FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE MASK COMES OFF

Bedevil rides in a luxury armored SUV into the heart of Houston. She doesn’t need the protection, but it does have reclining chairs that vibrate and warm her back. Frowning in concentration, she runs her finger along the rim of her water bottle, reaching into the liquid with her Affect to rearrange the molecules. The water darkens, shifts color to a deep pink. A foul whiff hits her nose before giving way to the sweetness of alcohol. Bedevil grins. Violà! A cherry whiskey sour, no bartender necessary.

Tim Prince sits across from her, not reclining his chair at all. He’s dressed in a wrinkled dress shirt and slacks, a tablet bouncing in his hand, and he keeps pushing a mess of sandy blond curls around on his head. His pale skin is marked with red splotches from a lack of moisturizing and the sun. When he sees that she’s made herself another drink, he says, his nasally voice like an ice pick in Bedevil’s brain, “You know… if you’d wanted something to drink, we could have gotten you something.”

Bedevil raises the bottle at him, as if to say cheers, and then gulps the drink down. Those precious molecules, the ones her brain screams for, barely have time to graze her tongue before hitting her throat. Warmth blooms in her chest.

She decides to scope out some of the local cape politics that her brief hadn’t covered. “So, who stuck you with me?”

He looks bored of the question, sighing apathetically and looking out the window, and his Affect says much the same. “I’m the city’s communications director. For the media channels and VIPs. You’re one of the latter. I was told to meet you and serve your needs.”

That means someone wants to keep an eye on her, in her experience. Manage where she goes, who she talks to… and they’ve chosen Tim as their agent to do it. That’s to be expected given Houston was added to the Vanguard just four years ago. Old loyalties and passions die hard, and she imagines the Houston capes still chafe under the Vanguard’s leadership. To prepare for that reality, she’d read up on all the city officials. However, what makes Tim an unusual choice is that he came from somewhere up north after the city was annexed. He’s not an agent of the city’s former independence, but of the Vanguard’s reach. Still, his title makes him the natural fit for this duty.

He glances at his tablet, as if it will shield him from Bedevil’s stare. His Affect is placid, docile. She can’t tell his strength, but she can read his apathy.

She doesn’t imagine he’ll be particularly good at his job.

Many of the cities Bedevil has visited built down, tunneling buildings and streets into the earth – it was safer given Affected war that people and even buildings could retreat underground, relying on tons of rock to shield them. Once, while in Denver, she watched as the entire skyline pulled underground so Megajoule could unleash his full power against Hecate, a powerful cloak at that time.

Houston, on the other hand, has been built upward, toward the sky. The central downtown district reminds her of interlinked nerve clusters. The towers of downtown, all new and pristine and built within the last five years, connect with each other through huge bridges and roads that weave up to the very top of some buildings and all the way down to the ground below. Bedevil rolls down her window to listen to the shrill cry of rails, which she’s heard many times, and to the roar of car traffic, which she’s heard rarely.

As the SUV travels through this thicket of a city, Bedevil watches the (admittedly few) people with a dull curiosity. They walk with heads aimed down, for the most part, either buried in newspapers or tablets or just studying the road, and walking as quickly as they can to their destinations to get out of the sweltering heat. They are extremely diverse – they were before the Affect and they’ve remained so since its emergence. In some places, isolationism, racism, these things have gotten worse. Here, in Houston, she glances into a boxing gym’s windows to see a large group of young men of all different races sparring together. All eyes are blackened equally.

The car passes under the shadow of a giant fresco of Megajoule. His slogan is emblazoned in red letters the size of a house: Reach. Dream. Strive. Become.

Bedevil closes her eyes and pretends his fingers are combing her hair, teasing her golden waves all the way down to her back, caressing her scalp. She aches to see his easy smile and his icemelt eyes in the flesh again. Of course, her adoration was unrequited. He was twice her age when he died, married, had a kid, and never saw her as anything but his teammate.

She loved him all the same.

She doesn’t know if he would have loved Houston, considering he died close by. She looks back out the rear window of the car, toward the southeast, searching that ominous red haze for the monument to his death in the Null Domain. She gasps as she spots it, a huge pillar of muscle and flesh visible from fifty miles out, bent over as if in prayer but not falling, with a gigantic mouth of human teeth grinning at her.

