can't ignore that, but..."

Then it hit Aar. If this woman wanted to hurt Project Phoenix members, she'd only need to wait for rescue forces. "The trackers," he murmured.

Silence hung over the room.

Upon every hero's arrival at Project Phoenix Headquarters, staff members would insert a microchip into the hero's left wrist. The chip was almost surface-level—for Aar, the insertion process had been far from surgical—but it broadcasted the location of heroes back to Headquarters during excursions. The instant Irene failed to report back on their current mission, an auxiliary team from Headquarters would swarm Chicago, or wherever this woman had taken them.

"You've got this facility guarded. You're planning to kill the rescue forces when they come," said Irene.

"We cut out the trackers," the woman replied.

Only now that Aar was paying attention did he feel the stinging sensation on his left wrist, the mark left by a cut he did not witness. The woman wasn't lying—she had sliced the trackers out.

"The ginger hero on your team, the one that died at Esquimalt," the woman said. "You never found the body, did you? We did. We're familiar with your procedures—the tracker is surprisingly easy to excise. All your trackers are far from here." She looked at Aar for a moment, then added, "Got his on-off switch, too. Fingerprint-activated, right? Doesn't matter."

It was at this moment that Aar knew he would leave alive.

In the rush of relief that enveloped him, he fought to keep his face blank. The woman could not know her plan had failed; Irene, despite her analytical mind, would have no way of piecing it together, so the task of concealment rested on Aar alone.

"So you've rigged the trackers' location," Irene said. Aar was impressed that, despite the circumstances, Irene's voice had not wavered once since the hostage arrangement had begun. "You've set up a trap for our reinforcements, but not here. When they track our location and try to come rescue us, you'll obliterate them."

In a rare show of delight, the woman smiled. "I think you've got it."

Nothing was left to say, and the hostages sat in silence for the following hour. After a few minutes of standing and staring, the woman seemed to realize she would gain nothing useful from the captives and disappeared, exiting through a near-invisible door in the back. Reason remained unconscious, and Aar suspected she had been sedated, since she had not moved since he himself had woken.

Irene had to be anxious. Aar knew this, but, for safety's sake, he could not communicate with her. When they eventually escaped, she would learn that they'd been safer than she'd realized; for now, though, Aar could only sit beside her and provide solidarity.

When the back wall exploded, Aar wished it had done so sooner.

Irene shrieked, but Aar waited patiently, even as debris flew across the room, even as clouds of smoke drifted toward the ceiling. Striding through the haze were people Aar recognized, trainers and staff members and the Beat. A grin broke across Aar's face, and he could not help the laughter that bubbled in his chest. He had not been wrong—Project Phoenix had won.

It was Aar's trainer Jensen that cut him free from his restraints. As the knife sliced through the ropes, Jensen muttered, "Thank God for the head tracker."

"Thank God."

Project Phoenix had learned early on that Aar's wrist tracker functioned poorly underwater. To rectify it, they had inserted a second tracker behind Aar's ear, a more sophisticated one that would operate anywhere. The advanced tracker did require more energy to monitor at Headquarters, which was why the wrist tracker was active by default. Only one device could switch the active tracker; Aar's captor had confiscated that device after knocking him out, despite Aar using it to its full effect before going unconscious.

Aar had understood something was wrong long before Reason or Irene had. He'd deferred to their judgment, believing them more experienced in what was considered normal. But the team had suffered for his silence, despite the godsend that was the second tracker.

Just as he'd wanted, Aar had learned from this experience. He would not doubt himself again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reason

"Look, I know it's been a week, but-"

"Timothy, if you don't get your ass up so help me," Amanda warned. She hung up, letting the phone sit beside her in the quiet. It wasn't quite as dramatic as slamming something down, but if she cracked the screen she'd be pissed. There was already a small chip from the fight the other day and she hardly had it touched. There was a perspicacious way about Tim that often left him the one she'd do anything for, but that didn't mean he was any easier to deal with. "That man. He can notice anything and comment on everything but ask him to fly anywhere and he shakes like a chihuahua in the disco."

God, I swear...If Cherry Bomb Empress bitch doesn't get back here, I'm quitting. Just joined the job and she's already gone over a week. Time seemed to amble by, slow in ways, only to creep up and slither around the edge of a building like a weasel as the group was left in the dust of trying to figure out what they were doing.

"We were called together for a reason," Amanda said, tilting her head up to peer at the ceiling. Though she'd only intended staying in the Headquarters for a night or two, it'd turned out to be more comfortable than the hotel across the street. At least there, the only people who annoyed her late at night were Timothy and the occasional King who was always finding ways to be loud directly down the hallway. Not that the Hydroflare idiot was any better, always shouting and blowing something up with her puppy-dog of a whipped boy. "She wouldn't just give us radio silence like this."

There was something off about everything. Since the attack, the Empress had left them alone. Was she taken? She couldn't have been...except, there wasn't another option, was there? Not that Amanda could come to at the moment. Moving to her overnight bag, Amanda rifled through and found one of the small notepads that she kept around to scribble in on long car rides and found three ink pens that would work well enough. She put everything into the pouch on her metal leg, snapping it twice against her fingers to make certain it wouldn't show itself to the average person.

A pistol was added for extra effort.

It took a few hours for Timothy to get there, and when he did, the boy seemed just as out of breath and filled with words and questions as he'd ever been. She didn't give him the chance to start talking before she held up a finger, took his bags, and brought him into the room. On the way up the elevator, he sprouted off enough details to make her want to scream, the last of which ended with a very detailed conversation about his dogsitter wanting a raise but still not wanting to clean up if the dog pukes under his watch.

"Okay, listen." Amanda set his bags down on the bed and gave him a smile. "This hotel room isn't secure, but it's as good as we're going to get, babe. No one knows that you were coming here. I choose a random hotel. Here's the problem: The Empress is missing."

"And you need my help to find her."

"Precisely. Where do we begin, mistro?"

Tim grinned and pulled out his computer. "When was she last seen? What day? What time? Was it at night? Day? Early morning? At the HQ?" The questions grew complicated but Amanda kept up the best she could, filling him in with everything like he was a shopping cart at Costco.

