Taylor flexed Victor’s hand, his flesh feeling odd to her mind. “This is so weird,” Victor’s mouth spoke, chest rumbling as it did.

She hated that feeling, and it felt wrong on a fundamental level to be wearing his skin, even as a third instance of herself. She wouldn’t keep it any longer than necessary, couldn’t keep it longer than that. It was anathema to who she was and she finally understood the truth of the words in her mom’s journals.

She was experiencing gender dysphoria, just from wearing a male suit for a few minutes. It was no wonder people sought treatment, because she couldn’t imagine living with the feeling that everything about your own skin was wrong. She wanted to take a knife to the flesh, carve it into a more suitable shape.

She couldn’t, however. Victor would be needed for the next step of their plan and she couldn’t waste him like that. Taylor turned to Melissa, even as she mentally distanced herself from the useful lump of meat, careful in how she did so. Taylor would look into continuing her mother’s work once the mess in Brockton was dealt with, the taste of the sensations alone were enough to convince her of the necessity.

“I really hope this doesn’t turn into another situation like the Major,” Taylor said, watching Victor’s body as she manipulated it.

“You and me both,” Motoko agreed.

Neither of them were used to the arrangement between them, but adding Victor had unforeseen consequences. For one, Taylor was the one dealing with the bulk of Victor, not Motoko. While neither of them wanted to unpack why that might have been, she and her other half were in agreement, they wanted nothing resembling Victor to end up as a personality in their head.

“Are the others ready?” Taylor asked.

“Jacob and Vivian are on standby,” Melissa confirmed. “You should get going.”

Taylor nodded, and so she set Victor into motion, he stepped through the shimmering portal and emerged back in his own apartment where they had abducted Othala just an hour prior. The woman was just another brain in a jar for Riley to play with at a later date, just as Victor now was. The pair were forced to watch her work on his body, with their conscious minds shackled to Riley’s control.

It twisted her stomach a bit, but they were Nazis, feeling sympathetic for them was not in the cards. Especially for Victor, the man with the ability to steal any skill. A man that often went on trips through Medhall just to steal skills from some of the most talented minorities in the world. The man that knew how to make a car crash look like an accident.

Taylor knew she wasn’t likely to get confirmation, but the shape of things fit a bit too well and Lisa was in agreement. She had avenged her mother in some capacity, but she wasn’t done yet. The entire Empire needed to be excised to make sure they never took another parent from a little girl who needed them.

“Breathe Tay,” Lisa said, her avatar now in her vision. “You knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to join the Nine.”

“I know,” Taylor said softly. “Doesn’t change things. I’ll just have to get used to it.”

Lisa smiled, but it was a fragile thing. The pair were in the deep end and they knew it. There were no clean hands in the Nine, and while she had dirtied her own, the acts to come would make her own sins seem heroic when looking back on them.

Her Victor puppet retrieved his phone, Lisa breaking the passcode in mere seconds. From there she had access to the Empire’s entire network of contacts. So she waited for the expected call to come in. She wasn’t waiting long, and soon the phone rang.

“Victor,” the voice said smoothly.

“Max,” she made her puppet answer. “I believe I had the evening free so I trust this to be urgent.”

“I wouldn’t have called otherwise,” he said. “I need you and Ethel to come in. Melody was ambushed. We don’t know the assailant as of yet, but she requires healing.”

“Ah, I will give Ethel a call and have her meet me,” she made him speak. “She ran to the corner store a few minutes ago, she should be back soon.”

She hoped her acting was convincing enough to sell the lie, because she needed Victor in that building with the understanding that the Empire was being picked off. Cricket was the target of Jack and Bakuda, but the true nature of the attack was kept as hidden as possible. A graze near her jugular alongside an explosion that messed up the way her brain processed things. Enough to sell that she was too close to an explosion without tipping their hand that she was already too far gone for anyone short of Riley and Cranial to heal.

It was a light touch as far as how the Nine usually operated, but Taylor wanted it that way. She had a vision for their announcement, and she intended to make it a grand presentation. Victor was just one moving part in all of that, but it was still a necessary one.

“See that you do,” Max Anders answered. “I fear the Major is back on the offensive, be on guard.”

Taylor hadn’t expected her counterpart to be his primary or even secondary suspect, but that was something she could use all the same.

