Faultline looked up at the complex map of newspaper articles, photographs, and computer printouts that covered my rear wall. Each document was linked to others in tangled cobweb of twine and colored pins, stretching from the ceiling down to where they were hidden by cardboard boxes piled against the wall.

She was wearing her full costume, a confusion of femininity and belligerence, and the image of her standing among the merely mundane clutter of my tiny office veered towards absurdity. The dark window of her welding mask made her expression hard to read, but I could see flashes of intelligence and humor in her eyes as she looked around at the walls.

She leaned in to read the tiny scrawl on one wrinkled post-it note.

"I never knew that the American Dental Association was related to the Case 53s."

"That's because you're not paying attention."

She turned to face me, and I looked back down at the papers strewn across my desk. The documents were an enigma. Every page so far had told a similar story. Funds misplaced or misdirected. Key staff dismissed at the inopportune times. A string of minor frauds and acts of incompetence with no apparent unifying cause or direction.

"Isn't this all a little much?" Faultline asked, tugging at a taut length of twine with the tip of a gloved finger, trying to strum the connection like a guitar string.

"Hey, don't touch that!"

"Seems like you'd be able to cross-reference all of this 'data' better with a computer," she continued. "They have software now that completely removes the need for twine."

I snorted. "As if that would be secure."

Through the visor of her welding mask I saw her look down at the report strewn across my desk, a computer printout that had been secured and encrypted in a computer system less than two days earlier - or at least, so the woman claimed. I was starting to have my doubts.

The kind of activity logged in the report wouldn't have gone unnoticed by state government, couldn't have. The funneling of funds alone amounted to criminal fraud. It would have been picked up by even a cursory audit, and if the rumors I'd heard about super-powered government watchdog organizations were true, then the local agencies should have been held under a more powerful gaze than the police.

In a small business it would have been unlikely. In an organization as large and as watched as the city government, it was almost unthinkable.

Eventually I pushed the papers into a loose pile, slapped my hand down on them. "I hope you didn't want to be paid for this. It's almost certainly a fake. Someone trying to lead me down a dead end."

She turned away from my board and gave me a sharp look. "It's real, Question. I took it off the city hall computers myself."

"Assuming you're not lying, how sure are you you're not being misled?" I asked. Faultline was a smart girl, and she had a reputation for getting the job done, but she wasn't so invested in this particular question that I could trust her to adeptly navigate an elaborate deception.

"Everything looked good on the night," she said. "Security was tighter than we expected. Nobody left the door open for us, if that's what you're asking."

"Who knew about your little visit to the mayor's office in advance?"

The woman picked her way over to my desk, across the cardboard boxes that littered the floor of my office. She stood in front of the desk and looked down at me. I leaned back and looked up at her. She cut an intimidating figure, but I didn't flinch.

"You, Gregor, Newter, and Spitfire," she said, dropping her hands onto her hips. "Nobody else."

"Any reason to think you've got a Thinker watching you?" I asked.

"No. Do you?"

"They're always watching me," I muttered, looking back down at the stolen documents.

Faultline stepped away and started pushing smaller boxes around with one massive combat boot, clearing a space around the only box big enough to sit on. "Why do you live like this?" Faultline asked, settling onto the box. "This crummy neighborhood, this crappy office."

"Because the truth doesn't pay," I said, pulling out an aggregate city budget sheet from a drawer, starting to cross reference it with the itemized list from Faultline. "Not in this city. Not in this universe."

"You ever think about giving it up?" she asked. "Cleaning up. Maybe even getting a girlfriend?"

On the street outside a police car switched on its siren, and the high pitched wail filled the office for a moment. I used it as an excuse not to reply, silently cross referencing.

After more than ten minutes of silent indexing and cross-referencing I dropped my pen, looked up, and said, "This could actually be genuine. It's almost inconceivable, but it joins enough dots that a multi-agency conspiracy is the least unlikely possibility. Someone in the upper echelons of the city wants to see Brockton fail."

"And people say I'm paranoid."

"Your problem, Faultline, is you've never been paranoid enough." I shuffled the papers and my own notes back into a loose pile, then stuffed them into a manila folder. "The job's good after all. Do you want cash, or information?"

"You have cash?" Faultline asked, looking up at me.

I frowned behind my mask. "I can write a check."

Faultline sighed. "Pass. Better make it information. What have you got?"

"What do you want, specifically."

"You know what I want," Faultline said, her eyes dark behind the visor of her welding mask

"Your 'them' again?" I asked. "Your Omega cabal?"

"'Omega cabal'," she snorted. "It sounds crazy when you say it like that."

"Not at all," I muttered, pulling open a drawer and digging around for a pack of index cards. "There have been dozens of secret societies who've made use of the Greek letter omega over the last century. Masonic lodges, fraternal societies, occult groups, revolutionaries."

"I need something real, Question. Not a fairy tale."

I finished jotting a name onto a blank index card, and slid it towards her across the desk. Faultline stepped over to the desk, and picked it up, examining it in the pale light from the blinded window.