“The Smiling Tower,” Tim says without looking out the window. “Lots of fun remnants like that around.”

“Carnality,” Bedevil whispers.

But then the Smiling Tower falls out of view as they approach Houston’s Shrine, this city’s version of the Titan Tower in Denver. Every city under the Vanguard’s rule has some kind of cape HQ, and Houston has the Shrine. She picks it out of the skyline — easy to do, as it’s twice the height and width of the skyscrapers around it. Bedevil imagines it is the hilt of a god’s sword thrust into the earth. Black and cylindrical, fatal.

The car pulls into the Shrine’s grand courtyard entrance, driving up through a lane that rises through several terraces of carefully manicured hedges. As they pull into the U-drive to drop her and Tim off at the Shrine entrance, Bedevil groans at the sight of the crowd. Throngs of people, mostly cape-arazzi reporters, the faithful arm of the Vanguard’s media, and adorants, the most fervent of citizenry here to donate their engrams to the heroes.

She steps out of the car and shows them the pose they love. Arms akimbo, golden hair wild, confident grin. They want to see her, Bedevil, in her uniform, the one she loves and hates. She loves the golden lines stylized to look like kintsugi, but hates the sheer whiteness of the rest of it. There’s an elegance to it she doesn’t feel at home in, but when she puts it on, it all fits fine. The cape billows behind her. Practical? No. But she can destroy it in a millisecond, dissolve it away into air if she needs to.

The suit is symbolic. Inspirational. The iconography of heroism. It’s all a show. The public needs to see these symbols of heroics. That’s the entire point of the Affect, of the capes, of the Vanguard itself. Power coalesced into people worthy to protect people’s positive emotions, like her.

Like Megajoule.

The reporters hold out microphones for her. “Bedevil, you just came from Miami, right? You dealt with the Thunder Prince there? How did you manage that?”

“He was just a small fry!” Bedevil laughs.

“You’re here to investigate the mask Home Run?” another asks.

“Guilty as charged,” she says, wondering why the hell they’ve given the mask who murdered Danger Close a name like that. It almost sounds like a cape name.

One more set of questions, this one from an old, weary reporter, her hands trembling as she holds her microphone up to Bedevil. “How is the war with Doppelganger? Any news on that front? The people haven’t seen Phoenix or Meltdown in weeks, do you have any comment on their whereabouts?”

Someone needs to train this lady on media interaction. Those kinds of questions only cast doubts on the capes. But Bedevil answers them, anyway. “The Vanguard is victory everlasting,” she says, the standard line. “And I’ve personally spoken to Phoenix and Meltdown in the past week. They’re out there fighting for all of us.” She smiles as best she can and changes the density of the air around her, allowing her to float up and over the crowd. It’s a bit tricky. She used to be able to finely manipulate her flight, but now she relies on tendrils of air to pull her places once she has some height on the crowd. She pulls herself to the large, marble doors leading into the Shrine.

The vaulted hall welcomes her in stark white marble, filled with hundreds of statues to capes. There are altars dedicated to every single cape in Houston. The vaulted ceiling of the shrine is gold and marble, invoking ancient beauty through the support columns with diameters greater than the span of her arms from fingertip to fingertip. A fountain babbles in the middle of the entry hall, and winged stairs lead up to the Shrine proper.

In the middle of all this, a special altar has been erected to Danger Close. A suit of his red and black camouflage armor, although not the suit he died in, stands in a ceremonial glass coffin as a memorial. Adorants line up to come and pay their respects.

Bedevil stops at the top of the stairs and closes her eyes. She’s not an empath, so she can’t perceive the Affect with any clarity, but like everyone else on earth she can get a good impression of its flow. Like wading in the ocean and feeling the current. The flow of engrams, the individual packets of Affect energy, moving from those who revere and honor the capes with their positive emotions, to the capes who protect them. An exchange of power and service. This is the heart of where that exchange happens, and because of that, Bedevil feels warm.

She opens her eyes, huffs a satisfied sigh, and then floats down to the Shrine.

The Houston Heroes, what’s left of them, anyway, are gathered to wait for her on the other side of this grand hall, up another flight of stairs that lead to the capes’ offices.

