Worm is owned by John C. 'Wildbow' McCrae

I didn't want to know which of them it was. I couldn't. Whether it was Brian or Rachel, it didn't matter. Neither of them would get up from the dead. They weren't so lucky.

I stared down at my hands, and I felt myself go cold, my thoughts crystal clear, singular.

"Taylor." Calle leaned over so that I could smell his cologne, and his voice was low so that it barely caressed my ear.

"Yes?"

My voice sounded calm, I thought dispassionately. It was like watching an entirely different person speak.

"You're shaking," he whispered.

"Oh," I said. I couldn't really think of anything else to say. He was right. My fingers were trembling.

I looked at Tagg, to see if he'd heard or if he'd noticed. No indication, but his hand was close to his gun. The text he'd read… he knew. He probably wasn't aware he was doing it, but he was ready for a fight to erupt any second.

Calle tapping the table snapped like a gunshot that no one else seemed to notice. I looked down at the pad of paper and pen he had slid me. WHAT?

I had to twist my hands to get the pen between my fingers. Bitch or Grue. In a body bag. I shoved the paper away from me.

Calle glanced at it, but his attention was on Tagg as he scribbled on the pad, flipped the page, added something else, then pointedly slid it back in front of me.

YOU WON. HE'S LOST EVERYTHING.

My head spun so fast a lance of pain shut up my neck, but Calle just reached over and tapped the pad.

I turned back, and my hands shook it took two tries to flip the page. TRUST ME.

How much pain could someone fit into two words.

Break ties.

I'm sorry.

You won.

Trust me.

Lisa had warned me, called me on it. I accept consequences for myself without thinking about them for others. I rush ahead rather than letting them make their own choices.

Was Rachel's death worth my victory? Was Brian's? Do I even have the right to think of them as being of different value? If Calle was right, did I have any right to throw away a victory I'd bought with someone else's life?

What do I need to do?

Calle took the pad, ripped off the top sheets without looking at them and shoved them into his briefcase. He tapped at his phone briefly, then scribbled on the pad again. It was brief, but longer than anything he'd written yet.

WAIT UNTIL SHE LEAVES AGAIN, THEN CONFESS. IN FULL. TRUST ME.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't talk to her. I couldn't sit in the same room as her without shoving whatever bugs I could find down her throat.

I ripped the sheet off and Calle took it. Then I wrote quickly: Negotiate. Priority #1: give parahumans agency/say in their fates, want Militia as head of BB PRT, NOT Protectorate, but other ways possible. And get rid of Tagg. Need consensus/coop/compromise, not confrontation.

#2: Amnesty for friends

#3: I would prefer team-up w/ Dragon/Defiant, but willing to accept ANY other fate.

I used my fingers to flick the pad to Dad.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I nodded.

"No, I mean…" Dad's voice trailed off. "Are you sure," he said again. "You trust me with that? To do that for you?"

"Yes, of course," I said. Because somehow Dad had managed to keep the Dockworkers relevant. He didn't understand capes. He didn't understand the nuances of law. But he was probably one of the best negotiators in the city.

Dad cleared his throat. "Since no progress is being made, my daughter has asked that I take over negotiations for her, with the understanding that any final resolution is contingent on her agreement."

Tagg looked at him as though he'd grown a second head.

"To that end, our new opening position is thus," Dad continued. "First, that the PRT strongly urge Congress for a full repeal of NEPEA-5—"

What?

"You're joking!" Tagg blurted as the door opened and Rebecca Costa-Brown entered.

"That was bracing," she said. "I had forgotten how enjoyable fieldwork, the chance to get your hands dirty, could be." She looked at me. "Did I miss something?"

"Now he's negotiating," Tagg said with a disgusted wave towards Dad.

"I do hope you're inclined to be more reasonable than your daughter, Mr. Hebert."

"His first desire was that we push for a repeal of NEPEA-5."

Rebecca's face went blank.

"Forget it," Tagg said.

"This is our opening position. Can I—"

Tagg turned on him. "Without NEPEA-5 parahumans would have driven honest people out of business!"

"Of course, they would have," Dad said reasonably. "That's how a free market works. Someone comes along that provides a good or service that is better, faster, cheaper, more efficient, whatever, and displaces those that can't. NEPEA-5 was straight-out protectionism. Worse, it was internal protectionism that focused on some American citizens at the expense of others.

