Where did it go wrong? When did they give up? When did you give up? What did I do wrong?

“...I’m sorry Vince, I need some time. To heal. To figure out…how to get away again. I’ll send you a message when I’m ready to go back to the Hero’s island. Stay safe, buddy. Tell Bob he looks like a giant gorilla butler.”

The message cut out there, as it had the last three times that Vincent watched it. He leaned back in his chair at the conference table, idly looking around the central chamber of the once-cult headquarters, finding himself wishing it had windows to let in sunlight. Even the green-tinged light of a typical, stormy NTC day might lighten his mood.

Emi was in her workshop corner, and Robert was eating a terrifying amount of food in the small kitchen area, giving the open room a vague sense of being lived in, contrasted harshly against its sterile concrete walls and numerous empty chairs and desks. Vincent rolled an Invader relic across his knuckles, trying to wrap his ill-suited mind around the oddness of Danny’s words.

It had spawned a complex series of emotions for someone so used to operating at a steady baseline. An excited, yet somber message from his friend and reluctant spy, announcing that against all odds he’d found the piece of the weapon. It was followed only a few days later by another message, this time from a far more exhausted and toned down version of Danny, explaining that they’d need to wait.

The circumstances weren’t what bothered Vincent. Danny had fought and won against a powerful Villain, and barely survived his victory. He’d been forced to kill for the first time, pushed his powers beyond what his body could handle, and hit Reactive rank at the same time. It was understandable that he needed time to recover. There was something off about it though, but it was beyond Vincent’s abilities to understand exactly what.

“I need Lucia,” he said to no one in particular.

“For what purpose?” Arthur asked. He’d been sitting on a small couch behind Vincent, so quiet and focused on his reports as to go unnoticed. Vincent spun in his chair to address the Guardian.

“I’m still used to relying on her to understand people. Have we heard from her lately?”

“Another message this morning, but once again it’s for Veridicus. She’s been sending more and more lately, trying to micromanage everything from sentence structure to posture. Still, I can’t question the results. Not only are the followers rising, but there’s reports of minor rebellions every week.”

“She’s certainly validating our trust in her on that front,” Vincent said. “I just wish she would give us an update on her primary mission.”

“Indeed,” Arthur said flatly. “Though we should acknowledge that her mission is an extraordinary one. We weren’t able to provide her with much intelligence or resources, just advantageous circumstances at best.”

“True, I just have a hard time being so removed from the operation. We’re trying to coordinate multiple time tables, while being in control of only one.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Let’s talk about Danny. Have you managed to locate the island?”

“It was a unique challenge, but I believe I’ve narrowed it down,” he answered, then came over and projected an image of a series of islands in the center of the table. “It should be somewhere here. The irony is that certain people still visit regularly. Mr. Mackenzie was correct that it’s a canine sanctuary, and there’s quite a bit of ongoing logistics to keep the animals fed and healthy.”

“That seems like it should be easy to trace, what’s the challenge?”

“Great Hero mysticism and power,” Arthur answered as he pulled up another image. It was a large rectangle of blue energy, sitting in an otherwise bland room full of crates and boxes. There was an odd incongruity caused by the remarkable display of power housed in what appeared to be a banal warehouse. “Evidently the Great Hero created portals of some kind in various key locations to connect to the island. This led to a level of secrecy around its true location, however that was several decades ago, and people talk.”

“It seems unlikely that traveling to this island by way of what must be carefully regulated portals…” Vincent paused, considering how quickly his own mind had accepted the Great Hero’s ability to create such wonders. “I assume we’d be better served with a more traditional approach?”

“Indeed, I’m looking into securing appropriate transportation as we speak.”

“Excellent. It’s unlikely we’d be able to enter the Sanctum without Danny’s assistance, but I’d like to be ready as soon as possible, just in case.”

“Understood, Mr. Villari. Will that be all?”

“For now, I need to speak with Emi before she leaves for K-Tech.” Vincent stood up, straightening his black suit as he did so. He made his way to the corner of the room where Emi had a number of tables lined up, each stacked with various components and tools. As he walked, several Apparitions broke away from him, one grabbing a chair, another a drink, leaving the items waiting for him as he came up next to the Tech.

“Those things are so, so very creepy,” Emi said without looking up.

“But convenient,” he answered. “Now that I can control them directly, I need the practice.” He’d recently hit the skill’s midpoint evolution thanks to his continual clashes with the gangs of NTC. Fewer dared risk direct confrontation after his display in the Pit, but there were always exceptions. “So what did you want to talk about? More breakthroughs?”

In answer, Emi pushed a piece of complex tech toward him. Vincent couldn’t make sense of it, as it looked more like the internal workings of something than a functional device. Circuits and wires were visible, though many were disconnected and out of place. “What am I looking at?”

