Interminable as another endless trek through the corridors of the Council’s clandestine facility feels, I try to see it as an opportunity. Slowly, I’m making my own map of this place, to compare with the blueprint I was provided with. This is a place that only ten people in the entire world know about- that puts it at the very top of my list of places that my mentor might have disappeared to. Even before I accepted that I’d have to take his place as Hawkshaw, I spent months searching for him, raiding black sites and interrogating anyone who I could think of that might have known anything about his whereabouts- all to no avail. But this place wasn’t even on my radar, and if Jason isn’t being held here, I’m willing to bet there’s at least some evidence that’ll point me to where he is.

That’s just background noise in my brain right now, though. Most of my attention is on the woman leading the way. Sandra Lai, AKA Zero, the Council’s computer expert. At a guess, she’s somewhere in her early twenties, making her the closest in age to me of all of them. That alone probably won’t be enough to dispel her skepticism of me, but it’s a point of commonality at the very least. And while I know better than to put too much trust in any of these people, I am going to have to find a way to work with them, certainly in the short-term, and quite possibly for a long time after that.

Zero doesn’t dress as formally as the rest of the group. Sweatpants and a hoodie are a fairly practical choice when you don’t have to worry about public presentation, and spend most of your time sitting in front of a screen. Presumably she isn’t planning on wearing it into the field, though.

Thanks to the 3D blueprint of this facility I’ve got saved to my suit’s onboard computer, I don’t need to ask about our destination. Lai’s leading me to the operations center. Having just finished a relatively routine mission with the Front Line, I’m interested to see what kind of setup the Council has for mission prep.

“Okay, out with it,” Zero said suddenly. “Why are you doing this?”

I can tell right away that she won’t believe me if I claim that my stated motives are all there is to it. Her suspicion isn’t entirely unwarranted either, considering who else she works with regularly.

“Most of it is what I said before. If I’m going to be working with you, I need to know that I can rely on you. But I’m also here to look into Jason’s disappearance, and that means I have to ask all of you some questions. This was just the first opportunity I got to talk to anyone alone.”

Not strictly true- I was alone with Professor Superior briefly last night, but the steady stream of world-shaking revelations kept me from doing much in the way of interrogation.

“What, you think we bumped him off and then brought you in to investigate?”

“As a group? No. But it’s possible one or more members did, and they don’t want everyone else to find out.”

I’d assumed Lai had already considered that possibility, but she’s silent for a moment, as if considering it. Either that, or she was in on the conspiracy, and she’s trying to figure out how to make my death look like an accident. Hard to be sure.

“Yeah, I could see it. Robards and Pallas were the most vocally against including you, when we voted on it. But I guess they’d know that would make them look suspicious if they were the ones who did it...”

As Zero trails off, I can almost see the wheels start turning in her head. I’m a little surprised that this seems to be the first time she’s really thinking about this. Perhaps having access to the Council’s vast information-gathering network has made her incurious, simply by dint of the fact that she has all the data she feels she needs at her fingertips.

“We’ll make a detective out of you yet.”

That earns me a laugh.

“Funny thing is, I always got the sense Robards... well, he didn’t like Hunt, but there was some respect there.”

Now that I’ve planted the seed, she’s starting to really think about it. I always liked collaborating on cases more than Jason did- getting someone to start looking at the world more analytically is a rewarding feeling. He was always more of the opinion that anyone without the requisite training would only slow him down, but in my experience, even untrained eyes can sometimes see angles a seasoned investigator will miss.

“Yeah. I know he designed some gear for Jason.”

“Right. It was you he disliked. Or dislikes, maybe. Doesn’t think you’re serious enough.”

That’s an interesting notion. According to Jason’s notes, Machina adopted a more utilitarian outlook after the Andromedan invasion, which was when they really started to gel. Before that, Robards had resented how Jason blackmailed his way onto the Council, and made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of the Front Line’s methods. The invasion had changed his perspective, made it more clear than ever that he couldn’t treat the task of saving the world like it was a game.

Zero doesn’t mention the fact that she designed some of my gear as well. By itself, that’s no cause for suspicion- she could just be trying not to brag. But I can’t let myself start making excuses for her. Lai’s more casual attitude, and the fact that she’s being helpful with my investigation, does make me like her. But that could easily be calculated, in order to make me share something critical with her that she’ll immediately report back to the rest of them. Having to think like that doesn’t come naturally to me, yet I have no other choice.

“Mm. And Pallas?”

“Honestly? No idea. She and I don’t talk much.”

Nothing about that statement is inherently suspicious- there’s no particular reason the two female members of the Council would be friends. What I don’t believe is that she’s got no thoughts whatsoever on the subject. You don’t spend years working with someone and not have some opinions about them, positive or negative, that would influence whether you think they’re a possible suspect in a case. But before I can press her on it, she stops walking. If it weren’t for the blueprint projected in the corner of my HUD, I wouldn’t know this section of hallway from any other, but with its aid, I can tell that it conceals yet another almost-invisible door.

Just the fact that the Council has a dedicated operations center is a step up from Skywatch Station, where we use the common room for mission planning, as well as a dozen other things. Often multiple at once. It’s certainly more economical than having a dozen rooms reserved for individual purposes that could all be served by one, but the Council doesn’t have to worry about what’s economical when making decisions like that.