"Parahumans are inherently local actors. Someone who could control bugs might force a local exterminator out of business, but in a reasonably large town there would probably be more work than one parahuman could handle. Even then, those displaced could focus on rodents and cut expenses on insect-related equipment and training. The fact is that those parahumans with saleable powers are almost exclusively niche service providers, with limitations that are very nearly as great as the advantages they'd offer.

"As an aggregate they may have an impact on the global economy, but the nature of their powers make large businesses unlikely. You aren't going to see chains of stores, or intercity service providers. There just aren't enough Movers, for example, to displace UPS or FedEx. Oh, some could probably start a courier service, but they'd never be able to handle the sheer number of deliveries those companies handle. The biggest you might get is some sort of profit-sharing collective similar to a law firm but far more diversified in goods and services offered."

"I suppose you would have just stood by and let them destroy the stock market for the sake of your social experiment."

Danny gave Tagg an unimpressed look. "For snide remarks at the negotiating table I rate that a three. I never said that any and all regulation was unwarranted. I said that not allowing people to use their talents and skills to earn a living was as unconscionable as it was stupid. Whatever temporary market stability it created, it created at least as much long-term social instability by creating real and perceived barriers for capes to the job market. And instead of simply allowing the market time to adjust to the presence of parahumans, you've allowed that instability to continue for twenty years."

"You really think NEPEA-5 was that bad?" Miss Militia asked.

"No, it was worse," Dad said. "And this leads into our second demand, that the PRT fully fund the MIRIS Initiative, and promote further private and public efforts to better integrate parahumans into society—"

Tagg made an exasperated sound. "Parahumans have been 'integrated,'" he even did the little air-quotes thing, "as, you call it, for twenty years."

"No," Dad said. "They haven't been. Prior to this summer there was, count them, one parahuman who was openly using parahuman abilities for non-law enforcement and non-criminal employment in Brockton Bay out of a total parahuman population of what, sixty? Seventy-five at most?"

"About that," Miss Militia said.

"Between NEPEA-5—and the IRS effectively demanding that parahumans either unmask or be charged with tax evasion—most capes are locked into being 'heroes,' 'villains,' or simply not using their powers in their day-to-day lives which, I've been told, is damn near impossible," Dad continued. "Other than that, there are damn few alternatives. The measures and programs that should have been helping parahumans navigate those alternatives—like the PRT's MIRIS Initiative—had their budgets systematically raided before they were even given a chance to succeed. Those that were funded at all, I should say, because most weren't. The barriers aren't absolute, Parian is example of that! But she is also the only parahuman in Brockton Bay who wasn't a hero or villain and still gaining economic benefit through use of her power.

"NEPEA-5 sent a message to every parahuman that laws could and would be changed specifically to their detriment. That the government wouldn't just support discrimination against them, it would take an active part. It was a message the PRT doubled down on when they stood by and refused to even comment on it.

"That 'separate but not equal' thing that didn't work so well three generations ago when it was based purely on skin color? Someone thought it'd be a great idea to pull it out and turn it against people with superpowers. Don't get me started on the way the PRT has trampled all over Constitutional safeguards.

"But don't take my word for it. You said it yourself. It'll take time to pass legislation or to do an investigation to justifiably seizing the portal. But you've already decided that it will happen despite not knowing who this Sierra Kiley is, or anything about her aside from that she purchased a great deal of land while my daughter is in your interrogation room."

"I don't have to waste my time listening to this socialist drivel," Tagg said.

"You aren't," Costa-Brown said stone-faced. "If Taylor wants to waste her time with sociology lessons that is her right. Three minutes."

"Included with funding MIRIS and other similar programs," Dad said, "Is proposing and promoting to Congress changes to the IRS to better enable parahumans to pay taxes and to transfer money to civilian identities, without needing to unmask or risk charges of tax evasion.

"Third. Interim Director Tagg finds a position better suited to his temperament and personality. The decision to attempt to unmask a supervillain in the middle of a school was irresponsible, negligent, and potentially criminal. Worse than that, he got it wrong."

What?

I stared at him. We all did. This was not what I had meant.

"Mr. Hebert," Miss Militia said hesitantly, "Danny, your daughter… Skitter used her powers at the school. For that matter she's used them here."