“Understood sir,” she had him say and ended the call.

“Damn, I made him paranoid as hell,” Motoko said with a chuckle.

Taylor rolled her eyes at the avatar of her counterpart within the virtual space. She directed Victor to exit the building from there and go to the streets, waiting five minutes before calling Max Anders once more.

She directed a touch of panic into Victor’s voice. “Sir, I can’t find her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t find my wife!” she made Victor scream, the sound making her own stomach churn in disgust. “She’s missing. A witness said a woman grabbed her, a woman with purple hair.”

“Damn,” Max cursed. “Get back to Medhall, I’m calling a meeting.”

Taylor grinned even as she had Victor grimace. “On my way.”

She had him end the call and a taxi pulled up, Vivian’s grinning face greeting him from behind the wheel. She made him curse under his breath but entered the vehicle all the same. She opted to update Vivian through her cyber brain rather than to continue suffering through having to speak with a man’s voice.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

As they drove, the Major moved into position. The cameras atop the same building she had taken her prior shot from were new, but easily subverted. She was cloaked all the same, as was her rifle. She wasn’t there to do anything more than serve as a witness to the Nine’s reveal, or act as a contingency, but Kaiser didn’t need to know that.

Taylor, not being needed just yet, curled up alongside Lisa and waited for the show to begin. Lisa held Taylor close, and for that she was grateful. She could feel her humanity slipping away with every decision and each bit of new tech. That Victor’s shell bothered her so much was a good sign, that she still identified enough as a human woman to recognize when she wasn’t and feel the appropriate emotions.

She wasn’t fractured beyond being able to recognize herself.

Just for that, she focused back on Victor as he arrived at Medhall. Vivian winked and drove off. She had performed one last check of her device, or as much of one as she could for something implanted before offering the mission her blessing and drove off. Taylor knew what the bomb would do, and it was horrendous. Yet, despite that, it was still too good a death for Nazis.

Victor wasn’t even ID’d, just ushered straight to an elevator. Lisa directed her on how to get to Max’s private meeting room.

“Seriously, what is it with Nazis thinking Hitler’s birthday is a secure code?” Lisa said, laughing as Taylor had Victor punch in the numbers. She was saying it aloud since they were together in person, it helped ground Taylor in the moment. “Ready to make the evening news so much more interesting?”

Lisa’s voice was strained, her smile tight, and yet Taylor was grateful for the levity of it all. She hated what she was about to participate in, no matter how deserving the targets might be.

“No, but it needs to be done,” Taylor said.

Victor exited the elevator, cues in his vision guiding her puppet to the meeting room. Entering, she felt the air sucked out of her own lungs when she saw the assembled capes. Specifically, she saw Hookwolf, looking unfazed, sitting at the table. She kept Victor’s features schooled, but Lisa endured her tirade of increasingly colorful insults with grace. Even the Major muttered several curses of her own.

Seriously, she had unloaded an entire magazine of anti-materiel rounds point-blank into him, then a building exploded with him in it! What did it take to kill the bastard and what game were the Empire playing by pretending he had died? The only thing she could think of was that his Birdcage sentence might be discarded with his death, and if he laid low for a while, he could appear later acting as a different animal.

Fuck, that really was the play, wasn’t it? A simple bait and switch, and given how similar some powers could be, it made processing charges and crimes for a rebranded cape a nightmare unless you could truly link the identities.

“Any word on my wife?” she made Victor say.

A few of the people in the room turned at those spoken words, she ran her recognition software on each one. Purity, Night and Fog were unexpected complications in addition to Hookwolf. It seemed the Empire had managed to bring those that left back into the fold. She forwarded that tidbit along to Melissa, who would likely want to revise her plans.

“Nothing,” Max said. “No witnesses either aside from your own. We’re expanding the search and having our people question their street patrols. We will find her, or the ones that took her.”

Taylor knew that Kaiser only cared because Othala was useful. The woman might have been a child bride, indoctrinated from birth, but she was an adult now and short of forced amnesia, she wasn’t going to change. The choice would be hers once it was all said and done, a small mercy granted to one who didn’t understand they had a choice in life.

“You seem off,” Hookwolf said, looking Victor over. “Understandable, but I would have expected your skills to make up for it.”