This isn’t a typical ops center, either. Instead of rows of desks and computer monitors on the walls, it’s a large room with a raised dais in the center, and a half-circle railing facing forward. Zero wastes no time before walking through the doorway and up onto the platform, placing her hands on the railing. The moment she does, it springs to life, bringing up a holographic keyboard as wide as the railing itself. Its layout is completely alien to me- half the keys have totally nonstandard symbols, which I assume are dedicated shortcuts for specific functions, when she needs to immediately insert a complex piece of prewritten code into an executable. At first, it looks to be hard-light, but when my arm brushes up against it, it passes through entirely. However, I can see Lai is touching it just fine, which throws me for a moment, before I notice the rings she’s wearing on each finger, not in the usual spot, but closer to her fingertips. They must allow her to interact with certain projections while keeping them intangible to others.

Lai’s hands dance across the keyboard soundlessly, though I can hear the rapid-fire tapping in my head just fine. As she does, the large empty space before the dais begins to light up. First, a series of flat holographic screens project themselves immediately in front of her. Behind them, a number of larger, three-dimensional holograms spring up. The first is a model of a building that I’d guess is where the XS Tech AI project is being developed. Next comes a model of the specific servers we’ll be targeting. Standing just behind her on the platform, I try to follow what she’s doing, with little success. Still, with every second that I watch, it becomes a little clearer to me. It’d only take me about an hour of observation before I could handle the controls myself, though I’d need to make it respond to my touch first. The others are probably programmed into it already- at least, the ones that would have any use for it. Beringer isn’t especially comfortable with modern technology, from what he said to me, and I can’t see Geas or Donovan using it either. But the rest of them seem tech-savvy enough that they’d have some cause to use this. It’s clearly more than a high-tech computer, considering it appears to have generated a complete 3D blueprint of a gigantic building, down to the placement of furniture within individual rooms. This may well be where someone would come to act as ‘mission control’ for an operation, though this group seems so impersonal that it’s strange to even picture it. Perhaps Network leaves a body here to provide informational support while the group is on an away mission.

Of course, I’m here with someone who knows how things are done in this group, so I may as well just ask.

“Are ops like this common, or do you all usually work alone?”

Without turning her head to look at me, or slowing the speed at which her fingers are working the keys, Zero gives me an answer.

“Official policy is to limit group deployments whenever possible. Unless something requires the whole group, it’s rare to see anything more than a pair. Some are more common than others. O’Connor will always go if Grendel’s going, to keep him under control. That kind of thing.”

She doesn’t elaborate on the reasoning behind the policy, but I can guess. If the more notable members of the group were repeatedly spotted in the presence of each other, or of mysterious strangers nobody’s ever heard of, it would start to raise questions. I can’t imagine the full Council’s presence is required that frequently, but before I can ask, Zero continues.

“I’m sending you the blueprints for the target site. It’s got all the security camera locations highlighted, guard patrol routes, the works.”

Not a moment later, I receive the file, and download it to the suit’s hard drive. She’s right- it’s startlingly detailed, full of information I’d kill to have had on any of the fortified buildings I’ve infiltrated in the past.

“How’d you make this? Can’t all be info that’s available on the internet.”

Lai chuckles.

“Our satellite network is equipped with imaging and mapping software powerful enough to make one of these for any building on Earth after a fifteen minute scan. Gave Hunt a version that worked for his suit, too. You still use that?”

I do- it’s exactly what I’ve been making a map of this very facility with.

“Yeah. That’s impressive.”

Also terrifyingly invasive, of course. Not that I haven't committed a million invasions of privacy in the process of cracking various cases. But I can’t just point a satellite at whatever building I want and have a full 3D blueprint of the thing generated in the time it takes for my tea to cool off. Except now I can, because all of these resources are now mine as well. Part of me hopes that the defensive measures at Skywatch Station have prevented it from being mapped like this, but I know better than to trick myself into believing it.

“Yup. Lucky for us, it looks like security is pretty light. These morons don’t know how dangerous the thing they’re building is, otherwise there would be a lot more guards and a lot less risk they end up destroying the world.”

Jason was a veritable font of pithy quotes, but one he was especially fond of was ‘The only thing more dangerous than a smart person with a gun is a stupid person with a gun.’ The smart person knows exactly how dangerous their weapon is, so they won’t use it unless they’re sure it’s a good idea. The stupid one has no idea how dangerous it is, so there’s no telling whether or not they’ll pull the trigger just because it looks like fun. The same principle goes with developing artificial intelligence. A smart person will be overly cautious, and make an AI with limited capabilities and a low chance of ending human civilization. A stupid person won’t even think about the potential dangers, and make an AI capable of almost anything, and even odds of deciding it wants to wipe out all life on Earth.

