Chapter 22:

I walked down the stairs of my base and saw Charlotte making something in the kitchen. It had been a week since I rescued her from the Merchants and she accepted my offer for employment. She had taken more of a caretaker role within my...organization? I wasn't really sure what to call this.

"What are you making?" I asked as I approached. She jumped at my voice. She was still spooked by me, even out of costume. Her initial excitement that she knew a superhero was tempered by her guilt at her impassiveness toward my torment at the hands of Emma, Sophia, and Madison. Add to that my her apprehension at my powers, and...

"Um...just making some tea..." she said.

"Enough for me?"

"Oh, yeah, or course." She went back to work while I sat down. I looked into the other room where a number of children were sleeping. Charlotte's main project. I had initially been against bringing them here, but she had worn me down. "Where else can they safely sleep?" "With their families?"

"Some of them...don't have families."

I was shaken from my thoughts by Charlotte handing me a teacup. I took it and thanked her.

"Do you have any plans for the day?" I asked her.

"Gonna head out and do some cleanup until the supplies come, then get started on lunch and dinner."

I nodded. "I'll be away, but if you need anything, you can message me." I said, before taking a sip of my tea. "You do remember the codes, right?"

She nodded, and then pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. "I have it written down."

I raised an eyebrow. "That...kind of defeats the purpose. If you lose it..."

"I won't." Charlotte said. "It's just until I memorize it."

"Try to memorize it soon."

"Okay..." Charlotte looked like I had just kicked her. I sighed.

"We don't want Tattletale to have to come up with a harder code, you know?"

"Right."

We finished out tea in relative silence. Even though it was a little awkward, I was just happy to be around someone who wasn't a Cape.

I loved spending time around my team, but most of our conversations devolved to Cape stuff.

Lisa and Alec never talked about their pasts, Brian and Aisha barely talked about their pasts, and Rachel barely talked at all. Dinah was more conversational, but the age gap made it a bit tougher to relate to her. Plus, she focused on her numbers a lot.

It was nice to be able to talk about more mundane things with someone. It had been a long time since I had that.

About 2 years.

I put my teacup down and stood up, stretching as I did. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 9. "I need to head out."

"Okay." Charlotte said. "Are you coming back tonight?"

"I should be back this evening." I said. "Maybe we'll do something special for dinner, instead of making you cook. Search around and see if any restaurants are open around here, and can supply enough for us. I'll pay for it and grab it on the way back."

Charlotte brightened slightly. "Anything in particular you want?"

"You pick. I'm good with anything."

Charlotte's smile widened, and she nodded. I smiled back, and then headed out through the secret entrance. I had to squint my eyes as I walked out into the sunlight.

I roamed the streets, taking in my territory on the way to my destination. Everything had been cleaned up pretty nicely, all things considered. There was still a long way to go, but...we were making progress.

The streets were still slightly flooded, many of the buildings were still in disrepair. I had been doing my best to take care of as many of the vermin that had moved into the area, trying to cut down on potential disease.

That and taking on criminals who were stupid enough to try and start something. E88 members, former ABB members, we had even gone up against the Travelers, collectively, a few times. Coil insisted that we needed to keep up appearances, to convince people that we had no connections.

Fortunately, that was about the extent of the conflicts that we had gotten into. I chalked it up to a combination of recovery efforts and the villains still being spooked by the Nine having been in the city.

As I headed onto the boardwalk, I glanced toward the water, the boat graveyard. I knew Sierra, my other employee, would be meeting with someone that Coil had found to discuss getting it cleaned up. I wasn't feeling too hopeful. We had already set up meetings with a few other people in regard to the graveyard. The costs had all been too high, so far.

I managed to make it to a bus stop just in time to hop onto one, and took a seat at the back of the bus. There weren't many people on the bus. Even on the weekends, most people were still working. Weekends weren't a luxury that many people could take right now.

The bus ride took about half an hour, and I hopped off. I would only have a short walk ahead of me. I could have asked Coil to send a car, avoid the bus and the walk, but...

I wanted to keep these two parts of my life separate.

I rounded the corner and stepped onto my street. My house had been relatively untouched by Leviathan's attack, which was fortunate. Our neighborhood wasn't the best to begin with. Had it been hit hard by Leviathan, the city likely would have just demolished all the houses.

I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. It took a moment for my dad to answer the door. "Taylor, come on in." he said. I nodded and entered.

Since Leviathan's attack, I had been staying at my base most of the time. I had told my dad that I was staying at shelters, trying to do my part with the recovery. He hadn't been happy, but he had accepted it.