"Who's this?"

"A dentist," I said.

Faultline sighed and let her hand drop to her side. "Damn it, Question-"

"Formerly a Protectorate dentist, on call for the San Jose Protectorate base medical team."

Faultline rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'm listening, as long as this story doesn't involve aliens or mind control."

I stared at her through the translucent material of my mask. "Are you saying I should leave the aliens out?"

She sighed and turned away, looking around at the floor of the office. "Just- go. Start."

"Julia Bergman," I began, tapping the index cart. "Licensed member of the ADA, dental surgeon on call for the San Jose PRT medical team."

Faultline made an impatient turning motion with her hand. "Why should I care."

"The standard procedure upon the discovery of one of the amnesiac parahumans known as 'Case 53s' is to administer a full physical and psychological evaluation, including x-rays, MRI scans, and a full dental check-up."

Faultline stopped fidgeting and moved to sit back down on her cardboard box. I waited for her to get comfortable before I continued.

"Fifteen months ago, Ms. Bergman was assigned to treat a Case 53 parahuman, code name Sanguine. Sanguine was in good health. Human-normal, beyond their cosmetic alterations. However Sanguine reported dental pain, and on investigation it was discovered he was fitted with an orthodontic implant. It hadn't been adjusted to the correct schedule, and was painfully out of alignment."

"So you're saying had braces," she said.

"Of a sort. The style and manufacture of his braces were unlike anything in use anywhere else. At least," I paused and leaned forward, "not anywhere on this planet."

"God dammit, Question," Faultline said, standing up.

I dove to the side and started rummaging through a cardboard box at the side of my desk. It took a few seconds, but I found what I needed.

I slid the x-ray plate across the desk towards the woman. "The implant shows every sign of being mass produced, there's even a brand mark and serial number, but you won't find anything like them in any orthodontist's catalog."

Faultline snatched up the x-ray, looking at it dubiously, as if she knew what to look for. "It could just be something obscure," she said. "Something from a small country, or something obsolete."

I shook my head. "If anything it's more advanced than our planet's dentistry. It shows evidence of a kind of tooling that we're only just developing for commercial use."

Faultline looked down at the x-ray, quiet now. "This could be government work, something exclusive."

I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. "It's a possibility."

"Well what's your theory? Alien orthodontists?"

"No. The aliens wouldn't have any interest in cosmetic dentistry. Unless-" I paused, my mind racing. I pulled out a yellow pad and began scribbling notes. "Unless they were preparing someone for a public-facing role. Spokesperson. Figurehead. President?"

"Question. Question! Focus!" Faultline clapped a pair of forge gloves together, bringing my attention back to her. "Is that everything? A Case 53 turned up with weird dental work?"

I shook my head slowly. "That copy of the x-ray is the last one in existence. A week after Sanguine was cleared by the medical team, a computer virus, reportedly released by an anti-cape hate group, wiped the headquarters' medical records. It purged all of their digital files along with that month's backups. Ms. Bergman was quietly dismissed. If she hadn't kept the physical plate and her notes, there'd be no evidence at all."

"A computer virus making it into a PRT computer system? That's weird," Faultline said.

"Suspicious," I corrected. "Indicative."

She rolled up the plastic sheet of the x-ray and slid it into an inner pocket of her coat. "It's a lead, I guess. This Bergman, will she talk?"

I spread my hands. "She spoke to me. She had a desire to see the truth told. Are we square?"

"We're square," Faultline said, slipping the index card into a deep pocket.

"Any more requests?" I asked.

"Just the usual. If you happen across any Case-53s who've slipped the PRT net-"

"I'll keep my eyes open," I said.

Faultline turned and started picking her way back to the flimsy wooden door.

"Actually, there's one more thing," I said.

Faultline stopped and turned. "Yeah?"

"I'm considering seeking out a consultant on this."

Faultline's eyebrows rose, visible as dark ridges behind the plastic of her visor. "Oh? You're finally starting to realize you're in over your head?"

"Hardly. But somehow all of this managed to get by all the Thinkers and Tinkers and data analysts the government has watching over our shoulders," I gestured at the government. "I need to know if that's because of corruption, or if it hits one of your blind spots."

"My blind spots?"

"Parahumans," I clarified, then waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I just need a Thinker consult. Know anyone in town with reasonable rates? Preferably someone without gang affiliations."

Faultline's eyes narrowed. "There's one."

"Name?"

"Tattletale," she said.

"I like her already."

"That'll change," Faultline said.

"Got her real name?" I asked.

Faultline snorted. "You know better than that."

"So how am I going to contact her? Does she have a business number?"

"People don't contact her, they suffer her."

"Fine," I said, pulling my notepad towards me and unlocking the drawer that held my computer. "I'll handle it. Thanks for the hook up."

Faultline turned the doorknob, and the door drifted open in her hands. "Yeah. You're welcome," she said, and left.

I lifted the lid of the computer and got to work. It might take a few days to track her down, but there were some turns you just couldn't skip on the road to the truth.