Their acting leader, Highheart, approaches with a cold expression that makes her look like a statue carved from onyx. Her dark dreadlocks spill over shock white armor covered in gray detailing that resembles feathers.

Highheart is every bit the stereotypical empath – zero emotion expressed physically, nothing betrayed in the Affect, and her stare feels like it could pierce Bedevil to the bone. While Bedevil is trained to control and conceal her emotions, Highheart is on another level.

Highheart reaches her hand out to shake, bowing her head slightly. Bedevil hesitates. Touching an empath is always risky, even if you think they’re on your side. But Highheart is sanctioned, has to be if she’s a Vanguard empath. She proved herself when they drew lines and the Houston Affected split between capes and masks, siding with or against the Vanguard respectively. And of course, Bedevil’s personal drone, folded up in her pocket to act as a handheld phone, would alert her if Highheart started trying to use her empathy to influence Bedevil’s emotions. Slowly, Bedevil reaches out to grasp Highheart’s hand.

“Pleasure to have you,” Highheart says. “I wish you’d come in better times.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Bedevil says, pulling her hand away as fast as possible.

Towering behind Highheart is Krater, the Houston Heroes’ front-line tank. He’s built just about as one would expect someone in his role to be built, over seven feet tall and pure muscle. Unlike Highheart, he’s not in uniform, opting instead for a massive three piece gray suit with a yellow button up underneath.

He grins at Bedevil and offers her his hand. It’s twice the size of hers. She knows he could pulverize her bones with little effort. But his touch is gentle.

The third member (but not final, no, that one’s in a morgue, unfortunately) of the Houston Heroes stands just to the side of the pair. Compared to Krater and Highheart he’s not quite as elegant. Looks like a scrawny white boy, even in his steel gray spandex costume with a striking silver star on his chest. Flashfire, who occupies the offensive role on their team. He only nods, not extending his hand.

All three of the Houston Heroes are former freelancers who chose the Vanguard. Bedevil can’t help but scrutinize their Affects for dissidence, for thoughts of rebellion against the Vanguard even now. Often, the worst rebels are those that were free before experiencing the Vanguard’s rule.

“Well, shall we get to it?” Bedevil asks.

Highheart nods, gestures for her to follow into an elevator leading up. They take it one floor up in silence, where it lets them out into the Shrine command center. Enormous windows overlook the Shrine below in a grand central meeting room with dozens of tables, chairs, and computer stations. Eight wings shoot out from this central room, each hallway leading to a different set of offices.

Capes in all kinds of colorful uniforms run this way and that through the offices overlooking the Shrine, parting for Krater like water before a rolling rock. Every single pair of eyes finds their way to Bedevil, and once found, they don’t leave. They all watch her with a mixture of awe and trepidation. The room is full of body heat from the other capes, and smells of sweat and an unpleasant cocktail of different foods with just a note of coffee. Unfortunately, this sweet, rich note is ruined by the rest.

Highheart takes Bedevil and the other two heroes to a private conference room, cut off from the rest of that sour smelling forum by a heavy metal door. There’s a simple black table with a pitcher of water and several glasses. A large computer screen hangs on one wall. Opposite, a giant window looks out at the chaos of the command center. She presses a button by the door and the window becomes opaque.

Once the door is shut and the window blocked, Krater sighs and places his massive hand against the wall. His stony confidence melts and Bedevil is faced with a tired, exasperated man. Still a giant, yet somehow he looks shrunken. He bows his head, rubbing his temples with his gigantic fingers, pressing so hard his skin cracks, turns to rock, and sloughs off.

Bedevil wastes no time. The faster she gets through this the faster she gets on the job. And the faster she leaves. “I’m sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what you’re going through as a team right now.” She actually can. She went through it all when Megajoule died. But it’s one of those things people like to hear. “I’m going to find the person that did this and bring them to justice.”

“Home Run.” Flashfire snorts, shaking his head at his imagined foe. He crosses his arms over his chest, trying to look stoic, or incensed, but ending up looking like a young, scared boy. “We’re gonna kill him.”

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In contrast to her two teammates, Highheart looks serene. As if she was the one who died instead of Danger Close. “Thank you, Bedevil. We appreciate you coming down to help us.” She looks at her two teammates and nods toward the door. They leave without a word. Flashfire only graces them with one final snort.