“Something suspicious,” Emi answered cryptically. “This is one piece now, but it started as over a dozen components small enough for me to smuggle out of K-Tech. I only realized they were connected by chance. One of the circuit boards was constructed in a way I’d never seen before–more Tecnico magic–so I recognized it when I found its other half.”

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not certain I understand your concern. You got this all from discarded tech, what’s significant about it being a piece of a larger whole?”

Emi took a few moments before answering. “Any number of people might see or interact with this trash before I do. Anything more obviously worth salvaging tends to be caught earlier–people are always looking for the credit. In order for something to get to me in the basement, it needs to be impressive enough and functional enough not to simply be tossed away. But, it also has to be unremarkable enough to be ignored by everyone else.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Vincent answered. “And these components don’t fit those criteria?”

Emi barked a laugh, shaking her head. “The opposite. Each piece fits those criteria perfectly. They are exactly the kind of thing to be ignored by people who aren’t looking for them, but found by someone who is.”

Vincent considered what she was implying, then cocked his head. “They all fit that criteria, so they all end up with you, but they’re also all parts of a single device?”

Emi let out a sigh, “Exactly. And to be fair, maybe there’s a bunch of pieces that didn’t make it all the way to me, but…I just have this feeling, you know?”

“No,” Vincent answered.

“Intuition, Villari. I feel like there’s something more going on here. Maybe this job is more than just a crappy place for the new people to be hazed. Maybe it’s some kind of puzzle. Like, maybe my manager is actually dumping a specific device into my lap, and if I can spot that, and repair it, I’ll have proven myself somehow.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That’s…excessively elaborate,” Vincent replied.

“You don’t understand what it’s like there, Villari. It’s a whole tower full of the smartest, loneliest people on the planet. They have infinite money, nearly infinite time, and very little supervision. Do you think we have some kind of carefully managed human resources department? There’s literally a room no one goes into anymore because it’s filled with acid. Acid!”

“Where did the acid come fro–”

“No one remembers! They just put up a sign! But forget about that. My point is that riddles and nonsense are genuinely how you get ahead at K-Tech,” she finished.

“Okay, then this is potentially an opportunity for you to do exactly that. I presume that would increase your access to the tower, and chances of finding the device. In that case: good work.”

“Yeah, maybe…” she said, staring at the indecipherable collection of technology. Glancing over, she saw that Vincent was still fiddling with an Invader relic. “I can’t believe you’re collecting those things. You are absolutely going to blow up again.”

“My apparitions take care of that problem, and normal human physiology clearly doesn’t work with them or they’d have been discovered years ago. Besides, very few of them actually blow up. I still think the one Danny found was meant to create a more manageable blast, but it was overcharged after decades of going unused,” Vincent said.

“Fine, fine, just don’t test them in here. How many have you figured out?”

“Three,” he said, a touch of pride in his tone. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, two of them are different types of attacks. One uses extreme cold, the other is some kind of forceful shockwave.”

“Those sound useful, what about the third?”

“I think it’s just a light. I’m hoping you can test it for radiation or something else unseen, but if this is the true core of Invader technology, it stands to reason that there will be some normal tools,” said Vincent.

“Yeah I can borrow some testing gear for work. Nothing here is sensitive enough that I’d be comfortable telling you to carry around a radioactive rock next to your sensitive bits.” Vincent’s eyebrows raised and he hastily moved a Relic from his pants pocket into a small box, which he placed on Emi’s work bench.

“More interesting is that I think I’m making some sense of the symbols on the Relics. I had assumed it was writing indicating the purpose of the Relic, and now that I’ve seen some of the effects, I’m convinced that’s true. There’s numerous studies on the Network of Invader language, and I think with more study I’ll be able to identify Relics without testing.”

“Fewer explosions would be ideal,” Emi said distractedly, and Vincent sensed he was losing her to the device once more.

“Actually I needed to speak with you about more explosions,” he said, and her eyes snapped back to his own.

“What are you up to now, Villari?” she asked.

“The Prophecy,” he answered simply, knowing she’d need a moment.

Emi’s eyes rolled with as much drama as she could manage. “Wonderful. You know how much I love aimless ramblings from a self-described Prophet.”

Vincent smiled indulgently. “The source is credible, but forget about it for now. I want to talk science.” Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t object. “Indulge me. What happens when powerful supers fight?” He cut her off when she immediately defaulted to a sarcastic comment. “I mean scientifically. Two people, saturated with power, using their abilities in life or death situations, what happens?”