"My understanding is that Skitter is a Horde Lord with the range of several blocks?" Dad asked.

"Master," I said, forgoing the effort it would have taken to drop my face into my hands. "Nobody has used the term 'Horde Lord' in ten years."

"Yes, thank you. You did check all of the other students and faculty at Arcadia to make sure none of them were Skitter? And you've fully accounted for everyone in her range? For that matter, 'Skitter' could well be a stalking horse used to draw attention away from the real ca—"

"She came to us to confess!" Tagg said.

"And you are sure that she wasn't Mastered or compelled in anyway?" Dad asked. "Tell you what, let's come back to that. For now let's, for the sake of argument, assume that you're right. You made the decision to unmask someone that you believe to be supervillain that has committed several murders and has on several occasions taken hostages, at a school, in the middle of the school day. Am I the only person at this table that sees a problem with that?"

"No," I said, Calle too, at almost the same time.

"No, Mr. Hebert, you are not," Miss Militia said softly, earning herself a baleful look from Tagg.

"Item four," Dad said. "A general amnesty for all of the Undersiders for past crimes."

He folded his hands. "The scope and degree of each of these points is open for negotiation, the purpose and intent is not."

"One minute," Rebecca said casually. "One more, then Tattletale, and then we're done."

"Three more," I said. Would Parian fight? Probably, if Alexandria didn't give her a choice. "And then you're left with whatever Tattletale has cooked up as a 'fuck you' present. Oh, and whatever Accord has planned for such a contingency. Between getting rid of us and the damage you're doing to the local PRT, he'll probably send you a 'thank you' note with fancy gold leaf calligraphy and a careful arrangement of flowers from an over-priced florist."

She stood and left.

Calle leaned towards me. "Wait for it."

A tense, interminable silence swelled until the air grew thick and stagnant, but at last a buzzer sounded and the door opened to admit two people in suits.

She was mid-thirties, with skin like good chocolate, and wore a gem-hued royal purple blouse with a midnight blue coat. He was twenty years older, Caucasian, and…bland, as though everything from his haircut to his clothes were designed to convey 'mid-level government bureaucrat, one.'

"What is this!" Tagg demanded. "Who are you people?"

"ADA Denise Berenger," the woman said. "My office was informed that you had Skitter in custody and she was offering to make a full confession? You did realize that you would have to involve us sooner or later? Quinn," she continued, turning to Calle.

"Denise," he said.

"Here to show us a good time, I trust?" she asked as they moved to open chairs.

Tagg stared at her, his hands flat on the table, then he shoved himself back in his chair and got his phone out only to bite back a curse when, a moment later, the suitcoat Rebecca had folded over her chair buzzed. He dropped his phone on the table and glared hatefully across it at me and hissed: "You just fucked yourself."

"I would hate to disappoint a lady," Calle told the woman. Had they missed Tagg's comment? It seemed unlikely. The man who had come in with her clearly had heard it and did not approve. "At least, outside a courtroom. Inside is anyone's game, of course."

"Not that that will stop you from stacking the deck cold if we let you get away with it."

"Of course not," Calle agreed.

"And you know Stephen?"

"Of course. How are you doing, Steve?"

"Fair," the man said. "I suppose this is the part where you explain why you convinced us to wait in a parking lot for four hours?"

"You didn't actually do that, did you?" Calle asked.

"Well, no," he admitted. "The restaurant across the street had serviceably private booths, and an excellent wi-fi signal. To business, then?"

"Certainly. Everyone, these are Denise Berenger and Stephen Goetz. Denise is the ADA and will be handling the state charges, while Steve is from the US Attorney's office and will be handling the federal charges.

"Denise, Steve, these are Director James Tagg, Miss Militia, my client Taylor Hebert alias Skitter, and her father Danny. Rebecca Costa-Brown, or Alexandria, whichever she prefers, will be joining us presently."

"It's a bit unusual for you to call us, Quinn," Berenger said. "Normally that would be Director Tagg's job."

"There was nothing to say," Tagg said sourly. "We were still negotiating."

"No we weren't," Dad said. "I'm not sure what you lawyers call negotiating, but I'm head of negotiations for the Dockworkers, and what we had was one side digging in and refusing to give an inch."

