After the Omegas had ambushed the police-squad, things got a little strange.

While I was busy repairing my armour, the world out there did not wait for me, it marched on with a vengeance. The ambush was widely publicised and painted as an attack on the whole nation, an attempt to undermine one of the most visible symbols of governmental power. That resulted in a fervour amongst both politicians of every colour and police-officers to eradicate the Omegas, pushing huge amounts of personal and financial resources into the operations against them. The increased resources made it a serious task-force and Detective Kendall was pushed aside, making way for a higher-ranked and more experienced commander, leaving Kendall in a supporting role.

At the same time, there was a shift in media pundits and public perception, the fact that a street-gang was considered to be a serious danger to the nation itself was heavily pushed and calls for stronger security got traction. One of the biggest supporters of stronger security was Eva-Maria Greene, Clark’s mother. She had inherited the fortune her family had amassed over the years, dating back at least hundred years. Her husband had married into the family, taking the Greene-name and acting as company-president, while his wife kept out of the limelight, until now. The family was old money, seriously old money, compared to my birth-family which had made their initial fortune in my great-grandfathers time, during the rebuilding of New Brunsburg. My grandfather had taken that fortune and built it into the almost-monopoly that KingCorps was, while my father had administered it, not making huge moves.

Now, Mrs Greene was amongst the front-runners calling to sweep the rabbel off the streets, to make our streets safe again. But not only that, there were also calls, often echoed by her, to increase the punishment for unregistered Powered, to increase screening to find unregistered Powered, labeling them as traitors and criminals. I wondered just how they wanted to do so, feeling that their appeals were strong on emotive language but little on actual plans and substantive ideas. Not that it mattered. For some reason, the huge amount of weapons found had been published and the general public was scared, making them eat up the strong language. That sentiment was strengthened when, a few days after the ambush, the anti-gang task-force started to conduct daily raids in an almost military manner, finding drugs, money and small arms.

I had an interesting discussion with Galatea about the reasons behind those emotions, she felt it strange that an increase in security, thanks to less criminals and less guns on the streets, was making people feel less secure. To her, it seemed paradox and she had trouble grasping the concept that ignorance was bliss. As long as the wider populace did not know or have to think about the problems on the streets, they were happy and felt secure. But the constant news made it impossible to remain blissfully ignorant, forcing the average citizen to confront the reality around them and that made them afraid.

Sophia and I decided that we should lay low, as we had been relatively public over the last few months, something that could cause big problems in such a paranoid climate. It would be far too easy to become the target of a witch hunt, getting chased down without regard for collateral damage or mercy.

So, I spent my days studying and tinkering, trying to get a few ideas to work, chief amongst them a grappling-hook system, that would allow me to scale buildings with ease. Most parts were incredibly easy, a synthetic rope, carbon fibre to be precise, was simplicity in itself, a small electric winch, strong enough to pull me in my armour up? No problem. I already had a spring-loaded launcher for projectiles, used for taser-darts, fitting it for hooks was easy.

And that was the snag of the system. The hook itself. I had tried half a dozen different ways to get a projectile that adhered to a wall, they either needed the wall to be made out of a specific material, stuck to the wall permanently, needed insane strength to punch into the wall or had some other problem.

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But from the tinkering with that problem, two interesting projects sprawled off. One was based of the simple idea to use an ultra-sticky compound that rapidly bio-degraded after a stable period of time. I was unable to get it into time-frames that were less than hours, but for the other application, that was just fine. The compound started out as a liquid but contact with air, oxygen to be precise, rapidly transformed it into ultra sticky threads, often tangled in an insane mess. That got me thinking and testing, what would happen if I placed the liquid around a pressure-vessel filled with oxygen before letting the vessel burst?

Upon seeing the result, I was glad that I had tested it in my test-chamber which was almost empty, leaving only a few measurement-devices exposed to the device. It looked as if a horde of preschoolers had gone wild with an unlimited amount of silly-string, draping it over every surface in a fashion that almost caused Galatea to crash when I asked her to calculate the pattern behind it.

Even better, two hours later, the stuff started to crumble into gritty dust that I could easily sweep up with a simple broom. A little more research allowed me to find a compound that accelerated the process dramatically. The strands themselves were pretty durable for their thickness and slightly stretchy. The overall result was a grenade that exploded into a tangled mess strong enough to tie down most people, even some strong powered would have to be careful to not get cut into ribbons, if they tried to rip the stuff without sufficient defense.

The other project was even more interesting, at least once I managed to get a useful application out of it. The idea was to project a sustained energy-field, allowing me to power a small tool at a distance. It was based on old maser-research, which had even more interesting applications, most of them unexplored. Sadly I ran into problems when projecting energy over more than a meter distance. I was certain that there was a way to make the idea work and dove into the old research, looking at old problems with new technology and materials. One of the applications I stumbled upon was a way to create a concentrated pulse, inducing electric energy at a distance. The problem was that the pulse lasted for fractions of a second and the minimal strength of the pulse was strong enough to fry most modern electric circuits, instead of powering them.

The idea that I had failed lasted only a fraction of a second until I realised that it was far from a failure. A tool that allowed me to destroy most micro-electronic appliances in an area at a distance? It was one of those moments, that you looked for dropped change and stumbled onto solid gold.

It took me a little work, but I managed to rework my prototype into a design similarly sized to my Plasma-cannon, capable of emitting either a highly concentrated pulse, narrowed down to a single wavelength or spread out over a few radial degrees into a cone. Both worked quite well, the cone should allow to destroy everything with a micro-circuit in it within a large building, something I was sadly unable to test and the narrow beam was pretty much a beam-cannon. It was horribly ineffective, taking tons of energy to produce mediocre results, but it was powerful enough to chop down a tree from a few hundred meters away. Using my plasma-cannon and the same amount of energy would have been enough to knock over a couple of trees, but that was unimportant. It was a beam-cannon!

The research and tinkering took me two weeks of intermittent work. During those two weeks, Sophia watched the Omegas get hunted down like dogs, captured and quickly placed on trial before getting harsh sentencing. Part of me thought that she would be happy to see them fall, to see their organisation crumble.

But she was not, every day she grew more distant and stared into space more often, causing me to worry for her and focus on her, which was the reason for my intermittent work. I tried to engage with her and sometimes it worked, but more often, it did not. I realised that she was sleeping more and more, often ten to twelve hours a day before spending hours watching television, purposefully staying away from the news and reporting on the Omegas.

There was a part of me that understood the problem, or at least I thought so. Destroying the Omegas had been Sophia’s goal, avenging her brother had consumed her. Now, the Omegas were falling and she could not watch it. In addition, I think she had hoped to find something, some sort of explanation, while pulling the organisation apart. Even that hope was taken away as we had to lay low to avoid getting caught in the cross-fire.

I felt a need to do something, to somehow help her. But feeling that need and having the ability were sadly two very different ball-games.