Their first place was something Amanda wouldn't have thought of in years--Google. Specifically, the map section where one could actually zoom in onto buildings, and for Tim, he knew a way to go back several days to get an accurate picture of the city. It started on the night of the attack and they sat there, winding through the tape for over half an hour before Tim noticed a speck of red on the HQ building.

"Hey--there we go," he said, stopping, zooming onto the building, and revealing a grainy picture of something red flying off. There wasn't much, but it was something that couldn't be denied--a Pheonix type symbol. Someone leaving. "That's her, right?"

"Fuck. She actually left. What direction, babe?"

He typed in something on his phone with one hand and used his other to scroll across the map a few places. It glitched the closer he got to the ocean. "Towards the Pacific, but that leaves several options. It doesn't really extend past that unless I could get something over the ocean, which I was going to try, but it looks like-"

"Someone tampered that?" It was no surprise. "Fuck. Now what? We know she left, and that no one went with her, but why? Where? And why hasn't she told us?"

There was silence to that and more typing, but Amanda wasn't satisfied with his thoughts alone. It wasn't him that had the issue. I have this issue. This is my issue. I need to be thinking. "Okay, I need you to try and get through the glitches. I'll be back later tonight."

"Wait, where are you going?"

She shook her head and walked to the door, her heels clicking on the floor loudly. "I think there's more of an investigation to be done. I feel like there's something someone has to know--there's something going on here, Timmy. I can't let you do all the work for me either." With a wink, she left, letting the door slam behind her.

The drive back to the HQ was slow but necessarily slow. Traffic had always been a tender subject. It allowed her to think and get her mind off everything. When one was driving they were thinking, their body going on autopilot while the flow of traffic led them along. How can I get into her room? Maybe the receptionist would know. If The Empress were to really leave without a message the room would be empty. But if she's left something behind...

Yet just as she reached the receptionists desk the man flinched back. "Okay, okay," he said, holding up his hands. "You're the fifth one today."

"Fifth?"

"Look, someone came in, said they had a message for The Empress. I gave him passage. I don't know where he went or what he took or whatever and I swear if one more person holds a gun to my head or tries to fireball me into the next room I'm going to get bodyguards." He held his hands up in defeat and Amanda made a mental note not to forget that rampage.

Tsking, she rolled her tongue against the side of her mouth. "Well, fun as that story was, babe, I'm just looking for clearance up to her room. I'm supposed to pick up a package of pictures to release to show how the new lineup is doing and to basically instill a message of calmness with us here, but when I tried to reach the room I realized that I never received the key. My mailbox is empty still so unless there's been some sort of issue-"

"Oh!" The man jumped, sat back down, and swiveled his chair across his five-foot room of space. For a circular desk, things weren't half as neat. At least, not from Amanda's perspective. He found a package, hastily scrawled 'Reason' on it, and rolled back over to here. "Yeah, here you go! Entrance codes to her room are in there, as well as codes to the other room."

"Thanks, babe."

She smiled at him and left. From there, it was only a matter of time. The envelope opened easily under her nails. Though the manicure had chipped from the repeated battles, the polish was holding up the best it could, reflecting holographic chips and a rainbow of desire back at her. If there was anything that Amanda truly found attractive in the world, it had to be some holographic nail polish. Nothing beat that.

The first code was easy, a set of numbers, and she typed it in. From there, the door opened, and Amanda crossed through it, careful not to disturb anything.

Drawn curtains barred off the city from view and she closed the door behind her, leaving the lights off. It was a gentle type of darkness. One that grew at the edges of a soft gray, muting but not distracting. Mm, my type of atmosphere. She kicked off the heels and left them by the door. Nothing seemed too out of place. There was a desk, undisturbed, with the drawers emptied of anything important. A bed, made, with the pillows tossed just a bit out of place. Then, Amanda reached the second door--a locked room with a password only six spots. The box contained both numbers and letters and Amanda frowned at the note left for her there. Nebuchadnezzar. The fuck? Then, her eyes lit up as she recalled the last history class with the sexiest professor she'd ever felt the need to fuck. Missed out on that one, babe. Maybe I'll hit him up some other day. You've just got to love a man with glasses held together by loose tape.

The first four-digit code didn't work--Not the birthday. She frowned, licked her lips, and tried the death. BC1104. Nope. "Shit me a biscuit," she muttered. Come on...1104BC. Greenlight. "Huston, we have takeoff."

The door opened like an air shuttle. A gasp and a wheeze and she stepped in, pacing herself across the floor and letting the coldness seep into her heels. "Oi, she likes it cold in here." A smile and she checked out the rest of the secret room. There, another desk waited, but again--nothing. It was cleaned like a whistle. Sighing, she started for the door again.

Something sharp pricked her foot and Amanda cursed, reaching down and picking up a small green shard of glass. A jade shard. There, her eyes lit.

"We were infiltrated. They weren't looking to steal something, but to deliver a message..." She cursed and left the room, making certain to lock it just the way she found it. The glass stayed in the palm of her hand. Oh fuck. She hurried out, picking up her heels and slamming them on as she made her way out of the building. I've got to get to Tim.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Beat

Life is a whole bunch of sicknesses one after the other. Every single person with an income is offering a cure for some affliction, and every one well-to-do is slinging duds, because cured people don't buy crap.

|<<

"Have you ever seen The Godfather, Sonia?" Dr. Lee asks, readjusting his seat on the box-spring mattress and watching the resultant jiggle of his gift. "It's sorta... disintegrated," he says before she has time to answer, "but that's a horse's brain. I was at the lab before I came here, see, and I thought it would be symbolic, but at the same time, subversive; intellectual in a way," he muses. "We've been doing this for a long time now-"

"Twenty years," Sonia says, glancing at the glassed-in display protecting her marriage certificate and a carmine silk corsage.

