Summus Proelium

Well, on the plus side, we had the proof we needed. There was no way anyone could look at these videos and not understand what was happening. Which, as it turned out, was something even worse than we had expected. Seriously, Amanda Sanvers had already been a huge problem. Even in police custody, I didn’t believe she was helpless or completely contained. I never thought it would actually be that easy, even from the moment she surrendered.

But now? Now it turned out she wasn’t operating only on her own ability. Well, she was, but a supercharged version of it. She had been getting a steady stream of Tech-Touched ideas and improvements from everyone who had been affected by this shit the whole time! How many ridiculous, impossible things could she build now, after all that?

God, I didn’t even want to think about it. But my brain insisted on screeching about all the horrible possibilities the whole time Paige and Sierra were making several copies of what we had found, which was taking a bit longer than it should have since Amanda apparently had built-in protections against that sort of thing and they were tiptoeing around them. We weren’t going to take any chances that this stuff could somehow disappear. That really would be just our luck, to know what was really going on and have no way to actually prove it because all the videos deleted themselves.

Meanwhile, as they were working on that, I felt paralyzed. Who should I call first? Who was I supposed to tell about this? The Ministry, Ten Towers, the cops, the jail, who would listen to me the most, and who could actually accomplish anything with the information? The prison system wouldn’t listen to me, obviously, despite my wild thoughts that I could call them up and tell them to get fifty men in there to point guns at-- oh shit, she wasn’t even in the prison right now! How the hell did that slip my mind? Amanda was--fuck she was wherever they had been taking her. Not prison, some other ‘safe location.’ But safe for who? Was she still in custody at this point?

I had my phone out, in my hand, staring at it as I literally staggered backward against the desk. Peyton, Roald, and Murphy were having an intense conversation off to one side, talking about letting Rubi know so she could pass it on to Caishen. I had to calm down, had to breathe and make myself focus. One thing at a time, Cassidy. What was the first thing I needed to do right now, besides tell my stomach to stop rolling so hard?

“Get hold of Rubi,” I quickly agreed with those three while they were debating how much good it would do. “Tell her to get Caishen to send all the reinforcements they can to make sure Amanda’s secure, and tell them she’s a lot more dangerous than they might think. I know they’re already keeping any tools and equipment away from her, but at this point I feel like she could MacGyver a nuclear bomb out of a VCR and scotch tape. Don’t let her near anything, strip the room bare if they need to. And keep eyes on her, for God’s sake. For all we know she’s already broken out of custody. Maybe that was what getting transferred out of the jail was for in the first place.”

Realizing I was babbling, I snapped my mouth shut and focused on my phone once more before coming to a decision. The Ministry. We had our issues, obviously, but this was about more than that. They had connections I didn’t, ways of getting this message to everyone who needed to hear it. Hell, they probably had at least one of their own people watching Amanda as we spoke. Especially after that last message I sent them. They knew she was responsible for Sleeptalk, so I really doubted they’d just left her without direct Ministry supervision. They could find out what she was up to and stop it.

That time, after listening to the phone ring three times, I didn’t get the receptionist or whatever they called the person screening calls. It went straight through to Ministers Gray. I heard the bear answer, his deep baritone filling my ear. “You have the proof?”

“As promised,” I immediately confirmed. “And it’s worse than we thought. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but trust me.” With that, I told them what we’d found, making sure to emphasize just how much Amanda’s power had been supercharged by this shit.

“So no one has any idea what she’s capable of now,” I managed by the end of that. “If she was a strong Tech-Touched before, she’s had all those minds feeding her power this whole time, since the moment that Sleeptalk stuff was first triggered. She could--”

“She could build anything, potentially,” Fisher interrupted, sounding like he was actually taking this as seriously as I wanted him to. “Thank you for the trust, Paintball. We shall handle it from here.” I started to say something, but he cut in. “I understand your reservations. Both of us do. But we have this in paw. I’m watching a live feed of Ms. Sanvers right now. She’s being kept in a small room with no tools. Her only entertainment at the moment is paperback books, and she is being fed using paper plates and cups, food she can eat with her hands, and all of that is removed when she’s done. A special system within the room mutes all sound so she cannot use her power to distract anyone. Even if she does escape that room, she has been implanted with a device which will administer a potent drug directly into her bloodstream capable of rendering her unconscious the moment she leaves it. I understand that even all of this is not one hundred percent foolproof, but it is not nothing. She is being contained, and we will do what we need to do in order to ensure she remains that way, no matter how many super-tech ideas she has swimming around in her brain. She will be given no opportunity to utilize them. We are taking your warning as seriously as we possibly can.”

Breathing out, I glanced toward the others before nodding. “Okay, I get it. You can handle this whole thing better than we can by ourselves. But we’re still sending the message to others. Ten Towers, the Minority, everyone we have contacts for.”