“Believe me, my self-control is without peer, and yet it is strained,” Victor’s mouth spoke. “A piece of me is missing, and I am left raw for it.”

“Poetic,” Kayden Anders said. “Any idea who might be hunting us other than some one armed slant?”

“That ‘slant’ was able to fight Bradley on even terms,” Victor was made to speak. “Do not underestimate animals, for even the weakest are fierce when cornered.”

Lisa squeezed her hand as Taylor grit her teeth at the spoken slurs. Motoko didn’t react, but Taylor could feel that she wasn’t as stoic about it as she appeared. Even at the worst of times at Winslow slurs were not spoken so freely. Then again, the ABB kids wouldn’t tolerate much of that. There were enough knifings in the school to attest to that truth. She was just thankful that she would only be doing this once.

“Infiltration is good,” Lisa said on the open comm. “Time to start the show.”

With that, the Butcher teleported right into the meeting room in a swirling burst of flame. Melissa was in her costume of bone and leather, looking the part of the Mad Max reject that had signified the position since the original. She had someone’s jaw covering her mouth, acting as a mask of sorts. It was almost funny, thinking of her heartfelt mentor wearing such a ridiculous outfit.

At least it hadn’t been her second costume, she only wore the coat and hat when things promised to get messy.

“Oh dear, this isn’t where I left my keys,” the Butcher said, looking across the assembled capes of the Empire, all of which were in civvies. Melissa then pointed to Victor. “You look good at finding things, maybe you could help!”

Kayden began to glow, her hand coming up when Taylor made Victor grab it. “Do not be foolish. This is the Butcher, kill her and you become her.”

In reality, that was why the Major was present, if one of the Empire managed to kill Melissa, she was to pop their skull before the Inheritance had a chance to set in. The bullet in the chamber was a Bakuda round; she and Vivian were in agreement that they would flip that coin if it came to it.

Neither Taylor nor Motoko were sure how the Inheritance would work between them, or how it might conflict with cyber brains, but it was better to take that risk than to let the Butcher fall into the hands of the Empire.

“Ah, a smart one,” the Butcher said with a reverberating chuckle. “Still, Jack did ask me to pick someone to make an example of. Max, how about it, for old times sake?”

Her inflection had shifted for that last line, sounding unlike any Taylor had heard before. Yet, Kaiser stilled. He recognized it, and that was what mattered. Moreover, the twins seemed to recognize it as well.

“Heith,” he said softly. Melissa’s grin only grew. “The Butcher killed her, what trickery is this?”

“Ah, you didn’t catch that part,” Melissa said, her voice back to that familiar playfulness. “Dear Skadi killed Fester, who was the Butcher at the time. You know how that goes, but the next Butcher killed her moments later. Lustrum was rather put off by her for that, you know?”

As she said that, a golden glow formed around her as she began to grow several inches in height. Kaiser actually took a step back at the sight of it, the confirmation that his dead wife was part of the Butcher collective. That was all part of the plan, to disrupt the Empire by shaking their foundations. Lisa had helped construct it, a step-by-step guide for dismantling a movement, a modification of the very plan that had been used to end Lustrum’s own influence.

Sure, they could easily kill everyone in that room with a single detonation, but it wouldn’t see the ideology of the Empire ended. Threads of hate ran deep, rooted and passed to children who didn’t know better. Taylor wanted to unmake the Empire in truth, and so she would.

“Monster,” Kaiser finally said. “An aberration against the will of god.”

Melissa snorted. “Please, we both know you don’t believe any of that, and besides, the only sin against god here is him.” She was pointing directly at Victor. “How old was she again? Twelve, thirteen?”

She made Victor swallow. “All parties consented, and her parents gave us their blessing.”

The words tasted like ash when Taylor made him speak them. Just how many little girls were forced into thinking they wanted some creepy old man? That child marriage was legal at all was an abomination that needed to be stomped out.

“See, Jack wanted me to pick a candidate to join the Nine and one to kill as a message,” Melissa said, drawing a massive revolver that she leveled upon Taylor’s puppet. “Obviously dear Max is my nominee, but that left me with a choice. I was going to kill you, Victor, but that would be a mercy, and I’m fresh out.”

The gun shifted and she pulled the trigger. Purity’s shoulder exploded at the same time Melissa vanished into smoke.