Lee creates a tension between his molars, grinding away the frustration that he let her get a word in. His eyes follow hers and he almost laughs at the shrine. What a silly reason to get into such a mess. "Yes. And it's been twenty good years. We understood each other. I'm not a thug, but I can't keep giving you powers if I don't get returns, Sonia. I know the prices are rising, but that was always a possibility - it says so right in your contract. Power is at a premium right now."

"You don't need to sell me, after all you've done. I'm trying to piece something together, really, but money is dry."

"We need people too. Above and below," Lee says. The springs wheeze as even his slight frame rises off of them. Halfway through the door, he turns back and points out the mess he made. "Get that contained in something airtight, and refrigerate it for a while before tossing it for the smell. Tell your family it's mashed potatoes or something if they ask... See you Sunday; at the latest."

*

It's dark, and so very cold. Places are always colder when your not supposed to move around in them. Sonia shivers, and she can hear the metal bed buckle in response. Honestly, she wishes the mortician would too. There's the risk that he would be smart and get others before checking - and that's why she's been in this frigid sarcophagus for half an hour - but men are rarely ever smart. Her ears perk up, and she curls her fingers around the box of cake mix that's balancing on her tummy, almost hoping the faint sounds of business crescendo into her being exposed and called into action. It doesn't. She waits.

When she's finally pulled back into the world, she's frozen through. Quick work is needed, and just as she starts thawing, she has to warm this guy's heart. He freezes with fear, which gives her the time. "Now don't be mad, sweetheart. I know you hate surprises, but trust me: this is a good one," she says, interrupting his delayed, and piercing, shrill. "I'm much better than some musty dead girl, aren't I?" she paws his unshaved, bulldog jowl. It melts through her fingers.

"Jesus... honey," he says, looking confused about it, "you scared the bejeebers outta me! What are you doing here? And what's with all the cake mix? Is it someone's birthday? Aw crap, it isn't yours, is it?"

Sonia uses him like a tree to climb out of the refrigerator. "No," she laughs, "It's not my birthday. You know that girl that was supposed to be here? Well, she's not - obviously. She's actually alive, which is the good news, but I was hoping that could be a special secret between you and me, huh?"

"I mean, anything for you, hun, but don't the doctors and the examiners already know about her. I'm not sure what I can do about that."

"Oh, the doctor is in on it. And the examiner... she's dealt with. Don't you worry about all that. Your baby has it covered. All I need you to do," she starts transporting boxes of moist chocolate from the cold chamber to a countertop, "Is to take the vase meant for Brittany St. Claire, and fill it with this instead. And then I got her hair," she waggles a zip-top bag full of it, in front of him before adding it to the pile," burn that up and add it in to get her DNA in there, and cover up the chocolate smell with carrion."

The man looks over his shoulders, and in the brief instances where he loses sight of the siren, he almost changes his mind. But then he looks into her cake-batter eyes, and his heart turns into red velvet. "How big was she, how much batter should I use?" he asks.

"I don't know. Six," she thinks back, "six and a half cups."

*

Madame Claire's eyes roll outside her head. She breathes like she just jolted awake from a nightmare, and then chuffs like a horse. From a pouch hanging at her hip, she takes out a pinch of salt and tosses it over her shoulder. Her fingertips are centimeters away from a silk carmine rose. She remembers the woman who brought it, and a whole box of low-value items, in. She was desperate - would've sold her soul over if she could've. Turns out she already did.

>>|

The streets of Atlanta have just the right restitution. In Los Angeles, where the rain falls hard, and the heat is never dry, the asphalt was a soup, and it made him walk legato. The Vancouver roads were frozen shut, and that whole excursion was staccato. Walking past the storefronts he used to protect, and by the people he has cultivated friendships with, Rajon gets his beat back.

The Beat's back. The Beat's back...pack has a katana sticking out of it. A lady about a block away from him, pushes her stroller across to the other side of the street. That's whack.

A gentle breeze skips through the city, and a block ahead, then a quick turn to the left, it runs into a cacophony of wind chimes and dream catchers. Good, Rajon thinks. It took convincing to let him come here, ('It's not like he's helping out here, anyway,' they rationalized, he imagines) and if the shop closed or anything, well that would just be his luck. The sound doesn't mean she's there, mind, but at least she hasn't been evicted or nothing. A few seconds later, all that clairvoyance is irrelevant, because now he knows.

The storefront is painted with a flaking lead composite, an over-sexualized cartoon sprite is laying across the words which make up the title: Madame Claire's: Collector and Mystic. Below that is an awning of vibrant vermillion, strung with musical mobiles and deconstructed xylophones - each one with an oversized price tag tied to it. Behind them, is a dusty window, and behind that, he can just make out the silhouette of the titular Madame Claire hard at work. He walks ahead, brushing away the clutter with a shielding hand, and they recoil and scream. Alerted by the noise, Madame comes out to the front step. "Coppa, is that you I see? Or do my eyes trick me?" she says, beaming at him like a mother would.

"Yes, Mada, it's me. I'm surprised you didn't know I was coming," he jokes. Madame does her best to withhold a grin from her grimace, and waves him away before turning back into the shop. Rajon follows her with impetuous pride.

The floor is so laden with salt he almost falls into a bookshelf stocked with gothic glass jars of different volumes and design flourishes. "Mind that," she says. "Ever since you went away, I've had to rely on felicity and whim to look kindly upon me." What she means is that she has to do so more now. Even when he was patrolling her place, she spent more on salt than the McDonalds he also worked at. "How are you?" she asks, forgiving his snark and sneaking him into a hug. "Has 'destiny' been everything you hoped it would be?"

"Oh. Yeah, yeah," he lies. "It was an adjustment, but lately I've really been finding my place in there. That's why I'm here actually. I need your help."

"You're looking for Sakura Sato," Madame finishes his words for him. She reaches around him, and testingly touches the hilt of the blade she used to connect the dots, then she unsheathes it from the gap between two zippers. Ruby red light reflects around the room, it warps and mutates through the menagerie of jarred goods and glass ornaments. He confirms her hypothesis with a distinct nod. She turns around and beckons, "Come."