There was a brief pause before Fisher’s voice came back. “Understandable. It would be wise to avoid panic right now, but ensuring the right people understand the gravity of the potential problem is important. Spread the word to those you trust. But first, you did say you had proof of this. Clearly, we believe you. You’ve more than earned that level of trust. But having a copy of that proof in hand would be… helpful.”

“Yeah, I’ll send you a copy,” I agreed. “Give me an email address I can get a file to and you can have all your tech experts go over it to make sure it’s legit. We’re doing the same for others.” While saying that, I was looking pointedly toward Paige, who gave me a short nod of confirmation. They had safely made the copies we needed.

Another pause followed, before Fisher gave me a temporary email I could use to send the file (avantguardproof at flyawaym dot com). I had no doubt that the email wouldn’t lead anywhere important or useful if we tried to do anything with it beyond sending that file. They would probably nuke absolutely every part of it off the internet the second they took the file off it. We might’ve been working together for this, but that didn’t mean they were going to open themselves up for us to dig through all their secrets. Or vice versa, to be honest.

Once Paige was working on sending the file, Fisher spoke again. “Now, proof is one thing, but I don’t suppose there might be something even more important in this place you’ve been searching? Wherever that may be.”

“Yeah, I know you tried to trace the call,” I retorted flatly, “and you’re probably a little annoyed that we’re not letting you. But don’t worry, as soon as we’re out of here, you’ll get the address and everything else we can tell you about getting in, just in case we missed something. And as far as that more important thing, I guess you mean a cure.”

“That would be quite useful, yes,” the TONI bear confirmed while giving no actual reaction to my bit about how they had tried to trace the call. “Skipping over the middle man--or woman-- entirely by having a readily-made cure sounds far better than being forced to watch Ms. Sanvers’ every move while she makes the cure now. Watching a hostile Tech-Touched work with live materials when you have no idea what they’re actually doing is difficult enough in the best of circumstances. If she is as… super-charged as you say, that could be exponentially more difficult.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered under my breath. “Listen, go over the proof and make damn sure Amanda stays in custody. We’ll search this place a bit more, and send you everything we can find. As soon as we’re done, you’ll get the address so you can go over it yourselves. But trust me, if we find even the slightest whiff of an actual cure, either the actual thing or any information about it, we’ll let you know.”

They agreed, and I disconnected before exhaling. “Okay, what about Rubi?”

“We sent her a message,” Roald informed me. “But she hasn’t answered yet.” He sounded anxious, for obvious reasons. “So we sent her another one to make sure she knows it’s important as soon as she sees it.”

“And now the Conservators have the information,” Paige put in. “As do the Seraphs. We sent it through your… bird papa.” I could hear the very faint smile in her voice despite the seriousness of the situation. “He’s spreading the word and making sure they take it seriously.”

My head bobbed a little. “Right, okay, good. Between all of them, they should be able to keep Amanda--okay they’ll do a better job than we could at making sure she stays trapped and doesn’t get access to any tools. Let’s just hope it’s actually enough.” I felt a pang go through me at the thought of even voicing that slight doubt, but pushed on. “But for now, I uhh, I don’t suppose there’s any helpfully-labeled cures lying around?”

With a loud, emphatic curse as she turned away from the wall she had been staring at, Sierra announced, “Of course not, that’d be too damn easy. If there’s a cure to this stuff, it’s locked up inside her head. It’s like she knew someone would eventually see all this and wanted to make sure they had to go through her to get the important shit.”

Murphy, who was bouncing up and down anxiously, piped up. “So what now? Do we really just sit back and wait to see if those people can keep her under control and get the cure out of her? What’re we supposed to do until then, twiddle our thumbs?”

“We’ve done enough,” I found myself saying, even though it hurt to say. “We’re giving them what they need. I don’t… I don’t know what else we can do. We can’t convince them to let us take Amanda and--well… hey, what if we send them Trevithick’s machine and tell them to plug her into it? We don’t have to tell them we already used it to go over Pittman, we can just… tell them to use it to make the cure. Or send it to the Ministry… or… maybe that’s a bad idea in general. I don’t know how the kid’ll feel about handing that sort of thing over to other people for them to use.” We were going to have to talk to Wren about that and see if there was a way to do it safely. Maybe they’d let her supervise and then take it away from them once they had the cure? But we’d also have to find a way to transport the whole thing, and… yeah, we’d talk about it.

By that point, as I was still running the whole idea through my head, Rubi called back. Those three focused on telling her what was going on, while I looked toward Paige and Sierra. “It does feel pretty weird to just pass the information on and let other people deal with it, huh? Like, I know they’re professionals and trying to interfere ourselves would just cause problems, but still. I don’t want to just put it in someone else’s hands.”

“Aww.” Sierra reached out to give my helmet a shake as though ruffling my hair. “You’re growing up and learning not to trust anyone else.”