Accepted my lie. Pretty easily, too.

I took a seat in the living room, and he hesitated. "Can I get you anything?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I'm all set."

He nodded and sat back into his chair. "How has work been going?" I asked.

"Good, plenty of work to go around." dad said. "How about you? How's working at the shelter?"

"It's going well. Things are starting to come together."

"That's good. Do you think that maybe you'll be coming home soon?"

"I...don't know. There's still a lot of work to do."

"And which shelter are you working at again?"

"It's one on the edge of Skitter's territory." I said, trying to keep my voice neutral as I said my cape name.

"That's good...her's is a pretty safe area, from what I've heard. And at least you're far enough from the other side of the city. That villain group...the Travellers, have been causing trouble over there." He then paused. "Have you...been around Skitter much?"

"Not really. I think she's usually off doing more important things. Overseeing stuff, you know?"

He nodded. "Well, if there's ever a cape fight, I'd hope you would get away from it."

I smiled slightly. "Don't worry, dad. You'll never see Taylor Hebert at a cape fight."

He chuckled and rubbed his eyes.

I hated lying to my dad. It was one of the tougher aspects of being a cape.

We chatted for a bit longer, moving to lighter topics, and then decided to head out to the city to get some breakfast. There weren't too many places that were open, but my dad was privy to the ones that were closest to the house. Supplies became a bit tougher to get to people who weren't central to our territories.

I was trying to work on that.

After our breakfast, we decided to stroll around the city a bit. We ran into a few of his coworkers, and stopped to chat with them.

It was about 1 in the afternoon when my phone went off. A text from Charlotte. I gulped as I saw that. I opened the text.

"Someone here to see u. Amy. Wants to know when you'll be back."

I stared at the text. Amy was looking for me? And the code was present. U meant Taylor, you meant Skitter.

"Tell her I'll be there as soon as I can." I responded. "Take her to my base. She's trustworthy."

My dad had noticed me slowing down, and turned to look at me. I sighed. "I think I need to head out. Something came up...at the shelter. They need me back."

"Oh..." my dad said. "Well, when can we do this again?"

"I...I'm not sure. A couple days? I'll call you and let you know." I said.

"Okay, I'll look forward to that." he said. I could tell he was disappointed, but it couldn't be helped, really.

If Panacea was looking for me, it couldn't be for anything particularly good. For this, I did call Coil for a ride. I had his man pick me up at a store a few blocks from my house. With the ride, it only took about 15 minutes to get back to my base. I entered through the secret entrance, and when I made it inside.

There, I found Charlotte and Amy sitting there, waiting for me.

"Taylor." Charlotte said as she saw me.

"Charlotte, Amy." I said. "What's up?" I asked, looking right at the other hero.

"I...I'm sorry for interrupting your day."

"It's fine. What's going on? Villains?"

"No, nothing like that. I just...I didn't know where else to go. I've been staying at hospitals and shelters, and I just...I can't anymore."

"And...you can't go home?"

"No." Amy said. Her face darkened. "I...I talked to Marquis. My dad."

"Marquis is your dad?" Charlotte asked. Amy just nodded.

"He revealed some things about why they took me in, how it happened. And...it just doesn't make sense. I can't see why Carol...she never..."

I held up a hand to stop her. "Amy, it's fine. You don't have to go into it if you don't want to." I said. "You can stay here, if you want. We have extra beds."

The relief was clear on Amy's face. "Really?"

I nodded. "Of course. You're my friend. If you need a place to stay, I'll help you out."

"Thank you, Taylor."

"It's no problem." I said. I pulled out my phone and sent a message to Coil, to get a bed for Amy. I would set it up in my top floor. My Taylor room. I doubted she would want to sleep with a lot of kids.

It took a while to get Amy calmed down enough that she was able to actually form sentences. We were talking about the current State of the city when I got another message. I pulled it out and saw it was from Tattletale.

"Trouble. Meeting at Grue's base. Get there ASAP."

I sighed, standing from my seat. "I need to go."

"What?" Charlotte asked.

"Something's up. I need to meet with the team about it."

"Do you want me to come?" Amy asked.

"No, you just rest here. You look pretty tired." I said. "And we should be able to handle it. Charlotte, can you handle ordering dinner?" I asked, pulling out some cash and tossing it to her.

"Oh, yeah, got it." Charlotte said.

"Thanks." I said, heading to the stairs.

So much for a day off.