The destination is The Room Depraved - a name borne from hokey showmanship - it's a plain room, but purposely so. Slate black walls, and a heavy silence; both of which help her concentrate. Rajon has been there before, but never as a customer. If all goes well, that'll still be true after today (Oh no, I'll pay, I'll pay. You sure? Oh thank you, really.). Madame carries the sword in like you'd imagine someone would bring a baguette to a religious official. Very dutiful and offering. Rajon cuts ahead of her to get the door since she has her hands full. Then there is a curtain he has to pull away. After she marches in, he closes both back up. They both take seats at a card table dressed - you guessed it: black. The katana takes its place on a lazy susan spraypainted to match.

"This is hers?" she gives it a little spin, and the pointy end whips in front of Rajon's chest. "Something she used frequently, and valued?" He nods again. In a flash, she grabs onto the artifact. Not like an offering, but like the safety bar of a roller coaster going too fast for her liking. Just like that, he's looking at the back of her eyes, all raw and puffy. She hums, the pitch fluctuating and fluttering and faltering, then she speaks, an octave or two lower than usual. "I see. I see. I see chains. Heavy chains." Rajon dives into his backpack and fishes out a notebook and pencil to write notes. "Flames, giant flames, but those do not burn. They are welcome, like from a fireplace in the winter months. And I see nails of jade, stabbing." He asks her if she can tell anything about the weather, but the request falls on deaf ears, and she only continues to list synonyms of 'stabbing'.

Her eyes roll back. Breathing comes back to her with a sharp intake. From a pouch hanging at her hip, she takes out a pinch of salt and tosses it over her shoulder. "Does that help?" she asks, with a completely normal smile.

"Yes, very much so. Thank you so much." He closes his notebook on three words scrawled large and outside the lines: chains, flames, and jade. It doesn't seem like much, buts it's concentrated information, and could end up being crucial, he thinks. Proud of himself for having the guts to ask to be sent out here, and moreso proud of Madame for her real honest superpower, he stuffs the gilded blade back into his bag. Once again, he leads the way past the door.

"Hey, don't forget your penc-" a vision cuts into her consciousness as she takes a hold of his Mirado Black Warrior. It's a quick one, so her eyes only make a quick loop, and she comes too in a smokey puff of salt. With eyes of the doe, she places the pencil in his hands. "Coppa... who is that man?" She's seen him before, and ever since has had trouble forgetting his face.

Rajon shrugs away her contact, and looks around, puzzled. "Which man?"

"The one on your mind."

"Oh. Nobody, nobody. My uncle maybe, but-"

They've made their way to the front counter. Madame's face goes rancid, as it usually does when she's being lied to with so little decorum. "That'll be two hundred bucks. You aren't short on cash, are you? Not with your new big-money job?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nora Belasco

Bruja! Mi hija!

Wake up, sister dearest. Mother's out to cook you right up. Get to the lake.

Sucking the air clean of the sterile bedroom was the first thing Nora could do upon waking up from a midday slumber. Little particles filtered down her throat in doing so, and she coughed herself to a sit, hacking violently into the bareness of her inner elbow. She saw dark blue fly forward - nothing more than bedhead falling into her eyes, but for a moment it was unfamiliar. "Christ," she wheezed, a final wave of hawking travelling up and out. And then she was fine, and she could breathe, and all was quiet. All was well.

Wearily, she exhaled, letting the oxygen filter out as gently as she could manage. The sun shining in was too bright; at least, against the white walls and white furniture and white sheets draped comfortably over her lap, it was. She blinked profusely while staring through the blinds, as if that might help her adjust.

It didn't.

"Ugh," she groaned, rubbing dry palms against her eyes. That was the cold's fault. It feels like I just slept for the first time in two years, she thought. Naturally, I don't wanna get the hell up. It was nice, for a minute. But then the thought of minutes brought her gaze to the clock, and at the realization it was noon, irritation began to trickle in. Sleep schedule? Hah, what's that? The team? Probably roaming, waiting. She flung the sheets off her lap and crawled over to stand straight. "Let's hope they haven't stopped working on my account," she said bitterly.

She shuffled over to the door, barefooted and unweighted by the tight-fitting uniform of yesterday. T-shirt, shorts stopping just a little beyond the gluteus maximus - nothing the inhabitants of this headquarters would deem "professional," by any means. Oh fuckin' well though.

Nora slipped her feet into some castaway shoes before exiting into the hall. She stood in the middle of it for a moment, looking around, bleary-eyed and swaying. So tired was she that when she glanced down one end of the hall, she thought there was a black bird hopping across the floor, but blinking proved otherwise. Fingers rubbed at the edge of her cheek roughly, perhaps a little angrily. Her nail began to pick at a bump but she stopped herself. I'm breaking out. I should sue.

In fact, that put her on a suitable course of action: find someone who would take her empty threats of suing seriously until something productive happened. It was a weak plan, but a plan, and so she dragged her feet down the pristine halls until she came upon the bare traces of a recovering civilization.

The whereabouts of such a thing were cued in by sound. Radio static. When she placed her body in the doorframe for a better listen, she found that a cluster of these "heroes" were in the room, sitting backwards on foldout chairs and skimming through paperwork at some table in the corner.

A lot of them kept raising their hands subconsciously to their ears, and a pit fell in Nora's stomach; oh, she thought, that was me, I think. My bad. She knit her fingers together in a fidget.

Still, they weren't deaf, and some listened intently to whatever the radio was tuned into. Nora caught a few traces of the story herself.

"...Declan Hart was killed yesterday. As you all know, Hart was an escaped convict, and had a particular group of heroes not stepped in, there's no telling the damage that could've been dealt to Esquimalt."

"Let me cut you off there, Marie," another voice intercepted through the speakers, "because, while Hart's death puts ease to several of us out there, Project Phoenix is, in and of itself, something to marvel at. I mean, there's heroes we've never even seen before, out there taking names! We all know Glacier, but what about that screamer a witness talked about? We have audio of it, too, but we'll refrain from placing it here. What of these new guys? And where is the Empress in all this?"