My eyes rolled. “I think I got the ‘don’t blindly trust other people’ memo loud and clear awhile ago, believe me. But this is worse. This is my family, my parents and your sister, guys. I know. I know how it sounds. I just--I’m terrified that if we just trust other people to deal with it, they’ll screw it up. They’ll let Amanda escape, or let her create something that makes the whole situation worse, or--”

“Paintball.” Paige moved in front of me, putting both hands on my shoulders. Our gazes met through the masks and helmet. “They won’t let that happen. We’re talking about the Ministry’s leadership here, not just your parents. They aren’t going to take any chances with them. Now that they know Amanda was responsible for this situation, they’ll keep her under control. If anyone can force her to give them the cure, it’s the Ministry. They’ll figure it out. They have the resources and the… motivation.”

It sort of sounded like she was convincing herself as much as she was me. But either way, I gave a little nod. “You’re right, I get it. We need to let them work. So let’s just go over this place with a fine-tooth comb one more time, take everything useful, and then get out of here.

“After all, we still need to figure out what to do with Pittman now.”

*********

So, we searched the place and the computers as thoroughly as possible. Paige and Sierra already had once, but they helped do so again just to make sure. Unfortunately, the first indication was accurate. It was obvious that Amanda had thoroughly wiped the files to remove any indication of how Sleeptalk was made or how to cure it. She left just enough to make it clear she was responsible, which I was a bit curious about. Maybe she’d wanted to be able to take credit or whatever when the time came? She did seem to be that self-centered. I could see her being annoyed about the idea of people thinking anyone else pulled this off.

In the end, we sent the location and details about how to get in the place to the Ministry, then took off back to the shop. I still felt awkward and anxious about the whole thing, to say the least. It felt like I was passing off responsibility, and if anything worse happened to my parents because I wasn’t right there helping, I would never forgive myself. But what else were we supposed to do? Amanda was in official custody. The Ministry could get to her, but we couldn’t. Besides, the Seraphs, Ten Towers, and the Conservators knew about the situation now too. Between all of them, they had to be able to handle it. They had to be able to get the cure out of one person.

Maybe I was more worried about what sort of deal they’d make with her. After all, I sort of doubted she would give them what they wanted just because they asked nicely, or targeted her sense of responsibility. And she probably wouldn’t respond well to threats either. No, she was going to want something.

Yeah, that was what was bothering me the most. Yes, the Ministry and the other official authorities were in the best position to deal with her. But that meant they were in a position to deal with her. They would have to give her something she wanted, and the fear of what that might end up being was making me sweat buckets.

Finally, we made it back to the shop. Which, to be perfectly honest, some small, paranoid part of me had been fretting about what could’ve happened while we were gone. Yes, Paige and Sierra were in constant contact with the cameras that were watching over Pittman, and they would have said something if he’d tried anything. Still, that sort of logic didn’t make that part of my brain shut up entirely.

But no, everything seemed fine as we made it inside and let Wren, Fred, and Qwerty know what was going on. Which basically just made them as anxious about the whole thing as we were, unfortunately. But at least we were all on the same page.

And speaking of being on the same page, before I could say anything else once the others were caught up, Sierra announced, “We need to do something about Daddy Dearest, before something goes wrong. We’re taking a risk every minute we keep him here. Scratch that, we’re taking a hundred risks every minute we keep him here.”

“Amen to that,” Fred agreed, sounding tired and stressed. “I’ll be glad to get rid of him. But uhh, how do we do that? Where do we send him? And how do you make sure he keeps quiet about who abducted him?”

“We can’t just send him right back to the island,” Wren reminded us. “It umm… I checked the machine and I was right. It’ll take weeks to fix it, maybe months. And a lot more special equipment.”

We were still debating about what to do with that bastard when my phone buzzed. Taking a look at who was calling, I frowned briefly before answering. “Eits?”

“Paintball,” he immediately replied, sounding like he was out of breath, “you’ve gotta get your group over to your high school!”

Well that made me do a double-take. “What? Why, what’s going on? The school’s been closed for hours.”

“Sports--basketball--big game--lots of people--all here.” Eits was panting between words. “Can’t get out--all the people--locked in--can’t open the--” He stopped, taking an audible breath. “Get your people, get over here. They’ve got a bunch of guys in the school with guns, and they triggered the lockdown so no one can get in or out. They’re using the civilians here as hostages.”

“Hang on,” I immediately replied, “I’ll call in reinforcements and--”

“No, you can’t do that,” he quickly interrupted. “They’ve got people in place monitoring all communications with known Star-Touched. They’re watching them, Paintball. I don’t know how, but they are. The second it looks like they’re mobilizing, they’ll kill the hostages. There’s supposed to be guys watching the place you guys hang out at, but I managed to stick a couple Mites in their cars to slow them down. But if you don’t get out of there right now, they’ll see you leaving. You’ve got like two minutes, maybe. So get the hell out of there and… and come save these people before they kill them.”

“Paintball, they said something about making Avant-Guard release their creator.”