Dan stepped out of the medical tents and made a call. Detective Hauss was busy requisitioning surveillance video from further down the bridge. Now that they knew what vehicle to look for, they could pull a full license plate number and track down where it had come from. Phil the lizard was taking a well-earned rest, having been given a full debrief. Dan was left with nothing to do for a few minutes, so it was time to update Granny Goodness.

The call was fairly straightforward at first. Anastasia answered after a single ring, demanding an update without any of the usual pleasantries. That was fine; neither of them liked speaking with the other. Dan's report was short and to the point, but when he reached the issue of the recovered body, he couldn't help himself.

"Between the collar and the fireball, there's a pretty clear culprit here."

"Quite so. This was a clumsy attempt by the People to target my family," Anastasia agreed.

"They took out a good mile of highway. I wouldn't call that clumsy. Thing is, I don't see how that's possible if they just kidnapped some random person." Dan knew the answer to his next question, but he wanted to hear it from her lips. "What do those collars do, Anastasia?"

Anastasia scoffed. "That's not something to be said aloud, certainly not to you. It's need to know."

"Thinkin' I need to know," Dan replied tersely. "Marcus told me about them, once. He said they were designed to induce power growth through torture."

"If you already know, then why do you feel the need to ask?" Anastasia snapped irritably. There was a brief pause, before she grudgingly confirmed, "That appears to be their purpose, yes. The People have been trying to undermine the permanence of upgrades for the entirety of their existence. It is one of the organization's guiding ideologies. These devices are one of several methods that they've devised to do so."

"The People can break upgrades?" Dan asked, caught between fascination and horror. Marcus had spoken as if it were theoretical.

Anastasia scoffed. "Nothing so dramatic. The process is both time-consuming and almost completely random. The smallest fraction of a fraction of the population is capable of breaking an upgrade through their own willpower and desperation, and even then only while experiencing the kind of pain you cannot even imagine. These collars aren't a threat. They are, at best, a clumsy tool that breaks the subject of their attention far more often than not."

"Do I want to know how you know that?" Dan asked, feeling nausea rising in his gut.

"Don't be a fool," Anastasia chided. "Upgrades were the solution to the randomness of cosmic incarnation. The stability of an entire nation depended on them functioning as intended. You cannot possibly believe that they weren't thoroughly tested for every possibility.

"Pattern recognition is built into human nature, Newman. You can tell a person that cosmic energy pulsed in a certain pattern produces a fixed result, and they'll believe it. They almost have to. It seems perfectly logical, even when it's not. The number of people capable of breaking through their own mental conditioning across the entire country accounts for less than a fraction of a fraction of a rounding error. There aren't even enough to form a conspiracy theory. The very idea is antithetical to how we think."

"So you're telling me, what?" Dan asked. "This is an isolated incident? What about that mess in Atlanta last year? I watched it live, and the explosion that took out those city blocks looked an awful lot like the one that hit here. Not exact, sure, but I'm guessing these collars don't produce exact results."

"Not exact," Anastasia agreed, neatly sidestepping his question, "but I imagine there is some consistency to the successes. Any given person being tortured wants the same thing as any other: for the pain to stop. The People probably give their victims some kind of stop condition, to focus themselves on. And I assume that everyone taken has the same general upgrade pattern, again for consistency's sake."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Taken," Dan repeated. "You think the kid was kidnapped?"

Anastasia scoffed. "You think it too, and so does the detective if he's got any brains to him. It seems rather obvious what happened. The child realized his fate and fought against it. He failed of course, but the effort was commendable."

It was the coldest, most clinical praise Dan had ever heard, and it was directed at a kid who had probably martyred himself attempting to prevent a terrorist attack.

"Did you have to learn how to be a heartless bitch, or were you just born this way?" Dan asked.

Anastasia ignored him. "Continue to follow the investigation. I want to know where they originated from. Any leads there can help us here."

"Trail's gone cold, then?" Dan asked, eager for news from home.

"Echo is hiding like a rat," Anastasia confirmed with the slightest of snarls. "He very well may have fled the city. But Coldeyes and Cannibal are here. It's not in their nature to run away."

"Banking a lot of resources on a psych profile," Dan noted.

"Cannibal is incapable of retreat," Anastasia said with ironclad certainty. "His power prevents it. He is the hunter. He sees himself as the top of the food chain. He will act thusly."

"And Coldeyes?"

"Coldeyes has staked his reputation on taking the city. If he backs down, he'd see it as losing everything he's ever worked for. He is an arrogant, overconfident fool, who has never met a Natural who can match him."

"But you can?" Dan asked.

Anastasia snorted. "I've had my power for longer than he's been alive."

"Yeah, he's the overconfident one," Dan mocked. "You know, they seem awfully content to let you waste your time running about the city, pissing off the locals."

"I never said they couldn't be patient," she replied mildly. "Waiting to strike is different than running away."

"Waiting to strike?" Dan repeated incredulously. "Waiting for what? An engraved invitation? Or does Cannibal think you're gonna run out into the street in a dress made out of steak?"

"The National Guard commander wants to raise the curfew, and start arresting even non-violent protestors." Anastasia dropped that bomb like she was reporting the weather. "My suspicion is that we have a mole, somewhere, and the People know this. I think the attack you're investigating was meant to spur me into action. They hoped that, by targeting my family, I'd lose my temper and allow these soldiers free reign."

"Wouldn't it be more likely for you to fly home and, I dunno? Flatten Florida?"

"That attack would have never succeeded," Anastasia stated firmly. "Perhaps I would have lost some guards, but that car wouldn't have made it within range of the mansion. They would've been shot to pieces long before even catching sight of my home. This was a taunt. A... reminder of past failures."

"So what are you going to do?" Dan asked.

"I'm going to do exactly what they want me to do. I'll allow the National Guard to act as they see fit, and I'll direct the FATs to do the same. Echo wants the populace against us before he's willing to act, so that's what he'll get. Let him spring his trap, see if I care."

"That sounds insanely reckless," Dan pointed out. Did she even have that kind of authority? He wasn't clear how officially in charge she was, though everyone certainly seemed to act like she was.

"The People are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned," Anastasia replied. "Echo's play with Champion was cheeky, but it won't matter in the end. There won't be a repeat performance. He can't trot out a corpse and call it real more than a few times before people begin to catch on. So, the story will burn itself out soon enough. The public will stop caring, and forget. Echo likely thought the country revered the man as much as he did. More fool, he. Champion was only ever a symbol, and a symbol that cannot be displayed is worthless."

The sheer callousness of the woman always managed to catch Dan off-guard. He knew Anastasia was powerful, but he hoped, for Abby's sake, that her skill matched her arrogance. He had nothing to say to her rant, nothing to add that would convince her in either direction. All he could do is buy time.

"Will you wait until we've finished here?" he asked. "Don't do anything crazy, don't make any changes, until we've tracked down the culprits of this attack. You never know, maybe they'll lead us right back to Echo, and you won't have to spring any trap at all."

"I rather doubt it," Anastasia said, though her voice was considering. "I suppose I can give you another day. But be quick, Daniel. I've waited decades to be rid of the People. I'm tired of waiting."

Dan had no response to that. He hung up the phone and clenched it tight in his fist. He had a day to track down a terrorist, or his city was going to go up in flames. No good could possibly come from Anastasia's idea. Not for Austin, at least. She wasn't concerned with the city, or the citizens within. She only cared about her revenge. Austin was just a convenient backdrop.

He had a day to give her a different target.

He had better get started.