"Thank you for your commentary, Archie. You raise some interesting questions, all of which will be talked about on our late night news report at ten. We do have some brief video footage of the scene, so be sure to check in later to see that, and to mourn the tragic loss of four brave heroes. On another note, the President recently tweeted..."

It all faded out after that, partially because Nora had no care for their current businessman-turned-politician in power, but mostly because she was still digesting the rest of the information given. The screamer- oh, she hoped that never stuck. The worst of it was "some brief video footage." Footage of what? Of the fight? Was she in it? "Brief video footage." Oh, God, she could very well be in it.

And if she was in it, that meant people would see her, and they'd recognize her, and they'd come to this sudden revelation of her whereabouts. And she didn't want that. Sickness came up and she grabbed her stomach; I don't want that.

Desperation. It clawed up and took her by the brain and shook it all around until thoughts were fluttering down and settling much like they would in a snowglobe. See, the whole reason she'd joined this goose hunt was to gain anonymity. If that thing aired, she'd be able to feel the eyes of others miles and miles away upon her own skin. Disgust slithered and twitched. They needed to complete this mission, whatever it was, soon. But when the hell would that happen if these "heroes" weren't doing anything other than mulling over files and listening to the radio? Frankly, she was starting to feel bad about feeling bad for their poor ears.

No, no. Someone needed to take some goddamn initiative and start figuring shit out. If it had to be her, so be it. It'd get her closer to getting what she signed up for, after all, and when that happened, well, there was no use in staying. In just a few days she may very well be sleeping in a prepaid bed, eating sufficient food, and living it up in some far off mountain. Away and away and away.

Another glance swept around the room, catching on to every limping leg and sprawling finger pointing at someplace on a map. One of them bumped into the corner of the table and practically collapsed right then and there.

Nora blinked. "Fuck it."

Into the room she delved, looking straight ahead to avoid the looks of the others. It was better that she couldn't see their expressions - turning heads meant acknowledgement, but twisted features meant a plethora of other things, and that wasn't something she was willing to deal with at this time. When she came to the table, she didn't raise her gaze at whoever it was she nearly collided with. Instead, her hand simply flashed out, snatched up a flashlight rolling lazily on the tabletop, and went back the way she came.

Eyes followed her. That was fine; when she turned the bend, they were gone.

"It's stupid that I have to do this," she murmured to herself as she descended the stairs. Her voice bounced with every step. "The Empress should be here, organizing the situation. But no. I'm the team's personal CSI at this point."

It was true, for the Empress' room, at least. But there was nothing up there, she already knew. Fortunately, the enemy had decided there were two places of importance in this forsaken place: as above, so below, or something like that. The heroes' quarters and the basement.

To the basement, then. Of course, there was no special forensic textbook in her brain this time, nor did she want there to be; the sound of her own steps was enough, but throw in another pair, and the noise would lose its value. It can't be too hard, she figured, descending into the bottommost flight of stairs, you just kinda...poke around. Plus, she was just about at her wits end with people grabbing her arm and demanding things.

When she came to the basement door, she found that it was surprisingly unsecure. Whatever security system there'd been before had been bashed to smithereens, and the lock still hadn't been replaced (she assumed this was because nothing of value resided inside any longer; there was no need for sudden expense). She also found that the door itself was misleading as to the contents of what laid beyond it. The door was smooth, white, pristine, and lit up by fluorescent lights above. Just the same as the rest of the building.

Fingers touched the knob, and twisted, and pushed, and the scene sitting in wait proved itself to be an inverted version of the rest of headquarters. Nora's gut fell. "You're fuckin' kidding me."

There was hardly any light, save for a pinpoint of it glowing at the opposite side of the floor. In order to see everything as it was- well, it was impossible. She had to click the flashlight on just to see more than five feet in. When she did, the beam travelled out weakly, letting dust multiply in the rays and casting light across what seemed to be a genuine maze of metallic tanks and moistened pipes. The floor itself could've been more grime than cement, and cobwebs sagged from tubes like the skin of some one-hundred and then some year old. And elderly people were pretty darn saggy.

It wasn't a pleasant place, to say the least.

She smacked the side of the flashlight as if that might make it shine brighter, to no avail. It stayed just as somewhat-functional as it was. "Things Project Phoenix can't afford," Nora said, simultaneously stepping deeper into the dark, "one extra janitor and batteries. Also, good leadership."

She might've gone deeper, but the door began to fall to a close all on its own, and Nora wasn't trying to get locked down here, of all places. A heavy bucket proved useful after she'd dragged it over to prop the slab open. It was a small success.

And then there really wasn't any excuse for her to back out, so she started inwards. Joy, oh joy.

It became extremely evident that this would be much more difficult than the investigative power let on. By the time she'd taken twenty steps, nothing existed except for weak lighting and a wet, musty scent. The first set of pipes were lower than they ought to have been, and she was too slow in figuring it out before her forehead bonked into something hard and brown and left two things vibrating. The pipes and her skull. "I hate this, I hate this," she groaned.

Ducking beneath the system and stepping around a water tank, already things seemed futile. What was she gonna find down here, like this? But when she swung her flashlight around - nearly dropping it - something fluttered from above, hanging from a pipe. Squinting, she snatched it down. Fabric. Black and smooth. Stretchy, too. Her mind clawed for remembrance. If she recalled, the earlier investigation told her this was rayon?

Without any way to discern what the information went, she moved on, propelled by the discovery that yes, she could find things down here, however useless they would probably turn out. In school, they'd give you a participation award for this sort of thing. My participation award is a ticket out of society. She blew air between her cheeks after brushing up against something slimy. Cool it, Belasco.

It became routine. Routine became unnerving, for as her eyes adjusted more and more to the surrounding darkness, things started materializing - not real things, though. Every time the flashlight moved she could've sworn a shadow darted behind a tank, and every time she looked too long at one particular thing it began to waver and move as though it was more than just an object rooted to the ground. And the sounds, oh, the sounds! The tanks themselves banged around and hummed to themselves sporadically. If naked and bare bodies were stuck in them, kicking and writhing around like an infant in the womb, she wouldn't be surprised.

The thought didn't help any.