When the door closes again, Bedevil speaks first. “Home Run, huh?”

Highheart nods. “He needed a name. Someone in the media coined it and everyone ran with it. It had a certain grim humor that made all of it easier to digest.”

“Flashfire. Is he always like that?”

“We’ve had almost a month to stew on this, to leave his armor strung up in the Shrine. A month to wait for you.”

There are many reasons for that. Houston is not unique in its crises. And with war in the west, it’s difficult to direct the Vanguard’s attention where it needs to be. “I’m here now,” Bedevil says, intending it like a whip crack over Highheart’s head.

But Highheart remains icy and calm, not cowed at all by Bedevil’s authority. “I know about you, Bedevil.”

Bedevil sits down at the table and leans back in the chair; an old trick her mother showed her. “I’ve dealt with dozens of teams like yours. People that think I was just Megajoule’s little girl sidekick and Oracle’s daughter. But I have a PhD and a ten year career in cape heroism that began when I was a teenager.”

Highheart doesn’t rise to this. In contrast to the chaotic assembly of capes outside, she seems like the still surface of a frozen lake. In Bedevil’s experience, empaths come in two varieties – chilly or angry. Highheart is definitely the former.

“I know you started in Houston as a teen, too,” Bedevil says, softer. “You were on the team that faced Carnality. You even volunteered to help evacuate Galveston.” A personal note, there. Personal for both of them. “And you were among the Affected that lobbied for the Vanguard to annex Houston. I know I’m late. But I’m here. So let’s get started and not lock horns right away?”

Highheart remains implacable a moment longer, but finally meets Bedevil’s gaze. She nods.

Bedevil nods. “Tell me about what happened.”

Highheart bows her head as if to go to sleep, and then says, “Thursday. A drone captures footage of a mask in a warehouse full of bodies. It’s only two seconds long; he destroyed it as soon as he was aware of it.”

“The bodies of the migrants?” Bedevil asks.

“We’ve been able to identify a few as Houstonians, but yes, for the most part, they’re from South America.”

Human trafficking. “Do you have a motive?”

“No. Danger Close was on the scene first. He never called it in, never had the chance to make a report. He went off alone.” She frowns. “And died.”

“What about footage from the fight?”

Highheart closes her eyes, and this is as much of an expression of guilt as someone like her would ever make. “Next to nothing.”

Bedevil doesn’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”

“It means, his armor cameras were off, and his drones weren’t recording footage. The only thing we have from their confrontation is the last few seconds, when it seems his cameras were turned back on. I know how that looks.”

“It’s…” Bedevil shakes her head. All Vanguard capes wear cameras for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is to help in situations just like this. There are very few legitimate reasons for turning them off. “It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence, no.”

“He was a good person. A true cape. There are hundreds of our people out there without armor, now. People whose gear he made.” Highheart stares out at those people in the command room. “Now that he’s gone, we’ve had to scramble to replace their gear. Many of our FIS agents working in the field to bring in masks and stop crime no longer have protection. We’ve lost three agents this month to simple gun violence.”

It’s one of the main rules of the Affect: anything created with the Affect disappears when the person who made it dies. There are a handful of exceptions, but for the most part, every Affected engineer, every designer, builder, what have you, took all their great works with them when they went.

Bedevil is caught in a mire. Damn her mother, sending her into this mess. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll need to see where he died.”

Highheart nods. “Show me the Affect Print for Home Run.”

An image appears on the computer screen, the only footage of Home Run that exists. Bedevil makes a quick study of him: tall, lean but well built. He’s dressed like a shitty teen on the streets in a well-worn baseball letterman jacket, faded black with red sleeves and buttons. Jeans. Red sneakers. Likes the color red, she notes. He’s got the hood of his jacket pulled up around a red mask with reflective goggles. The mask covered his entire face.

The computer’s electronic voice answers: “Affect Print weak due to mask interference.”

The great limiter – of Affect scans and even the most powerful telepathy. A face needs to be visible. The more of a face that is obscured, the less Affect that can be read digitally. In person, it’s a different story, but over screens, it’s difficult.

“Maximum flux of well over ten million engrams at point of contact,” the computer announces.