While Zero is busy absorbing as much information as possible on XS Technologies and its AI project, I choose one of the dozens of screens she’s now brought up, and give it a look. It seems this particular project isn’t itself the result of a metahuman researcher, but rather the so-called ‘trickle-down’ effect those super-geniuses have had on science as a whole. The specialized weapons and ammunition Adamant and I both used on our last mission are products of the same process. While most of the things a person like Machina or Zero creates are too complex to be replicated by someone without their superhuman smarts, they can be taken apart and reverse-engineered. This allows ordinary human scientists and engineers to discover new, often groundbreaking principles and concepts that a super-scientist understands intuitively thanks to their powers. From that, they create tech that isn’t quite as impressive as a fully functional flying mech-suit, but surpasses mundane designs and products. Homing ammunition may seem impressive compared to conventional bullets, but some of the mystique is lost when you learn that it was tech derived from the designs of someone who made guns that can teleport bullets directly into a target’s vital organs. And for the companies that fund this kind of research, it’s often cheaper to hire a dozen replaceable people than one super-genius who knows that he’s irreplaceable, and can charge whatever the hell he wants.

“So, what are you actually doing with this thing?”

I’m still doing my best to follow along, but Lai is working too fast for me to keep up. It makes me wonder if her power provides an enhancement to her ability to multitask. Plenty of similar powers have minor bonuses like that, like Vindicator’s augmented aim and faster reflexes.

“Bunch of stuff. Mainly getting the jet fueled up, making sure our flight path is clear, and firing up the translocator beacon at the hangar.”

Transportation is one of many reasons that most hero teams end up being sponsored by either a government or a corporation. Unless their powers happen to be particularly suited for making a lot of money very quickly, heroes can’t really fund themselves. That means no costume repairs, no headquarters, and no way to know where crimes are happening, much less get there before it’s all over. That’s where Uncle Sam or Mr. Monopoly comes in- offering to finance everything a band of aspiring do-gooders might need, so long as they’ll wear a flag or promote a shitty product. It’s tempting, so long as you aren’t particularly attached to your principles.

“Hangar’s a separate facility, right? It’s not on the blueprints.”

“Bingo. Only Geas, Robards and Gil know where this place actually is, so we can’t keep any vehicles here. Hangar’s located up in Greenland- we keep a super-sonic plane there to get where we need to be quick. Once the beacon is online, you’ll be able to jump there just like you did to get here.”

It only takes a few seconds for me to figure out why those three in particular are the only ones entrusted with the information. Gilgamesh was the one who brought the group together initially, so of course he’d know. Robards probably arranged for the construction using his engineering expertise and vast wealth. And O’Connor used his ability to erase the memories of the construction crews after they were done building this place. That also tells me that they were probably his very first recruits, which adds some interesting context to the roles they seem to play in the overall group dynamic.

“Impressive.”

I’m repeating myself a little there, but it’s better than regurgitating some vapid response like ‘sounds dangerous.’ The Council’s members consider themselves the most important people on the planet- they wouldn’t use a system like that if they thought it was even remotely dangerous. And with the technology available to them, I’m sure it’s far safer than the average HALO jump.

“It sure is. I’m gonna go get dressed for success. You can look the intel over if you want, but I’ll be handling all the tech stuff. Either way, make sure you’re good to go by the time the platform is in position.”

Sandra steps down from the platform, leaving all the screens active, and walks out. Probably planning on changing into a more combat-ready outfit, based on what she said. The door slides shut behind her, leaving me alone in the ops center. I could take some time to study the target location, but if there was anything worth examining in particular, Zero would probably have pointed it out already. All the information she left up is either of minimal importance to the actual mission- like XS Technologies’ background and major financial stakeholders -or complex technical stuff I don’t understand. Instead, I decide to focus on the operations center itself.

Approaching the railing, I examine it for a moment. It’s smooth, polished metal, with no obvious interface whatsoever. Without Lai’s ring setup, I won’t be able to interact with her bizarre keyboard, though I do save an image of its layout to my suit’s hard drive, to study later. And she made no mention of having programmed me into the system to allow access. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value for me to find.

Before doing anything, I press a small button on my utility belt. Soft enough that it would be inaudible if the room wasn’t totally silent, it begins emitting a sound. The frequency is extremely precise, designed with audio recording devices in mind. Just because my implant doesn’t have one, doesn’t mean this facility is clean. If anyone is listening, the frequency will drown out anything else that the bug picks up for the next few minutes. Naturally, that will alert whoever’s on the other end to the fact that I’m doing something I don’t want recorded- but they can hardly confront me about that fact without revealing that they’re trying to surveil me. I have fewer options with regards to video recording devices, but if my hunch is correct, that won’t be much of a problem.

Placing my hands on the railing, I wait for a moment. The keyboard vanishes, but the holographic images remain the same. Clearing my throat, I speak clearly, though not too loud- even if I’m preventing any listening devices from recording me, that doesn’t mean someone doesn’t have their ear to the door.

“Hauteclere.”

Nothing perceptibly changes, but after a moment, I receive another data transfer from the ops center console. The file name is blank, but I accept it regardless, and pull away. Zero’s keyboard returns, and I disable the jammer, as if nothing changed. But while I pretend to examine the files she left for me, I’m really opening up the one that just finished downloading.