Dripping water was the worst. The wetness of it really got to her, and just walking through the space made a shake sprout up on her skin.

One drop fell and struck her on the cheek, and she fell into an immediate crouch, prepped and ready to take it to the fetal position. But she sat there and told herself, "It's just a drop, not the whole lake. It's just a drop, not the whole lake." And kept on keeping on.

The end of the room was coming closer, and the light there grew. That light would be where all the juicy bits were, Nora bet. Hairs and DNA and probably blood, if the team got to them in time that one night. Those hairs and stains could very well be the end of this. Merle and Palila, they'd let her refrain from team operations just for accomplishing this, wouldn't they?

Irrational thoughts took her caution away, and she proceeded at an irrational pace, and in doing so, the twitchy figure that darted in front of her and into the rest of the space produced a highly irrational scream out of her throat and a highly irrational instance of tripping over a pipe and crashing to the ground.

Skin scraped cement; she felt all the dryness of it chipping away and the moistness of blood sprouting up on the surface.

There was someone down there. Oh, no, oh no, oh no. Would they kick away the door prop and lock her in? Would they catch her unaware and plunge metal into her back? Worse and worse; would they grab her by the arm and say "do this for me"?

Nora, gasping, scrambled to her feet and hopped over the pipe. Light. She was in the light. The light of the vault; it spread out in a circle of white. Safety. No - no. They could see her but she couldn't see them. Fuck.

As she ducked inside of the open vault, a voice came to her, not from outside but ricocheting within.

"It's tricking you, Belasco."

She could still hear the water dripping from the pipes. Her hands shook as her knees fell to the ground, feeling along for something, just anything of real value to take with her. She could fly her way out. She could. Right between the pipes and out the door.

"There's nothing there, Belasco."

There was a pedestal in the middle of the vault and her fingers brushed the base of it, hands rising steadily until they felt the sting of a broken glass case. She patted inside of it despite already knowing there was nothing but shivering shards within.

"You're seeing things, Belasco."

Fingers twined with blood twined in hair. She tugged. "If I were evidence, where would I be? C'mon, c'mon." Look no further than the back corner, where a mask lay black and cracked. A beetle crawled through the mouth of it and she kicked the thing out, smashing it, blood, guts, and all, against the concrete. And then she grabbed that mask. Square jaw, intricate designs - nothing anyone in that building owned, she'd bet.

It was what sat under the mask, serving as a home for insects, that mattered. A piece of paper, eaten mostly to scraps, sat there, curling under the movements of six-legged beings. Nora didn't want to smush their bodies against the note and leave the words unreadable, though. So she waited. The beetles crawled away in a panicked flurry, and then she bent down to snatch it up and read. It had a sticking backing, as though it'd been some sort of label, and it said:

"Miguel's Compendium."

Though Nora had only a vague recollection of a hero by the name of Miguel - a man long dead on the news - the two words had a sort of power to them, as though one thing belonging to one person held a whole lot of weight for a whole lot of reasons.

"I- okay. I should've just stayed in bed today, fuck." She shimmied up to the door, mask, label, fabric, and flashlight in hand. Prepared to run, but wait!

And listen.

There was nothing.

Wake up, sister dearest. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing but you, yourself-

She took a fragile step out of the vault and immediately took flight.

-and I.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Girl

The condo was quiet. Irene set down her glasses and her pen and rubbed her face. She drew her legs up onto the bar stool to wrap her arms around them and rest her forehead on her knees.

She'd done her best to dig up the given names of their fallen comrades, and tried to ascertain whether or not their families knew. For some of those identified she'd been able to locate obituaries or announcements, but some...she'd had no choice but to just contact them herself.

After Vancouver, she'd made the calls immediately. She'd realized that, with Sato gone and the project in chaos, there was no official protocol in place to take care of such matters. As always, this meant it was her job.

'Don't worry, the Girl is on it.'

Irene had always been the catch-all. The cleaner. The safety net. She was used to picking up the slack for everyone else, but telling a father that both his sons were dead was a task she had never expected to perform. Nothing could have prepared her for it.

'But don't worry--the Girl is on it.'

"Hello."

Irene looked up from her knees across the breakfast bar. Maanyo went to the fridge and rifled around.

"Hi," she said. "I thought most everyone was sleeping."

"I got hungry." He turned back to her with an orange in his hand. "Do you have a concussion?"

"No, just a contusion. The base medic said I'd be fine, just sore. I'll sleep, I will," she promised. "I've just got a few more calls to make... Couple of emails. Not much."

Voices rose in a room across the hall from the common areas, drawing their attention. Something fell against the wall with a thud--furniture, most likely.

Irene and Maanyo looked back at each other. "You'd think they'd have shouted themselves hoarse by now," she said.

Maanyo set his elbows on the countertop and dug the sharp nail of his thumb into the orange peel. "You'd think."

Clint and...well, and the Real Clint, she supposed, they'd argued on the plane the whole way back from Vancouver, and then they'd immediately gone and locked themselves in Clint's--or whoever's--room and hadn't come out.

She put her glasses back on and shook her sleeve out of the way of her wristwatch. "It's been....over an hour."

"I don't care if they come out tonight," said Maanyo, tossing orange peel into the garbage disposal. "They just need to be quiet. Others are sleeping. I was sleeping. You—"

"We've established that everyone should be sleeping, yes." Irene tapped her phone's screen to bring it to life as she put her glasses back on. No new messages or calls. She glanced up and saw Maanyo looking at her phone as well. 'Rude.' "You have orange juice on your--hand."

"Hm? Huh." Maanyo licked the webbing between his fingers. "Any word?"

Another crash from Clint's room. She worked her fingers in her hair through to her scalp, sighing.

"None yet. I think we—"

A bedroom door opened and Hydroflare's voice rang down the hall. "Someone shut them up!"

Irene pushed her chair out from the bar. "I've got it." She stuck her phone in her pocket as she walked away, towards the dorm corridor. "Go back to bed, Stella."

Another door opened as she passed it and King stuck his head out.