“Ten million?” Bedevil asks, feeling a bit queasy. That rivaled some of the stronger cloaks she’d seen. It rivaled her own power.

“Yes, not quite what they’d call Superheavyweight, but certainly a lot. A mask with as much power as one of the Vanguard’s great capes,” Highheart says, utterly still.

“Any traces of Affect left on the scene?” Bedevil asks the computer.

“Many.”

Bedevil nods. Deciphering Affect impressions was a difficult task, something best done in person to really get a feel for the emotions left behind. But in a pinch, a scan could sort the emotions for interpretation. She looks over the read outs, the emotions listed there sorted by intensity and separated by their sources – one an unknown signature, the other Danger Close’s familiar Affect.

The readouts don’t tell her the story of a maniacal cloak. They tell her Home Run is an angry man with a sense of duty and compassion. He’s shocked, he’s outraged.

“He’s… Well…”

Highheart gives a small, dismissive gesture. “We’ve seen them. We know what emotions he was feeling when it happened.”

Bedevil tries leaning back into her chair again, not as a power move on Highheart, but on her own brain. “Do these look like the emotions of a man who just massacred a room full of people?”

“So whatever his motive was… his actions are acceptable to you?”

Bedevil groans. Empaths, man. “No, but keep it in mind.”

“His arms are covered in blood.”

Well, she couldn’t deny that. “Digging through the bodies for survivors, perhaps.”

Highheart snaps a glare at her. “Really?”

Bedevil needs a drink, another one, as soon as she can get it. “You want me to give the benefit of the doubt to Danger Close, I have to give it to Home Run, too. If you want me to find him, we can’t assume he’s some serial killer Heavyweight on a rampage. We also have to consider he might not be responsible for the warehouse murders.”

Highheart raps the table with her fingers. She nods, quietly, and then gestures for Bedevil to continue.

“His Affect print has an emotional profile similar to… zeal.” Bedevil’s eyebrows can’t help but crawl up her forehead at that.

“Okay.” Highheart couldn’t give her one single iota of a fuck.

“He may be… well, he might have a cause, a mission. Is there a prominent mask group in Houston?”

“We have the usual gangs. But there’s a group called the Houston Liberation Front, they’re a leftist anarchy group. Believe in the abolishment of capes.”

“Great,” Bedevil says, trying not to roll her eyes. “We can start there. It does put a potential motive on this guy.”

She offers that last bit for Highheart, something to soothe her mind. It’s hard to know if she actually takes it, but she does nod again.

“Have you had drones flying over that neighborhood to look for Affect print matches?”

“The Shells are big. Too much Affect swirling around; it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Get me some layouts of the area. We’re going to figure out where he came from. Can you show me the final bit of footage?”

Bedevil watches Danger Close’s final seconds of life: he zooms over a baseball field toward a smoking crater near the home plate. Yellow light shines through the plume, casting it in an eerie glow. Danger Close parts the curtains of smoke and is met with Home Run, his bat burning like the sun. He swings— and the footage ends.

“Damn,” Bedevil whispers. “Something elemental, heat based. It’ll be hard to diagnose a power with that little footage.”

Highheart turns back to the screen, having faced away for the clip. “Yeah.”

“Are there any more sightings?”

She shakes her head.

“Well, we’ve got a start, don’t we?” Bedevil tries on the sidekick grin again, trying to make Highheart feel like she has control of the situation. Highheart does not look convinced. Nor does she look happy to have one of the Vanguard’s top capes poking around in her city.

It’s not the worst start to an investigation Bedevil has had.

Highheart leaves her to attend to other business, so Bedevil pulls her personal drone from her pocket. The little machine unfurls, floating into the air and casting its sapphire gaze onto the table, scanning the room for Affect impressions.

As Bedevil suspected, with an empath as the Houston Heroes’ leader, there are no traces of any Affect in this room. Highheart seems to have scrubbed the place clean.

“Dotty, give me the engram readouts for Houston,” Bedevil asks.