My hunch was right. Zero isn’t the only one with access to this machine- Jason did too. And before he disappeared, he left me a little something, right under everyone’s nose. The file is heavily encrypted, using a cipher only he and I ever knew- a simple password wouldn’t be sufficient security for him, especially if this is what I think it is. But he managed to keep it hidden on this machine, even from the woman whose specialty is dealing with computers. Either that, or our cipher is compromised, and the Council left this file here as a trap, filling it with false or misleading information. That’s a possibility I can’t discount, not when I’m dealing with a telepath.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Regardless, I won’t have time to decrypt the file now- it’ll have to wait until after the mission. But my guess is that it’s the ‘missing piece’ of his dossiers on the Council. Contingencies on how to deal with them if they ever became a threat. And, if I’m lucky, maybe even a clue to his current whereabouts, living or dead.

No sense speculating about it right now, though. I volunteered for this mission, so I have to see it through. And in truth, I’m somewhat curious about this hangar facility. It’s certainly going to be more visible than Council Central, simply because the plane needs to be able to actually take off, whereas nobody enters or leaves this place except by translocation.

Their access to supersonic vehicles isn’t terribly surprising either- much of Machina’s fortune was made off of selling fighter jets with similar capabilities. What really interests me is how they keep its existence quiet. Hiding the hangar itself can’t be that hard, but even with radar-reflecting tech like the digital cloak, an unregistered vehicle capable of breaking the sound barrier can’t be easy to keep secret.

My HUD alerts me to an incoming message from Zero. I don’t recall giving her the correct frequency with which to contact me, but it’s no surprise that she has access to it, either because Jason shared it with her, or thanks to her power. Which makes me wonder if she didn’t miss the message he left for me- or maybe even helped him hide it.

meet @ ready room

According to my blueprint, the ready room is just down the hall. Makes sense that it would be close to the ops center. As I leave, the operations console shuts down behind me, and the door slides shut without a sound.

Inside the ready room is a row of lockers, each marked with the alias of a Council member. The one I assume belongs to Blake simply reads ‘Astro,’ and I make note of the one marked Hawkshaw for further investigation. There are also several spacious changing rooms, one of which has its door closed. I make my first few steps into the room louder than usual, so Lai knows I’m there. Moving in near-total silence is second nature, but sometimes it’s necessary, or simply polite, to make your presence known.

“Be out in a minute,” she calls. I can’t help but wonder if calling me in before she was finished changing was intentional, or if she’s simply so used to multitasking that it didn’t even register.

While waiting, I examine the other side of the room. There’s a number of drawers and cabinets set into the far wall, each with the same set of names demarcating them. Opening Jason’s, I find a neatly-organized array of equipment, most of which are simply backups of things I have in my belt at the moment. This must be where the Council keeps any gear they want to have on-hand for a deployment. Finding a second secret message within five minutes is probably too much to hope for, but I do a quick search of the cabinet anyway. There are no hidden notes or flash drives, but I do spot a few odds and ends that aren’t familiar to me. Whenever he picked something up on a case, Jason would usually store it at his headquarters, but I suppose things brought back from a mission with the Council would be hard to explain. They bear further examination, but not right now.

Closing the cabinet, I hear the changing room door open behind me. Zero steps out, wearing a reinforced black jumpsuit with a number of sequentially spaced projector ports, similar to the one my hard-light shield is generated by. Knowing that she was the one who developed that tech, it’s not exactly hard to guess how Sandra’s suit works. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail, and she wears no mask. There’s a bag that seems to be built into the suit itself, which represents the only equipment she seems to carry.

“Looking good,” I offer, in part as justification for my gaze. The aesthetic element doesn’t really factor much into my assessment. I’m more concerned with the protection it offers.

“Thanks. You ready to roll?”

“Depends. Any specific gear you’d recommend I bring?”

Lai cocks her head to the side for a second, trying to think.

“I doubt you’ll need anything that you aren’t already carrying. But you’ll wanna activate the Fawkes widget before we go. You did figure out how to activate your implant, right?”

Nodding, I twist my arm so the wrist faces upwards, and enunciate the activation phrase.

“Naegling.”

Each implant is designed only to activate with a specific keyword, which the individual user can set. They offer more functions than I was initially led to believe, which are outlined in the user’s manual. I skimmed it last night, but there hasn’t really been enough time to study every single widget in depth. As a result, I can’t quite recall what this ‘Fawkes’ one is supposed to do.

Mimicking my motion, Zero activates her implant as well, the holographic screen appearing over the same spot on her wrist as mine.

“Lovelace.”

The reference isn’t lost on me, but I don’t call it out. Instead, I sift through the list of functions within the implant’s menu, until I find the one with the smirking white mask beside it. There are a number of other destinations under the translocation widget, but most of them are grayed out, presumably due to the beacons being offline at the moment. The only ones available to me are for this facility, my HQ, and the hangar.

“Fawkes makes you impossible to recognize while active. My design, of course. It induces acute prosopagnosia in the people around you, preventing them from connecting the knowledge of who you are to the person in front of them. Face-blindness up to eleven.”

That reference isn’t easy to miss either. Fawkes, because the widget makes you anonymous. The fact that Zero is capable of ‘brain-hacking’ to that degree is both impressive and concerning.

“Sounds useful.”