"Does your daughter want to confess?" Denise asked. "And does anyone have a copy of the charges? My office not only wasn't contacted, I couldn't find a case file or even a briefing."

"My client wants to turn herself in," Calle said, passing over his copy of the charges. "Tagg is making it needlessly complicated by refusing to negotiate."

"Her demands were outrageous, and an utter non-starter."

"Of course, they were," Calle agreed happily. "It's called a starting position. Generally, both sides work inward from there towards something mutually agreeable. Director Tagg, however, proved just as obstinate as he just accused my client of being."

"This is… Your client was willing to confess to all of this?" Goetz asked skeptically as he peered over Berenger's shoulder.

"If we can come to an agreement in the next two hours that is sufficiently ironclad that it won't be changed after the fact, yes," I said.

"Why the time limit? That makes things harder for you," Berenger asked. "Quinn would have explained that, or he should have."

"He did. I walked away from my friends, my former team. They'll probably give me until sundown. After that they'll probably decide that I'm being held under duress, or possibly Mastered. I can't predict how they'll react, but it could range from simply releasing the details of everything I've been involved in to the press, to staging an attack to 'liberate' me. In any case I would prefer that not to happen."

"These charges are accurate?" she pressed. "Sixteen assaults on day one and it doesn't look like you stopped to breathe since. Most usually take at least a little while to ramp up rather than starting out with mass assault."

"Lung ordered more than a dozen members of the ABB to murder a group of teenagers. I intervened. That would be most of the assault and parahuman battery charges. The negligence and gross injury came from my pumping Lung full of insect venom, and then Armsmaster not taking it into account before shutting down Lung's regeneration with a Tinkertech sedative."

"Wait," she held up a hand. "Just wait a moment. Go back. These sixteen assaults you're being charged with is because you prevented a murder?"

"Four of them. Four murders, that is. Well, five, Lung was pretty upset, but I attacked him… Yes," I said faintly.

"And you followed that up with a bank robbery?"

"The Undersiders are, were, a gang of powered thieves put together by a PRT contractor, a former PRT agent named Thomas Calvert," I said. "Who was also the supervillain Coil. He used us for…lots of things. We found out later that the bank robbery's actual objective was to decoy the Wards so that he'd be free to kidnap a twelve-year old precog. Most of the charges stem from his orders and, later, our efforts to defeat him."

"This is ridiculous, why are we even listening to this?" Tagg demanded.

"Because you gave them a list of charges," Goetz said. "And we didn't even get that much."

"Or any context. Do you know how hard it is to successfully prosecute a charge in you don't know the circumstances to which that charge applies?" Berenger asked. She turned back to me. "What I meant was, how do you go from being a would-be hero, to bank robbery?"

"I was infiltrating the Undersiders," I said. "Armsmaster knew but… We didn't interact well. He started out assuming I was a villain because of how my costume turned out. He convinced me to let him have credit for capturing Lung, but turned around and blamed me for Lung almost dying due to a bad combination of insect and arachnid venom and a Tinkertech tranquilizer that shut down his regeneration. I think he understood the dangers of an undercover op better than I did, but at that point neither of us were listening to each other."

"And after?" Miss Militia asked. "You never once tried to come in."

"I didn't know about Coil until after I was in too deep to get out safely on my own. I didn't trust Armsmaster, and I didn't know how badly the rest of the PRT and Protectorate was compromised. His power let him run two parallel timelines and keep whichever one he preferred. I would be surprised if he hadn't interrogated me in one of those dropped timelines, I know he used them for other…purposes. I knew he, Coil, had significant penetration of the PRT before I ever found out about Calvert. Then Leviathan happened and I honestly couldn't remember why I would want to talk to anyone in the PRT or Protectorate."

Miss Militia flinched which made me feel both better and worse.

"Leviathan?" Denise asked. "No wait, we'll come back to that. You can prove that Coil and Calvert were the same person?"

I hesitated.

"Go ahead and answer," Calle said lazily.

"I have a lot of circumstantial evidence. I have a lot of witnesses who can testify to it. I have a timeline that makes a lot of sense. The PRT would dismiss any actual evidence I have as manufactured, and, admittedly, I have the parahuman backing to make it very difficult to say something wasn't manufactured…or that it was."