From its blue eye, Dotty displays graphs and charts that detail the flow of engrams to and from capes and the people. Standard acceptance of “cast off” or engrams that aren’t devoted to the capes themselves is 10 percent in any large population center. Meaning, for every nine Heavyweight capes, you would expect to see one Heavyweight who isn’t aligned with the Vanguard, either a mask or a cloak. Houston’s records indicate roughly 6000 capes, with about 100 of them at Heavyweight power. Meaning there should be a maximum of 5 to 10 Heavyweight masks or cloaks in Houston. And those are just the earth shakers – she’d expect 10 to 15 times these numbers for the next rung down, the Cruiserweights, affectionately referred to as block busters to describe the maximum application of their power. The numbers for Welterweights, the “street level” powers, well, that would be over 100 times larger a pool than the Heavyweights.

But the engram cast off for Houston is nearly 20 percent. Double the usual numbers. Meaning at least 10, if not 20 Heavyweight masks. 100 to 200 Cruiserweights. 1000 or more Welterweights. Bedevil whistles.

It’s a miracle the city hasn’t been leveled in all out Affected war, to say nothing of what Carnality did to it.

At that thought, Bedevil feels a little too sober, and pours herself some water from the pitcher on the table, caresses the glass, and then transmutes the liquid into vodka. She drinks it down in one gulp, barely noticing the warmth blooming in her chest or the way it drags on her throat.

That warmth lasts but a second. Dotty’s graphs and charts disappear, and the drone turns its sapphire gaze onto Bedevil. Thoughts spew into her from another mind, impressions and letters assembling themselves without her direction. Her joints stiffen, her vision dims and frays at the edges in gray static. The glass tumbles out of her hand and shatters on the floor.

A low murmur of voices fills the room. IMPERTINENT. IMPERTINENT, they whisper. Her hackles rise, her flight response kicks in. Within the darkness at the corner of her vision there seeps a deeper black, a shadow within shadows creeping its way towards the meager light cast by dimmed lamps.

Two hands materialize at the window, their fingers pressed against the glass. From their wrists, bones and tendons emerge and intertwine, forming the shape of two arms, shoulders, a chest. Thin blue veins shoot out over this scaffolding and a nervous system tangles together. A beating heart forms from pale wires and sheets of flesh.

Muscles are the next step, painted in thin but powerful strokes, and then marbled, ghost-white skin stretches over all of this. A head sprouts up from the chest. The shadows grow out of the darkness to clothe the head with hair. A woman’s half-formed face turns toward Bedevil, black coals becoming pits and finally dark eyes appraising her like a jeweler looking at a fake ring. The shadows grow and grow until they become segmented armor covering her form. The armor shifts like skin as she moves closer to Bedevil, running her smoky, ethereal fingers across the table. Her features, clear now, are ageless in one instant and wrinkled and worn the next.

“The capes are impertinent.” Her mother, Cynthia, Oracle of the Vanguard, and octogenarian heavy metal bitch.

“They’re grieving,” Bedevil says.

Cynthia shakes her ethereal head. “It takes all my attention to be here like this with you. That is time my attention is not on Doppelganger.”

Bedevil asks, “How’s that going?”

“Every day he springs new creations on us, horrible chimeras of Affected human and animal. His power grows by the day while ours stays the same. I must scan every cape, every citizen in the cities that border his territory, or else find we’ve lost another stronghold to his replacements.” Cynthia closes her eyes and her form threatens to dissolve, but then reforms. “But for the moment, the front is quiet, it seems. You have me for a few minutes.”

“Are you going to do the thing where you finish-” Bedevil starts, and sure enough, Cynthia continues for her: “-Your sentences and explain everything that I’ve already read from your mind? Yes, my dearest, I’m going to do that, because time is short.”

Bedevil sighs. Even a normal conversation with Cynthia is impossible. “Tell me what you think then, so we can-.”

“Get on with it, yes.”

Bedevil rolls her eyes.

“Houston is not falling into line as quickly as we hoped. This Home Run may be one of their former Affected from before our incorporation… someone with a charging or elemental power, as you suspect. Check the profiles of those we couldn’t recruit as capes. But, on the other hand, the capes here are impertinent-” And this word lingers and echoes as if there is a chorus here repeating her mother- “And must face disciplinary action. Perhaps even disentanglement.”