There’s no perceptual change after I activate the widget, nor does anything shift after Lai activates her own. The implants are probably counteracting each other, which would be a necessary feature if two people were ever to use the widget at the same time.

“More for you than me, since I’m not internationally famous. Ready to jump?”

When I give her a nod, Zero selects the hangar and activates her translocator. I follow a moment later.

Already, I’m beginning to adjust to the disorientation. It still takes me a few seconds to get my bearings, while Sandra is already stepping out of her box. She pulls up a series of screens in front of her, projected from the surface of her suit. Two miniature keyboards are being projected from her wrists, and she doesn’t miss a beat before beginning to type. Once my vision’s stopped swimming, I walk out of the box, which closes up behind me and immediately initiates the decontamination process. Zero seems to be sending commands to the hangar facility itself, as the overhead lights come on, and the hangar doors slowly open up.

This place is fairly bare-bones, at least by the Council’s standards. Aside from the arrival stations for incoming translocations, there isn’t much to see. A number of workstations with mechanic’s tools along the far wall, for maintenance, and the plane itself, occupying the center of the room. It makes some amount of sense- this place is more exposed than the Council’s headquarters, so they don’t want anything here that might lead back to them if it’s discovered.

“She’s impressive,” I comment, gesturing to the plane. “Got a name?”

It’s certainly a unique vehicle, resembling a cross between a Concorde and a U-2 spy plane. Large enough to comfortably fit ten or fifteen people, but not the size of a genuine passenger plane, and featuring no visible weapons. Considering the firepower available to the Council, I can understand why, though I’d be surprised if it isn’t hiding at least a few tricks up its sleeve.

“Not officially, but Sam likes to call her Black Beauty.”

The extraterrestrial explorer might be the Council member I know the least about. Though I can see some elements of Machina’s style in the plane’s design, I suspect he had a hand in building it as well, considering aeronautics is his area of expertise. It’s not hard to imagine him opening it up with some of the tools on the workbench across the room, and spending a few hours retooling the engine in order to make it a hair faster.

“Like the horse?”

“Like the horse.”

Zero still doesn’t even turn to look at me when replying. I don’t mind- given how many different screens she seems to be splitting focus between, it’s impressive she can even respond at all.

“You can get on board. She’s fueled up, I just need to run a quick diagnostic. We can go over the game plan once we’re in the air.”

A paranoid voice in the back of my head, bearing a suspicious resemblance to Jason, tells me that she could be trying to get me on the plane so she can remotely trigger the self-destruct and kill me. Normally I wouldn’t put too much stock in what that voice says, but given the circumstances, I can’t afford to ignore its advice. So instead of doing so, I decide to stall for a few seconds.

“Now you’re starting to remind me of Adamant.”

There’s no sign of annoyance in Lai’s tone when she replies.

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Hunt never had anything negative to say about her.”

That piques my interest, and provides an opportunity for me to keep her talking long enough that we’ll have to board together. It isn’t realistic to indulge ever paranoid thought I have, but when dealing with the people who may well have made my mentor disappear, I won’t take any chances.

“Did he talk about the people he worked with often?”

It’s worth knowing what he said about the other members of the Front Line. I don’t doubt that the topic came up more than once during Council meetings. Naturally, I’m curious what Jason told them about me, too.

“Not much. He wasn’t especially talkative in general. But whenever anyone suggested pointing his team at a problem to get them to handle it, he would usually veto. Said it would be too hard to deflect suspicion, because they weren’t his direct subordinates.”

Sound logic. Machina and Geas are both the uncontested leaders of their respective teams, and each command between fifteen and thirty metahumans. Using them like unwitting pawns to clean up messes left behind by the Council’s clandestine operations is much easier, because they’re already used to taking orders without question. Haley, Jason and Clay were always equals- if he wanted to send them to deal with something, he’d have to provide proper justification. And without being able to reveal the source of intelligence, that would get complicated quickly. Being able to call upon the Front Line’s firepower where necessary would be useful to the Council, but I can’t imagine Vindicator or Adamant bring much to the table that Pallas doesn’t already have. Even if she didn’t have her own country, she’d easily be strong enough to merit a seat at the table. All of them are equivalently powerful or influential in one area or another- except me. Jason was about to force himself into the group by threatening to expose them, which also served as a demonstration of his skill as an investigator. I was only brought on board because they needed someone to solve a mystery for them. Putting aside the question of their potential involvement with Jason’s disappearance, it’s easy to imagine them thanking me for my service after I crack the case, and then erasing my memories anyways.

Some part of me wants to try and impress them, in the hopes that they’ll simply come to respect me like they respected Jason. That’s overly optimistic, even for me. My best bet is to simply take a page out of Jason’s book and get my own hold over them. If Jason had some sort of dead-man’s switch, it doesn’t seem to have gone off, meaning that he disabled it voluntarily, or whoever took him out also managed to disable it in the process. There’s also the third, less realistic option- that Jason isn’t dead or in captivity, but merely undercover, and quietly resetting the timer on the dead-man’s switch without alerting anyone. He had more than a few of the things set up that I’ve already had to deal with, just none that made any mention of the Council or its members.

“Systems are green across the board. Graves, are you coming or not?”