"And none of that will matter if your friends dump all of this onto the net," Berenger said. "Christ."

"This town has been hit by an entire who's who list of scum and villainy in the last two months," Goetz said, having paged most of the way through the charges. "It looks like they've got assault charges her against most of it. Gross bodily harm, you blinded people?"

"Lung, Valefor," I said.

"I'm surprised no one put the Nine on here," he said.

"They would have been removed," Calle said.

"Right, right," Goetz said absently. "It doesn't look good when your prosecute someone whose alleged victim has a kill order."

I wasn't certain if he was being serious or trying to make a joke.

"Could someone explain the treason charge?"

"She waged war against the United States by seizing territory and ruling as a God-damned tyrant!" Tagg thundered.

"Society was breaking down," I said. "Civic infrastructure was failing. Supplies weren't getting to people. It wasn't just the looters, and people fighting for the biggest share of what little there was. There were hostile parahuman gangs from outside Brockton Bay looking to exploit the situation.

"My friends and I split up the city amongst us, those areas where things were worst, and suppressed looting, made sure supplies got through, and all the rest. It wasn't at all legal. We didn't coordinate it with anyone. For the most part there was effectively no one to coordinate with, and the PRT certainly wasn't interested. Not entirely without reason."

"A pretty justification for usurping the sovereignty of the United States!"

"Trying to exert some semblance of control in a place where the rule of law has already broken down is rather different than rising in rebellion or fomenting insurrection," Goetz said. "Denise, can you press treason charges against a state?"

"Not since the Civil War," Berenger replied dryly.

"Huh, there's that I suppose. The Constitution mandates that two witnesses to each overt act be called?"

"Done," Tagg said. "Plenty of people saw Skitter—"

"That won't cut it," Goetz said. "Anyone with her approximate height and build could have worn a costume. With a wig even the hair wouldn't be a factor. Her stand-off range is what, three blocks?" He shook his head. "If I try to push these charges I might as well cut the throat of any case I tried to make against her."

"How much of this was while you were under the control—" Berenger glanced at Tagg, "—purportedly under the control of Calvert?"

"Starting at the bank? Most of it from then until Echidna. The nineteenth—twentieth?—something like that, " I said. "It's been a pretty busy couple of months. The dates blur together, but the individual fights are pretty distinct.

"Anyway, that stuff was at his behest or trying to thwart him. A lot of the assaults after June fifth, those in the everyday and against normals, were about deterring looters and the like. It was at his bidding, but I'd have probably done something similar if I was in a similar position without him."

"Uh-huh, and did any of these not fall into one of those categories?"

"Kidnapping Sophia Hess," I said, "and there's an assault in my civilian identity against Emma Barnes."

"I remember seeing that," Berenger said faintly as she paged back. "That did seem a little strange in among the others—what were those about?"

"Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes, along with a third girl, Madison Clements, ran a bullying campaign against me in high school for the better part of a year and a half," I said. Was it sad that it was getting easier to tell the story with each repetition? Or was it something healthy? "Physical and verbal assaults, harassing emails, stolen and sabotaged homework, they stole and desecrated the flute Mom left me when she-after she…"

Dad's head came up sharply and his knuckles flashed white before he dropped his fist into his lap. His other hand was very tight around my thigh, but it didn't hurt. "My wife was killed in a car accident in May of '09."

"I see," she said.

"It culminated with them filling my locker with used tampons, pads, and other disgusting crap, then locking me in it. I ended up in the hospital for a week. Cops, and Child Protection Services should have been all over it. But CPS was never notified. The BBPD closed the investigation almost immediately. And Dad wasn't able to find a lawyer willing to sue anyone for a percentage of damages."

"There's more to it than that," Berenger said.

I lifted my shoulders. "Since I don't know what you're read in on, my telling you anything more might be a crime."

Miss Militia gave me a decidedly unfriendly look before clearing her throat. "Sophia Hess is the civilian identity of Shadow Stalker. Through…circumstances, Taylor Hebert became aware of Hess' dual identity only minutes before finding out that a member of the Protectorate had set her up to die during the battle with Leviathan."

"Which is why you mentioned never trying to go legit after Leviathan," Berenger said. "Was it revenge? Kidnapping Hess, I mean."

"You don't have to answer that," Calle said.

