Chapter 6*

Piggot picked up her tray, situational awareness focusing on the potential trouble spots in the cafeteria. Canary and Purity were seated together, keeping their heads down as she walked straight passed them. Two of Crash's more unlikely victims. Brockton Bay Social Services were slavering for a chance to take Aster into custody, but Piggot had a good idea of what the Blaster would do if her child was taken. The former Empire cape was useful as a P.R.T. force-projector. If she continued to be so, now Crash was out of the picture, Piggot would keep Social Services off her. Otherwise she was sure that, without Crash's power suppressing them, relatives of the former Empire member's victims would be calling for Purity's head soon enough. The media outside Brockton Bay were trying to tar Canary with the same brush The current problem was a higher priority.

Calvert was sitting in the far corner of the cafeteria, hunched over his food. Two PRT troopers were at the next table, watching him as they ate. His back was to the wall, two exits in easy reach and even closer to hard cover, Piggot noted. Some training ran too deep for any amount of trauma to erase. He was moving like an old man, lines in his face that hadn't been there during his arrest. Less smooth, less practiced, more broken. She banged her tray down deliberately to make him jump, and sat down at the table.

"Emily," he said, sounding as though the life had been sucked out of him.

"Thomas," she said, refusing to lower her voice to match his.

"Come to gloat?"

"Cut the whining self-pity. I came to see if you're competent." He didn't snap her head off and just held up the plastic knife.

"The doctors say no."

"Shows what they know." He smiled thinly. It was a reaction, she supposed. "Dammit, Thomas, you came through Ellisburg faster than this." He flinched. Good.

"I didn't trigger in Ellisburg." Piggot stopped, tried not to think about how many people could have been saved if he had, if a cape had stayed. They wouldn't have. If she - if he had gained powers then, then they would have escaped and left the others. Capes were broken, untrustworthy, people, and now Calvert was one of them. It didn't matter now. Brockton Bay mattered now. Calvert was still speaking.

"The things he made me do. It wasn't the evil things that were the worst. It was the stupid things. All those lives, all those resources, all just thrown away because a stupid kid with a lucky trigger wanted to fight a really evil villain." She'd have felt better if he'd shouted or sworn. The flat, quiet, monotone didn't fit Calvert.

She could sympathise. Trapped, watching your thoughts get forcibly derailed, a puppet made of flesh, too much like Nilbog to spare her nightmares. Crash had played with her mind, made her accept changes to her body, not let her override his specious vacuous arguments because he didn't think she should. Crash had, allegedly, liked her. Coil, Calvert, had been disposable.

"We checked the background on Coil's mercs. Most of them have criminal histories going back decades."

"So he wasn't killing good troops. That's-" he paused, picked his words carefully, "-a relief."

"And irrelevant." She cut him off. "I'll cut the crap. I don't know if you were Coil or Crash made you Coil. I don't know if Coil would have been a hero if Crash wasn't here. I doubt it. I know you." She expected sarcasm or smooth dismissal, not his hand tightening on the spoon as he stared at the table in silence. "I do know that you're unmasked and you have a power the Protectorate needs."

"And if I don't comply, you'll use everything I did to throw me away and hide the key," he said quietly. "You know any good lawyer would have me out on a Mastered defense in seconds."

"What makes you think you'll get a lawyer?" He almost laughed but it died in his throat.

"That's a hell of a Protectorate recruitment speech."

"Screw the Protectorate." He didn't choke, but his spoon paused in the listless path it was carving in the jello. "No time for induction now. I want an independent thinker on PRT retainer."

"What's in it for me?" And there was the devious bastard she knew and loathed.

"I'll put in a good word for you at your trial."

"He's dead. Good." Calvert quoted, deadpan, and she smirked. "Why me?"

"Coil had spies everywhere. They're useful. You know who they are."

"You want me to bring them in."

"I want you to put them to work for the P.R.T." Finally he looked up at her, and there was blunt calculation behind his eyes. "The city's a tinderbox. We need it to be certain the P.R.T. is in control, get a heads-up on trouble. Coil's network is made for that."

"And I'm the only adult thinker you've got who's not in coma, lobotomised, or on suicide watch. So what's in it for me?"

"Because when I retire, my successor needs to inherit a stable city. You want to make your job easier, don't you?" She thought she had him as his head raised, but the smile was crooked.

"Nice try. I'm a cape. No P.R.T. Directorate for me."

"No," she said, putting her hands flat on the table. "Armsmaster's resigned from the Protectorate pending reassignment to Canada to recover Dragon and the Birdcage. There's a position free at the head of the Protectorate, if you start establishing yourself now."

"There are other capes more senior."

"But none more qualified, especially with your power. Ms. Militia is good at tactics, not overall strategy and she hates politics." It was true, but he'd still have to compete with Velocity, Battery, and Assault, if any of them wanted the job. "If you work with Armsmaster now, his recommendation and mine carry weight." She didn't say she'd give hers, but the hint she might should be enough of a lure. She needed him usable. As he thought about it she smirked, sure she had him, and then his skin turned a sickly grey.

Piggot saw him glance across and swore to herself as Dinah Alcott sat down quietly with her cousin at a far table. Whatever happened either Oracle or Coil would have to transfer. The girl had got over her kidnap and drugging surprisingly easily; Piggot suspected a side-effect of Crash's powers, as rescuing the damsel in distress isn't so heroic when she suffers lasting trauma. Calvert hadn't. Villains were supposed to enjoy their crimes, and she remembered the hit she'd felt when - she grabbed Calvert's arm, twisted it into an armlock and wrested the plastic knife away as he tried to drive it into his throat.

As the PRT troopers piled on, Piggot cursed out loud. The troopers should have been on the ball, have reacted the moment he turned the weapon on himself. As Oracle moved to rise, she glared until the juvenile Thinker wilted and sat. There would be a time and place for this painful chat and the cafeteria was not it. As the officers walked the unresisting Calvert out, back to his cell, Emily Piggot rubbed her forehead. What a mess.

#

*Author's Note - There should be another chapter inserted before this one, dealing with New Wave, but I'm not able to finish it right now. I hate the flu.