Zero is heading for the airstair, still paying more attention to her holographic screens than her surroundings. I follow, satisfied that I’ve avoided at least one possible assassination scenario so far. Being inside a pressurized aircraft moving at supersonic speeds won’t be a risk-free experience either, but there isn’t much I can do about it other than keep my guard up.

“I’m coming. And you can call me Kellan. Just not while we’re in the field.”

I haven't been able to discern the rule behind how Lai addresses the other Council members, if there even is one. There’s no ‘mister’ or ‘miss’ stuff, which I appreciate, but she uses first names for some, last names for others, and cape names for one or two. It doesn’t take a detective to know that she’s indicating her feelings on those individuals based on how she refers to them, but nothing in her interactions with the rest of the group gives me the impression that she’s on a genuine first-name basis with any of them. She called O’Connor ‘Nick’ to his face, but only seems to call him Geas behind his back.

“Sure.”

The plane doesn’t seem to have black stone floors, probably more because of the weight issue than anything else. Instead, the floors are carpeted, with black leather seats in the back that bring private planes to mind. The cockpit, however, more closely resembles that of a fighter jet. Zero doesn’t head for the pilot’s seat, and though I’m flight-certified (under a false identity, of course), she doesn’t seem to be expecting me to fly us either. According to Professor Superior, she helped write software for self-driving vehicles, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d programmed this plane to fly itself as well. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if her holographic setup lets her control the whole vehicle from the comfort of a seat that can recline.

‘Black Beauty’ waits until we’re both seated and strapped in, across the aisle from each other, to get moving. The doors close and the cabin begins to pressurize, while Sandra continues typing. I wonder if she ever stops, even when the screens aren’t visible from the outside. It wouldn’t be that hard to use an AR overlay and accomplish the same effect, without broadcasting to everyone around that you’re only giving them a fraction of your attention. A part of me wants to start decrypting Jason’s file immediately, but doing that in proximity to the world’s most accomplished hacker would be a massive unforced error. Instead, I simply sit and wait.

It’s not long before the plane gets going. It was clearly designed not to need as much time taxiing before it can achieve liftoff- the distance between the hangar doors and where it was parked was a little less than the typical length of an aircraft carrier’s runway. Being able to quickly calculate distances like that is surprisingly important in my line of work, especially when it comes to judging whether the gap between two buildings is narrow enough to jump. That didn’t stop me from complaining when Jason sat me down in front of a math textbook and told me that I couldn’t go into the field with him until I could recite it from memory.

An uncompromising taskmaster he might have been, but Jason was the best partner I ever worked with. Anything he told you to do, you’d do without hesitation, and once he felt he could trust your judgement, he’d do the same. We established so many shorthands and code-words that whenever we’d have a ‘team-up,’ there would inevitably be complaints about the fact that we practically spoke our own language. That was what gave him the idea to effectively create a language that only he and I would understand, to ensure that we could communicate securely no matter what. It’s even telepath-proof, since even the strongest psychics can’t understand thoughts in a language they don’t speak. One mind-reader had the clever idea of trying to ‘download’ an entire language into his brain by taking the relevant memories from a fluent speaker, but the massive information influx permanently fried his brain’s language centers, leaving him incapable of coherent speech. Smarter telepaths can still use their powers to accelerate the learning process, but only for languages that have direct one-to-one translations of individual words. The cipher Jason and I use to encode information isn’t isomorphic to any pre-existing language, so the only way for a psychic to decode it would be to rip the meaning of every single word and symbol from my mind individually. It would allow them to roughly translate a single document, in the same way that you might be able to translate something by looking up the meaning of every single word in a dictionary, but the process would be slow and painstaking, requiring uninterrupted access to my mind for a prolonged period. Knowing the risks posed by trying to do so, most telepaths wouldn’t even attempt it.

It’s an odd time to be reminiscing about my mentor, while the plane is thundering down the runway and out of the hangar, before smoothly lifting off into the air. All of this business with the Council is making me miss working with him. Operations with the Front Line, while new and somewhat unfamiliar, are still well within the bounds of what I was expecting when I took the Hawkshaw name. I know I can rely on them, and I know their intentions are pure. With these people, there are no expectations whatsoever. No implicit trust, no certainty of their intentions or goals. I have to treat them all like threats, and act as if betrayal is inevitable.

The plane doesn’t stop accelerating once we’re in the air- if anything, it’s going even faster. Despite that, though, there isn't a hint of turbulence. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, considering the plane was built by somebody who had space travel figured out decades before the rest of the species.

“We’re about to hit Mach Two,” Lai informs me, without looking up from her screen. “That gives us about three hours. Let’s go over the plan.”

“Sounds good.”

“Bring up the blueprint and I’ll show you where we’ll be going.”

With the three-dimensional map of the XS Tech facility displayed on my HUD, I can see in real-time as Sandra charts our path through the building. The server room for the AI division is underground, and our insertion point is at the highest level, though the building is only three stories tall. Her chosen course is fairly circuitous, but it seems to avoid guard patrols entirely.

“Security cams aren’t a concern, because they won’t be able to pick us up, but it’s best to avoid any live security measures. An unconscious body will still set off alarms, even if they can’t see who knocked the guy out, and that means burning our way through steel shutters instead of just bypassing some electronic locks.”