"And if I want to?"

He shrugged. "Then go ahead."

I shook my head. "At that point I'd effectively dropped out, even though school wasn't in session owing to the damage in the area. High school was a nightmare I wanted in my past. I would have been extremely happy to have left Sophia there, but she kept trying to kill me and my friends. She had a mad-on for us because her power didn't work well when it met Grue's. Despite officially being limited to tranquilizer bolts, she put a hunting broadhead into Grue, and she tried to knife my throat open. Would have, if my costume wasn't exceptionally cut-resistant. I'd hate to see what she'd have done if she'd linked Taylor Hebert and Skitter. And I'd had ample evidence by that point that the heroes were not only not going to rein her in, but continue to enable her—"

"I take exception to that," Miss Militia said sharply. "You don't know Director Piggot well at all if you thought for one moment that she would have tolerated that kind of behavior from anyone. Especially a cape!"

"BBPD," I said. "Closed the case in less than two weeks. CPS, as near as I can tell never investigated at all. It should have been stupidly easy to find a lawyer willing to sue the school and city over the locker alone for a percentage, but that didn't happen either. And after the incident where I punched Emma we had a big sit-down at Winslow. Hess' handler—it was easy to figure out who she was and who she worked for after I knew what Hess was—was there. I put it all out, the bullying, thefts, Mom's flute, the emails… The emails, I understand, are a federal crime?"

"Depending on the nature of them and their contents, yes," Goetz said.

"Well the FBI never investigated either," I said. "That meeting was back in April. If Director Piggot wasn't one to tolerate bullying by capes, why was Shadow Stalker still walking free until June?"

"Miss Militia?" Berenger asked.

"This is the first that I've heard of any of this," Miss Militia said.

"I honestly don't know if that's supposed to make things better or worse," I said. I turned back to Berenger. "I wanted to scare her away. I guess Regent knew she'd never scare—that the only way to get her to stop would be if someone made her—and decided to have her dig up some of her old texts and fire them off so that they couldn't be ignored or swept away this time. Good for him."

"That wasn't the only thing he did," Miss Militia said. "Did you know he had her fashion a noose out of an electrical cord and left her with it around her neck?"

"Did you know that if not for Panacea after Leviathan I wouldn't have been able to donate blood if I'd ever needed to?" I countered. "Exposure to bloodborne pathogens. HIV, more STIs than I could count, I could have practically sung the whole alphabet from strains of hepatitis. Regent could have killed her, but he didn't. He didn't even make a real effort which is more than I can say for your fellow 'hero.'"

Berenger cleared her throat. "The Fossberg Gallery?"

"Coil."

"The debates too?"

"The murders were staged," I said. "Yes."

Berenger shook her head. "This kind of shit is why we encourage law enforcement to involve the lawyers early. This is… If I include these assault charges against the ABB, I'll look ridiculous to a jury which will do nothing for the rest of the charges. Worse, I could win, and in doing so set precedent."

"So set precedent," Tagg said.

"It would effectively gut Independent heroes," Berenger said.

"We saw the same thing happen to most rogues when NEPEA-5 forced the Uppermost to disband," Goetz added. "Some hung up their capes permanently. Some joined the Protectorate or Wards, but a good number ended up villains. Except the Uppermost was tiny compared to the total number of non-Protectorate capes."

Berenger shook her head again. "What, exactly, do you want?"

"Amnesty for my friends," I said. "For everything."

"And?"

"That's it."

"That is not it!" Tagg said.

"The other issues my client raised were within your purview, not theirs," Calle said.

"There's a trap here, Calle," Berenger said. "I can smell it."

"And you?" Calle asked, looking at Goetz.

"Most of these aren't federal charges. The bank, I suppose. But if this Coil is, or was, Thomas Calvert… Did Armsmaster report the infiltration attempt? It would have been unauthorized, but there should have been something. The man is the only one I know who can be overly precise and struggle to reach a reasonable minimum wordcount."

"Not to my knowledge," Miss Militia said. "One of my jobs was as a sounding board concerning independents, but the first solid report I had on Skitter was the aftermath of the bank robbery."

"Director?" Goetz asked.

Rebecca was coming down the shaft again.