Emi closed her mouth and looked off to one side, clearly thinking. “Gamma bursts,” she said at last, then shook her head. “Well, it would only be Gamma if the supers involved were taking the injections, but there’d be Asteroid Radiation coming off of them regardless.”

Vincent nodded, expecting this. “So–for the sake of argument–if there was a Prophecy about when the ‘Gods war in the streets’, what would that ensure?”

Emi’s jaw clenched in irritation, but she answered. “If there were enough supers fighting, it would mean increased Rad-saturation in a localized area.”

“That’s my conclusion as well. Here’s another one, ‘When the Watcher gazes down…’ The asteroid is always in orbit, but it’s not geosynchronous. What occurs directly beneath the Watcher at any given time?”

The Tech’s eyes narrowed, “Increased Rad-saturation.” She looked up at him expectantly, and he nodded.

“There’s two more. ‘When the storm rages as never before…’ and ‘When the Gamma burns…’”

“The larger the storm, the more saturation. And burning Gamma–while remarkably wasteful–absolutely increases the saturation even further. Do you think that’s what the Prophecy is about? Some kind of recipe for the perfect combination of events to get the maximum possible amount of Asteroid radiation in one place? For what purpose?”

Vincent smiled, leaning forward to tap on the blueprints Emi had hung on the wall–those of the mysterious weapon. “‘When the Watcher gazes down…upon its end,” he said, finishing the full line of the prophecy. “A weapon would require an enormous amount of power to destroy the asteroid. I think we know where that energy is supposed to come from.”

Emi once again paused to consider. “I’ll concede that it’s possible, and I suppose finding the prophecy in the same book as the blueprints lends it some credence. Frankly I’d be happy to believe that the prophecy was actually just a weird, convoluted tech-manual.”

“It may be exactly that,” Vincent said, shrugging. “Regardless, I believe we need to prepare for these circumstances. The first part is easy–I found a night where the Watcher is over NTC and one of the largest Radstorms is expected. It’s just over four months away.”

“That doesn’t give us much time. We’re missing basically everything to make this plan work,” she said.

“It’ll happen again in another year or so, but I’d prefer not to wait that long,” Vincent replied. “That means we have another objective in the meantime.”

“We have to arrange for hundreds of supers to go to war in the middle of NTC?” Emi said, shaking her head. “Maybe four months is too much time for such an easy task.”

“You’re right, it sounds impossible. Why, we’d need every gang and Villain in the city to come out at once. How could we possibly arrange that? Who would they even listen to?” Vincent had been practicing sarcasm. He didn’t care for it, but for some reason it kept Emi’s attention.

Her mouth fell open. “That’s why you’ve been doing all this? I thought you wanted to give Veridicus his own little empire.”

Vincent smiled, “Provided we account for the other details, Veridicus will make an announcement that an unprecedented shipment of Gamma will be delivered to NTC on that particular night. With unprecedented NGG protection, of course.”

“If you can make them believe it, that would be just about the only thing that could possibly make every one of them slink out of their hiding places,” Emi agreed. Her eyes narrowed a second later, “Wait, this whole discussion began with explosions. How exactly do you plan to set fire to Gamma? Is there actually a shipment?”

“No, and even if there were, it wouldn’t be enough. Thankfully, K-Tech provides. I was hoping you could build us a few bombs.”

Emi immediately seemed to grasp what he was suggesting. “The Gamma pipelines? Are you insane? Those things are pumping Gamma from all over the State. Every drop that a K-Tech collector is able to pull from the atmosphere is in those pipes. It’s too much–even for the storage facility beneath the bay–that means those pipes are full.”

“Sounds like a lot of Gamma to burn,” Vincent replied.

“Gamma explodes, Villari! We’d have to create some kind of rupture that was both small enough not to destroy the city, but big enough to release exactly the right amount of Gamma to burn with the saturation you want!”

“Wonderful, I knew you’d understand,” Vincent said, still smiling.

“Damn it, Villari! How come all of your plans involve me building technical solutions to impossible problems?”

“Because you’re the Tech, and you’re highly reliable,” he said. Then his tone became a lot more somber. “Besides, I stopped you from using an explosion once, and everything went wrong. Consider this an acknowledgement of my own past mistakes.”

Emi threw up her arms while flopping back in her chair. “I…fine. I don’t even know what to say to all that.”

“Don’t say anything,” Vincent replied, turning and walking back toward Arthur. “Just do what you do best. You have my full confidence.”

He could feel Emi glaring at his back. “And exactly what are you going to do?” she asked.

“Great question. Our timeline is clear, and we have one piece of the device accounted for, and you’re on your way to finding the second. I’m going to go find out about the final piece.” Vincent reached the table and addressed the Guardian, who looked up.

“Arthur, get me to London. I need to visit my sister.”