I don’t really need to be told this, considering I’ve been using the same digital cloaking tech as her for years, but she seems to enjoy the opportunity to explain how her toys work, and I’m not inclined to interrupt her.

“The AI is code-named Maitreya. It’s running on a server underneath the facility, with several inactive backups in case something goes wrong with the prime version. Once I’ve erased it, we can leave, and the others will do their part”

Geas will probably have to make his own trip out here, if he’s going to be making selective edits to the research team’s memories. I imagine Lai will have to tell him exactly what to erase, since he likely doesn’t understand enough of the technicalities to do it alone.

“If everything goes according to plan, you won’t have to do anything except watch me work. Nobody will know we were there, and the archives going blank will just be a big mystery.”

That sounds pretty good to me, all things considered. After the train job, a simple, bloodless operation would be perfect. But even if the mission itself won’t be dangerous, I can’t let myself relax. Just telling me that could be Zero’s way of lulling me into a false sense of security.

“Understood. I’ll follow your lead.”

Lai makes a soft, satisfied humming sound.

“Good. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the floor plan. If you take a wrong turn at the wrong moment, it could send everything to hell.”

I don’t really appreciate the lack of confidence, but it’s sound advice nonetheless. While Zero quickly falls silent and ends the call, I keep the blueprint up, first tracing out our path exactly, before moving on to the rest of the facility. It seems like we’ll be making an aerial insertion, but there’s no designated exfiltration point. That throws me off for a moment, before I remember that we can just translocate out at any time.

The XS Technologies building seems to be a research and development facility, located in relative obscurity. Not a secret, per se, just far enough out of the way to make industrial espionage difficult. It’s not a military contractor, but even consumer electronics can be a cutthroat business. Each floor is dedicated to a specific division, with household appliances on the third, to robotics on the second, home security on the first, and finally artificial intelligence in the sub-basement. It’s also a pretty spacious building, with multiple elevators and stairwells. Lai’s path takes back and forth through it, in a way that would appear completely counterproductive if you couldn’t see the way it narrowly avoided every single patrol unit that any other route would have eventually intersected with. Even knowing she probably had some sort of pathfinding program chart it, I can’t help but be impressed.

XS Tech hires security from a South Korean firm, rather than employing guards directly. However, even if we did manage to screw up and find ourselves face-to-face with them, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. They’re firmly mid-tier, capable of keeping wandering children out and not much else. I can’t blame the company for choosing a mediocre contractor, though- it’s not as if anyone of our caliber has ever had a reason to break into one of their facilities before today. And if they’re smart, they won’t ever give us a reason to do so again.

One thing Zero’s blueprint brings to my attention while I’m observing it is that the entire facility is totally offline. No remote connections of any kind- employees even leave their smartphones at home. This is ostensibly to prevent anyone from leaking confidential information, but the more likely answer is that it’s an AI security measure. Despite what Lai said about them not taking their creation seriously, I have to give them some credit for that- they’re not completely stupid. However, since we’re both essentially walking cell towers, we’ll have to disable our connections before going in as well, just to be safe. That probably won’t be easy for Zero, who I’m sure is used to having a constant stream of information from any number of sources at all times. I can’t deny that my uplink is useful, but I can function fine without it too.

Aside from being underground, there don’t seem to be very many additional security measures protecting Maitreya. The locks are a touch more advanced than upstairs, but nothing I couldn’t crack given enough time, and Zero could probably do it in a fraction of that time. The amount of information she provided on the facility is almost overwhelming, but one perk of my power is that I have near-perfect recall, and with a three-hour flight, I have plenty of time to commit it all to memory. Thankfully, my brain has superior storage capacity compared to baseline humans, otherwise I would have long since run out of space up there.

Almost there, Lai informs me via text. The message includes a live tracker showing precisely how much time we have until arrival- seventeen minutes, forty-one second and counting. Part of me wishes she’d provided that information earlier, but it would only have served to distract me. Deceleration begins not long after, as it takes a while for something moving as fast as ‘Black Beauty’ to slow down sufficiently that someone could jump out safely. Just as I was beginning to feel comfortable inside of the thing, there’s a sudden shift, and I have to belatedly brace as the engines cut back by at least seventy percent.

A quick glance at Zero shows that she’s barely moved since the last time I looked, except to make herself a little more comfortable while she types. It really does remind me of Adamant, though Sandra’s stillness is due to intense focus, while Haley’s simply capable of sitting still and staying silent for long stretches, at least while she’s in her metal form. As a flesh-and-blood human, she’s pretty different, even bordering on hyperactive at times. I recall for a moment that I could be with her and Clay, continuing our cowboy movie marathon, instead of doing this, and frown. Fortunately, the stomach-turning sensations provided by the plane serve as a suitable distraction.