Tagg was sitting back in his chair. His shoulders were slightly hunched, like an irritated badger glowering at the world from just inside its hole. "We are still going through many of Armsmaster's personal files. They are heavily encrypted and…very dense."

Goetz rubbed the bridge of his nose with one forefinger. Then he shook his head and straightened in his seat. "Someone fucked up here. Crimes were certainly committed. What I want to know is why I'm looking at the headaches prosecuting this will entail rather than the ones entailed with prosecuting this Coil, Calvert, whichever."

"I'm willing to confess," I said.

"Young lady, do you know what I call it when people try to confess to crimes they didn't commit?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"A waste of both our time."

"There is not one thing on that sheet she didn't commit!" Tagg thundered.

"Right," Goetz said. "I told you the problem with the treason charge. What about it, D? How do you think those assault charges stemming from her stopping the local rage dragon from killing a bunch of kids will play out to a jury?"

"Not well," Berenger said distractedly. "I don't see anything in here about you offering up information on Coil, Calvert, whichever."

"He's dead," I said. "I killed him."

"To be clear," Calle added. "We're talking about the man who had at least two teams of parahumans plus a number of lone agents working independently of each other, a long platoon of mercenaries with Toybox-provided weapons, kidnapped and kept drugged a preteen girl simply for her power, outed the identities of every Empire Eighty-Eight cape to the media, and had a Class-A threat sitting in his basement, all while maintaining his cover as a PRT contractor." He smiled and added ironically, "My client feared for her life."

The door opened and Rebecca walked in. Her clothes slightly mussed, her hair slightly less than perfect, and she was dabbing out a spot of red on her cheek with a handkerchief.

"Assistant Director," Goetz said as he stood, "or is it 'Alexandria?'"

"Whichever you prefer, Mr. Goetz," she replied.

Calle's hand was very tight on my thigh and I darted a fast look at him and he shoved the pad at me, flipped back to our earlier conversation.

TRUST ME!

The underline and exclamation points were new.

I concentrated on the phone. A-L-E-X-B-L-O-O-D

I still couldn't understand Lisa, but her voice sounded calm. Not pissed. Not grieving.

Calm.

How could she be calm?

"Is that blood?" Berenger asked.

"She's been killing my friends," I said.

The two lawyers looked at me. "What?" Goetz asked.

"As long as I don't agree to their demands, she goes and hurts someone I care about," I said. "Regent is in the hospital. Someone else is in the morgue. And now she's got more blood on her."

"And I left my phone behind," she murmured. "How clumsy of me."

Both lawyers had stared at me as I spoke, but now Berenger darted a look back at Rebecca and blanched. "You mean she's telling the truth?"

Rebecca shrugged. "A ploy, but one that would have been potentially successful had you not interrupted. Her friends are safe…for now."

"They are?" I asked blankly. That…explained Lisa's tone. "But the body… Regent?"

"Christ," Berenger said. After a moment she shook her head. "The confession is worthless."

"What?!"

I wasn't certain who was more surprised, myself or Tagg.

"I'll probably have to drop the charges entirely."

"Like hell you will!" Tagg said. "She's a villain!"

"She has rights," Berenger snapped back. "About the only thing you've done right is not prevent her from having her lawyer or father present."

"He had Dad picked up to put someone I care about into the line of fire," I said. Dad started, but Calle reached past me to put a hand on his shoulder until he sat back in his chair.

"Even if you did it for the wrong reason," Berenger amended.

The fury in Tagg's voice matched the outrage spread across his face. "You're believing a villain over me?"

Rebecca gave Berenger a calm look. "Miss Berenger—"

"And you," Berenger said. "As former Chief Director Costa-Brown you should have fucking known better than to even think of that kind of stunt. As for actually pulling it…" she shook her head. "If Alexandria is supposed to be a shinning example of what it means to be a hero it's no wonder the PRT and Protectorate are so fucked up."

"Denise," Goetz said. "Let's everyone take a deep breath."

"Not until someone explains where you're willing to that just walk out of here like nothing happened," Tagg sneered.

"Because all Calle will have to do is get this interview room's recording played," Goetz said. "He'll claim duress, and the confession will be thrown out. Then he'll claim that we've prevented his client from making a plea bargain."

"So fucking what?" Tagg asked. "We've got more than enough evidence that she's actually done everything she just agreed she's done."