"I've got it, I've got it," she said, waving him off. She went to door of Glacier's room and knocked sharply on the door.

It opened, with one of the men claiming to be Clint Gallagher standing there, looking haggard and upset. He still had blood on his shirt from when he'd been elbowed in the face by Declan Hart.

"Whoever it is, tell them to fuck off," said the other man from in the room.

"It's Irene," snapped Door Man.

There was a harsh bark of a laugh. "Your booty call can wait."

Irene's eyes narrowed. "May I come in for a moment?" she asked, pushing in. One Clint stood by the window, in slacks that were wrinkled from a four-hour plane ride and a shirt that was unbuttoned down a little too far for standard dress. The other Clint, who closed the door behind Irene, was the one she was used to these days; in his downtime, he wore jeans and sweatshirts. He'd washed the blood from his face but it was still a little swollen and already bruising, and oddly this flaw in his visage didn't seem to distress him too much. He wasn't as haughty or vocal as the huffing, puffing Clint by the window.

"Boys," Irene addressed both of them, "you need to put a pin in it for the night,"

"We're not done here," New Clint hissed, glaring at Bruised Clint.

"For now you are," she said in the tone she usually reserved for uncooperative board members. "It's been a very long day for everyone, and the rest of the team is trying to sleep. You need to put this tantrum on hold until daybreak."

"Fine. Fine," snarled Window Clint. He snatched up his sportscoat and yanked it on roughly, telling the other man, "You meet me at the Peninsula Beverly Hills at eight A.M."

"You can't leave," said Irene. "We don't know which one of you is the security risk, but neither of you can leave until we figure it out--which we will, tomorrow."

"And where am I supposed to stay?" demanded the angrier of the Clints. He was on her left. "I'm not staying in a dead person's room and it smells like bargain-brand deodorant in here. Hey Irene, how about I bunk with you?"

Irene pulled her cardkey out of her pocket and flicked it at him. "Take my room, I don't care."

He chuckled, turning the card over with his fingers. "Maybe this is better than the Peninsula after all."

She clarified, "I'm sleeping on the couch."

"Don't sleep on the couch," said the other man. "You can take this bed, I'll sleep out there."

"This is stupid, I— Which one of you is—" Irene rubbed her eyes. "Okay, no, we'll do it this way: I was first introduced to one Clint Gallagher at the 2009 Tony Awards."

"You were dating Aaron Tveit," said the one on the left.

"We were not dating."

He threw his hands out. "Then why did you get so offended?!"

"Okay, so that was you, yeah. Now I also was at the CityCube when that terrorist cell tried to raid the International Engineering Showcase. Which one of you pulled us out of the elevator?"

"Me, again."

"Right, so you're the horny asshole TMZ loves." Irene pointed to the Clint on the right, "Have we met?"

"At that art gallery opening in Venice," he said. "You, uh, your dress snagged on a splinter."

"You got me free," she said.

"Yeah, and there was that time before, at the—I don't remember when exactly, but it was the dedication ceremony of that aircraft carrier in D.C., and that reporter was harassing you for a quote about some fighter jet you just sold."

She had completely forgotten, but now she did recall how he had been uncharacteristically chill about helping her escape the man and hide out in the cafe across from the pier. He'd seemed his usual flirty self, but lacking his signature persistent lewdness.

"Your hair was shorter then," he said, probably taking her silence to mean she didn't know what he was talking about. "You were wearing this yellow dress with blue shoes, some magazine took photos of you. They didn't like it, but I thought you looked nice."

"I remember," she said. That was a little detailed for a random memory. This man wasn't like the Clint Gallagher the world knew; he was kind and thoughtful. Chivalrous, even. His heart hadn't been in the assholery he'd committed, it was only a part he played, she could see that now. The distinction between their personalities was making other differences apparent now: she'd been right that first day, his eyes were a lighter brown than the other man's. He was slightly taller than him as well, and his jaw was covered in a bit of scruff that had never appeared on his counterpart's resolutely smooth face. She should have seen it before. "You must be the one who talked down that suicide bomber in Paris." He nodded. "Glacier was helping when Glenfell burned. You?" He nodded. "Did you also give the lecture at West Point last year?" He nodded. "Makes sense, they said it was actually intelligent."

"Hey, what about me, I can be a gentleman--I pulled that drunk guy off of you at the Morocco World Cup."

Irene pinched the bridge of her nose. "I wasn't at the Morocco World Cup, you muppet."

"I'm Clint's double," the guy on the right confessed. "My name is Dante Mendoza, I handle jobs he doesn't want but needs the credit for. I try to act the way he would act, and I use tech to approximate his abilities. He calls me when he needs me to fill in for him, and then he pays me."

"That's...wow. That's wildly irresponsible," said Irene.

"Oh come on, Archie—" began Clint.

"No, not you," she interrupted. "You're a childish egomaniac and a moron, you didn't know any better. I mean you," she said, pointing to Dante.

"Me? What did I do?!"

"You went along with it! You're a standard, but you pose as a superhuman. What business did you have at a disaster like Grenfell, or Paris?" she demanded. "What if it took a hard left and you couldn't fake your way through handling a catastrophe? People could get hurt, real damage could be done. You're a completely ordinary human with no supernatural capabilities, who accepted a position on an international superhuman task force that takes on people like Declan Hart!"

Dante sputtered with indignation. He gestured at Irene. "So are you!"

"Yeah, but my name is Irene Archambault and I am the most well-connected, capable standard in the goddamn world! I'm the girl you call when shit goes sideways." She turned and wrenched the door open. "And I don't lie about that!"

Irene left the room and stormed two doors down the hall to her own; she took her phone charger out of the wall and a blanket from the bed, then went back out to the living room. Maanyo was gone from the kitchen and the lights were out. The other bedroom doors were closed. Irene threw the pillow at the couch, flopped down, and pulled the blanket over her entire self.

-

Irene woke to the xylophonic singing of her cell phone. Squinting against the harsh light of day streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows, she groped for the offending noise maker.

She cleared her throat before answering. "This is Irene."

"Irene, it's Jim Daniels, good morning."