Over the next few minutes, the plane slows to a speed that could be compared with a commercial airliner, in preparation for our exit. Though there are no windows except up in the cockpit, I can tell from Zero’s tracker that we’ve been over the Korean Peninsula for a little while now. If we weren’t invisible to radar, and every other method of digital detection under the sun, the presence of an unregistered stealth plane in this airspace would be cause enough for an international incident. Luckily, tensions between the two Koreas have cooled off quite a bit over the past few years- something I’m sure the Council had more than a little to do with. Getting solid intelligence about the inner workings of the North Korean government isn’t easy even for me, but there are rumors about major shake-ups among the dictator’s inner circle, and I can easily imagine Network insinuating instances of himself into the right bodies, to whisper in certain ears, and slowly but surely shift the country’s course towards one less likely to plunge the planet into nuclear war.

Once the tracker shows less than a minute to arrival, Zero undoes her seatbelt and stands. Finally, the holo-screens disappear- I was starting to worry she wouldn’t stop typing even during the jump. I unbuckle as well, and follow her to the back, past where the seats stop. There’s a wide door on both sides, and she walks over to the leftmost one, placing a hand on the handle.

Another minute passes, and the door stays shut. Sandra notices that I’m looking, and speaks, this time without needing to call.

“Won’t be long. The tracker will say.”

As she speaks, I notice the tracker change, now displaying a more detailed map of the target location, with the plane highlighted in red. While waiting, I take a moment to disable the suit’s remote connections, cutting me off from all communications except short-range transmissions like the ones Zero and I have been using. Anything with more range, that requires a satellite or relay tower, is too dangerous to have active in the vicinity of a nascent AI, even one that won’t be active for another five years or so. Then, as we’re approaching the facility, the plane’s icon turns green, and Lai wrenches the door open without warning, before leaping out. The depressurization is sudden, but my suit keeps me safe. However, as I realize that, I also realize that Zero wasn’t wearing a suit at all- or an oxygen tank. At this altitude, she’ll lose consciousness far before impact, and even if she’s got the same gravity-manipulation module as me, it won’t do her much good if she’s got hypoxia by the time she lands. I jump after her, glad my coat’s magnetic fasteners can keep it from being torn off my shoulders by the wind.

Thanks to gravity, Lai is already some distance below me, and it’s not as if I can fall much faster to catch up, considering we’re both in proper form for this kind of dive. However, even at range, I can see that she’s conscious, and no longer unprotected. A shell of hard light has formed around her, deep blue in contrast to my shield’s stark yellow. I feel a little foolish, thinking she’d made the jump without any sort of protection, but the knowledge that she can maintain an oxygen supply inside of a hard-light construct is new to me. Not only does it allay my concerns in the present moment, it’s also a minor fact to file away in case I ever have to fight her. Gas attacks are unlikely to be effective unless deployed while she’s unaware.

We fall for a few minutes, before I see Zero suddenly slow, indicating she’s manually activated her own slow-fall module. I wait a moment before doing the same, leaving me only a couple yards above her, descending at the same reduced rate. Having passed through the clouds, we can see the facility below us. Activating the gravity-reduction device early gives us an opportunity to adjust course, aiming for the specific insertion point Lai outlined on the blueprint. She leads, and as promised, I follow. Despite my distrust of the Council and its members, I’m not so prideful as to balk at the prospect of taking orders.

I touch down on the rooftop seconds after Sandra. Once again, she doesn’t waste a second before heading to the nearby service entrance. It’s only designed to open from the inside, but she doesn’t have any trouble using her hard-light construct, which more resembles armor than a shell now that I can see it up close, to rip it open. The exact mechanics are unclear to me, since a construct made entirely out of energy (not actually ‘hard light,’ because that’s not a thing that exists) shouldn’t grant her enhanced strength without some kind of complex mechanism that it appears to lack, but I know better than to question her on the details at this particular moment. Perhaps once the job’s done, I’ll have demonstrated enough value to her that she’ll be willing to explain.

Lai drops down into the building, and I follow. The interior is unexciting, drab white surfaces and windowless doors lining a nondescript hallway. No guards in sight, but I immediately clock several security cameras, spaced out at regular intervals. No sooner have we stood up straight, do they immediately turn to ‘face’ us, like a series of accusing black eyes. Moments later, the alarm goes off. No flashing red lights, but an ear-piercing siren that’s followed by shutters closing over every doorway, and at both ends of the hall.

“How the fuck- our cloaks are both active! They shouldn’t be able to see us!”

I would have assumed that there was an alarm on the service door that her scan hadn’t picked up, if not for the fact that the cameras are clearly pointed directly at our position. Zero doesn’t seem scared by any means, but she’s confused, and by extension angry. I put it together a moment later.

“They don’t have to see us. It’s the negative space. We’re displacing air when we move, distorting light, disturbing the environment in microscopic ways. They can use that to infer our general location.”

Moments after the alarm went off, Sandra’s armor changed, shifting from what I take to have been an all-purpose setting to a more combat-friendly one, with sharper edges and bigger fists. Zero is silent for a moment, as she considers my theory and decides it’s plausible. But that doesn’t satisfy her completely.

“Nobody looking at the security feeds is going to notice that. Not seconds after we’re inside the building. Unless...”

“Unless?”

It’s pretty much a rhetorical question. I can guess the conclusion she came to, because it’s the same one I did. I’d just prefer not to be the one to say it.

“Unless Maitreya is already awake.”