Disentanglement. The forcible excision of emotions from people. Removal of bonds of love, hate, anger, sadness, and on and on. Exorcism of negative, undesirable traits, like sociopathy or deviant sexual behavior. If there is a tether of engrams, it can be severed. Bedevil also knows it is extremely painful, and in this case, it might be unnecessary. “Let them have their-”

“Do not mistake sedition for grief. I see it in their eyes. They still chafe under our yoke.” Cynthia whips her head out toward the window, out to capes. “Most of them are not ours, not raised to see the light of the Vanguard. They view us as their rulers, not their saviors. Your presence here shall correct that.”

“Yes, mother.” Bedevil bows her head low, thinks to take a knee but instead keeps her reverence simple. Cynthia’s word is law – her perception perfect. Bedevil knows that following her mother’s instructions to the letter will keep her safe. “Is there anything else?”

“This Home Run. Let’s turn him into a cloak. Begin a Villainization protocol.”

This startles Bedevil. Villainization often gives cloaks more power than they’d have organically. The capes also experience a net gain in engrams, as they protect the people from the new threat. But the process can be costly to the common people and the environment. Battles become deadlier, more charged. “Mom? Are you sure?”

Her mother’s eyes hollow out, their intensity picking through Bedevil’s brain matter for a fraction of a second. All that psychic power used like a ruler on the back of Bedevil’s hand. Do not question me.

“Yes, I’m quite sure. Houston’s capes will know this benefits them, and you will ensure that the Vanguard still gets the credit. We all gain the engrams of Houston’s city by hunting down a cloak and the murderer of one of their native Affected. It’s win-win.”

“What about Home Run himself? He’s already strong.” Bedevil can’t imagine what his power will look like when the surplus engrams of fear and hate come in. It won’t be as big a boon to him as the increased goodwill would be to the capes, but it’d be significant.

“You should be happy – your engram count will probably benefit the most.”

Bedevil can’t help her reservations. “But the last time we did this in Houston…”

“I know. Carnality.” Cynthia shakes her head, and then suddenly she is by her daughter’s side, laying a gentle, ethereal hand on Bedevil’s shoulders. “Megajoule might still be with us if not for her. But rest assured, Home Run is nothing like Carnality.”

It’s good to feel her mother’s soft touch. Bedevil wishes she could lean into it and feel the real weight of Cynthia’s hand. “Of course, I’ll do as you say.”

“Good. There is one more thing. This business of Danger Close turning off his camera, the visits he made alone before his death – I suspect there is more to it. Since I can’t be plucking at individual hay to find this needle, I must rely on you. Do what you must to root out this conspiracy.” Cynthia offers Bedevil one last smile, and then vanishes into thin air.

Bedevil’s eyes water from the intense psychic energy leaving her. Dotty folds up, disguising itself as her personal phone. She gathers herself, smooths her uniform, and picks the phone up, considering it. One of her Mother’s direct cameras on the world, one of the only ways she can read minds. Somewhere, there’s an office of screens and monitors with Cynthia in it, connected to perhaps forty to fifty drones and live camera feeds. Most of them are trained on Doppelganger out in the west, to fight the man who can replace anyone with a clone of his own design, but Dotty is Mother’s personal set of eyes sitting on Bedevil’s shoulder.

Not that she’s not grateful that Cynthia is watching over her. No, she’s very grateful. She loves her mother. She wipes her eyes and gets on with the task at hand. Poking her head out the door, she finds a Shrine attendant, dressed to be almost invisible in their black suits. “Get me Highheart, please.”

A few moments later, Highheart returns to the office. “You called?”

“We’re going to start a Villainization of Home Run. Get a campaign, alerts out, everything. Get him classified as a cloak on the records.” Bedevil nods to Highheart, hoping this all sounds like heaven to her. “The full might of the Vanguard is about to come down on him.”

Highheart doesn’t give her much back, no show of gratitude in her face, nor in her Affect, but she does bow slightly. Without another word, she rushes off with fire in heels.

Bedevil scowls at the glass shards. She taps her toes on the floor and exerts her power. She rearranges molecules, forces life into matter, and bends reality. Tendrils grow from the ground, made from the same material as the tiles, and gather her mess into a neat pile.

She bends the air to force the pieces back into their original shape, but she adds a new detail with her power. She could make the glass whole again without a scar if she wanted, but whenever she repairs something with her power, she always adds golden lines along the cracks, to show that the piece had been broken, and was now more beautiful for it.