She scrambled into a sitting position, snatching up her glasses off the coffee table. "Jim, hi, good morning, this is Irene." She shook her head. He already knew that, he'd called her. "It's morning--I mean, good morning." She sighed. "Hi, Jim." Irene got up to find her pencil and notepad.

"Sorry if I woke you, I saw on the news this morning, the chaos in Vancouver--I wouldn't have called this early if I didn't have something for you."

"I'm excited to hear it," she assured him. She saw her notepad sitting on the breakfast bar and in her eagerness to get to it she nearly tripped over the corner of a rug.

"It's not Sato, I'm sorry if I got your hopes up," Daniels told her, "but there was a break-in at the Imperial Engineering complex in Beijing."

As though due to an electric shock, Irene was instantly awake and alert. "What?"

"They made off with all sorts of tech--Mah Yu wants to string you up, she's convinced it was ADI." There was some background noise on Daniels' end of the line; a busy day at the office, evidently. "But there's more: they have security footage and audio, and the words 'Zachariel,' 'Tifanos,' and 'Empress' were all picked up."

"Can you run facial recognition on the footage?" Irene asked, scribbling down the information. "Can you send me a copy?"

"No, and yes," said Daniels. "They were wearing jade masks. I didn't remember if you said Oni or Olmec, but I figured exactly how many shadow ops are wearing jade masks at all?"

"Oni, they were Oni masks," she said. "Japanese demons."

"Then you may want to get on a plane to Beijing, girl. Imperial pretty much put the city on lockdown the second it happened, and there's no way they could have moved that much hardware out of the city unnoticed, so they are almost certainly still there."

"Jimmy, I owe you," she told him. "I owe you five times over."

"I'll tell my guy in Beijing that you're on your way--his name is Jiahao Wei, let me get his number for you." Daniels shuffled around before reading off a phone number and extension. "He'll walk you right into the crime scene if you can get Glacier to sign his kid's lunchbox."

"I--yeah, I can do that. All right, I'm gonna run now, but thank you Jim, thank you so much." Irene hung up, scratching out the last few keywords for her notes. "Zài jiàn," she said to herself; 'see you soon.' She'd need to get them a flight, then get everybody up and dressed and out, then figure out who had passports and who needed hero visas--and then make a few calls and get those hero visas... "Zài jiàn, zài jiàn..."

"Are you speaking Chinese?" Irene looked over her shoulder. Dante stood there in a hoodie and sweatpants, moccasin slippers on his feet. "I got up to make coffee, do you want some? Call it a peace offering."

"That's thoughtful, thank you, but I can't."

"You're still angry."

"I'm not angry," she said calmly, picking up her phone. "I'm offended." She scrolled through her contacts list, looking for her flight coordinator's number.

"Offended," he mused, leaving the room to loop around into the kitchen. "All right, then."

Irene shot him the side-eye and lifted her phone to her ear. "Hello, yes, this is Irene. I need a flight from Los Angeles to Beijing, immediately." She was promised a takeoff in a little over an hour. "Thank you, Joyce. Bye."

"Beijing?" Dante asked as he set up the Keurig. "What's in Beijing?"

"In about 18 hours, me." She looked at her watch then started scraping her wild, thick hair back into a ponytail to get it out of the way. "I need to shower and pack... I should check in with Brigitte and see how the conference went. I might be able to swing by Tokyo on my way back if I time it right, I can get the contracts from Moto, it'll give me a chance to read them before the board meeting. Maybe I can skype in..."

Dante shook his head, muttering something into his coffee.

-

Including Irene, eight of them landed in Beijing at 1800 hours: Maanyo, Obsidian, Guaritore, The Beat, Hydroflare, King, and Glacier had come with her to investigate the sighting of the Jade Masks. After a fair amount of arguing, Nora Belasco and Palmer had been persuaded to stay in Los Angeles to hold down the fort--and to keep Dante Mendoza from leaving. They hadn't yet ascertained what exactly the implications of his being there meant for the project, what sort of threat the breach in confidence posed.

The team was groggy and airsick when they landed. Clint--undoubtedly, unapologetically, undeniably the Clint--griped and grumbled the whole descent. Unfortunately, he'd found a friend in the habitually unpleasant Stella-Maris, who, when she wasn't being Hydroflare, made a hobby of judging others.

Mah met them at the airport with transportation waiting. She was a severe woman made up of sharp angles and straight lines. She kept her hair pulled in a perfectly coiled bun and wore black pantsuits every day of her life. Her natural disposition was stern.

Today, Mah was particularly prickly towards them; Daniels had been right, obviously, Mah thought that ADI had something to do with the break-in.

"There's nothing left at the scene," Mah told them as they followed her towards the waiting cars.

"You cleared it?" Irene asked. That was distinctly less than ideal.

"We needed to resume work," said Mah. "The evidence has been catalogued and you may examine it. You may also see the vault if you like, but you will be escorted by security and all phones and recording devices will be confiscated."

"And leave us without a way to contact our team?" said Hydroflare. "Do we look stupid?"

Irene swatted her comments away. "Of course, we understand. You need to protect your work." She hung back as the others started piling into the vehicles Mah had brought, and pulled Hydroflare aside. "I haven't slept a full night in at least two days and now I'm trying to avoid about five different international disasters right now, so I would super appreciate it if you'd just not, okay?"

"That high horse is going to buck you right off one of these days," said Hydroflare, stepping around her.

They climbed in and Mah's drivers took them to the Imperial Engineering campus. The place was already running normally again; the only indications that there had been any sort of incident were the handful of law enforcement agents in the lobby and the broken glass door the villains had escaped through.

Irene's gifts lay in outsourcing; she knew who to call, she knew who would get the job done and who would know the answers and have the resources and know the way--if she couldn't do it herself, she made a phone call. It had made some of the others--like Hydroflare--look at her as a pretender, a highly dispensable member of the team.

But now, with a team of covert agents presenting them with soil samples left from muddy footprints, and readouts of ph levels, and USB drives full of security footage, even Stella-Maris seemed impressed.

They were on the trail.