"It's extortion!" Goetz finally ran out of patience. "You obtained, tried to obtain, something through the use of force or threat of force."

"It was a ploy!" he snapped back.

"She didn't know that!"

"We're cops. We don't have to tell them the truth. If they're stupid enough to believe us that's their problem!"

"We aren't talking about what charges were being discussed, or jumping on differences in word choice," Berenger said. "You set her up to believe that you were hurting and killing people and that only telling you what you wanted to hear would stop it. That is textbook extortion, and just because you are law enforcement and she is a suspect does not make it okay!"

"Skitter committed a crime, several scores of crimes, including murder," Tagg countered.

"That doesn't give you permission to break the law yourself or to violate her rights!"

Dad was sitting back, not sure which of the lawyers to watch, or if he should be watching Tagg or Rebecca instead. I was just too relieved that everyone was still alive and free.

Cut ties.

And that.

Miss Militia was also sitting back, but her attention was firmly on me.

"Pad," I hissed at Calle. Calle was watching, but unlike Dad he was watching in a way that suggested he was missing a bucket of popcorn. He wordlessly, and without looking, slid the pad to me.

You knew they weren't hurting my friends?

He tore his attention away long enough to read the note before nodding absently.

How? When?

He glanced at the note, then leaned over so that he could watch while murmuring in my ear. "When you said it wasn't Tattletale in the bag. She, conceivably, could escalate things to force Alexandria's hand to resort to lethal force. The idea of Hellhound threatening Alexandria…"

He didn't finish. He didn't need to. The idea that Rachel's dogs could seriously threaten Alexandria was laughable. Rachel? Only more so. And it explained how she got around Imp's power. She hadn't. Realizing that instantly made me feel stupid. What would I have done—done by mistake—if Calle hadn't interrupted me?

"Extortion was always going to be a problem with this path, one they could avoid by getting you to act out," Calle continued.

I twisted my head so I could whisper, "hurt them, you mean."

"Kill them, you mean," he said my words back, but they came out as just words. There was no judgment in them. "But having actual bodies would have raised questions later."

"Her so-called friends are every bit as guilty," Tagg said. "Were we supposed to just let them go?"

"Of course not!" Berenger said. "Whether you arrested them or not wasn't the point. That she believed you were sending Alexandria out to hurt—even kill—them is!"

"What about the people she's hurt?" Tagg asked.

"Can you prove that Calvert wasn't Coil? Or that Armsmaster wasn't running his own private, off-the-books undercover operation?"

What? I stared at her, but the question had stirred Miss Militia again.

"I beg your pardon?"

"She told us that Armsmaster took credit for her first take down, of Lung, on her first night out no less," Berenger crossed her arms. "And that she told him she planned to infiltrate the Undersiders. Can you factually tell me that he wasn't trying to set up an off-the-books infiltration of Coil? One that even she wasn't aware she was part of?" she nodded towards me.

"Armsmaster was a stickler for detail," Miss Militia said. "Protocol."

I stared at her as I flashed the pen across the pad, tore off the sheet, and flicked it at her.

Truce?

She grimaced, refolding it before sliding it back. "But no, I cannot say that."

"I hate prosecuting capes," Berenger said conversationally. "It's just too damn easy to confuse the issue trying to get salient facts out. Toss in a defender deliberately trying to confusing things and it's worse."

"I don't understand," I said.

She looked at me. "The issue of identity comes into play and in this case, we're talking about a horde-centric Master with an offset range in excess of a thousand feet. It isn't enough to prove that you were inside the 'Skitter' costume on each occasion. I have to prove that you are Skitter and not fronting for an actual cape. That includes that you are you, and not being pressured, coerced, or bribed into taking the fall for a 'real' Skitter."

"Oh," I said.

"How bad will it get if we don't resolve things tonight?" Goetz asked.

"Very bad," I said. "I don't know how bad or in what direction, but you know about Hess. There are other things I've learned that undermine the Truce, the Unwritten Rules, the PRT and Protectorate… And that's assuming the Undersiders just spam the media. They could decide to mount a rescue op."

"Okay, so very fucking bad," Berenger said. "Steve, is there anything you can hit her with?"

"My gut says the law enforcement officer thing. Maybe the kidnapping, but assuming the accuracy of the backstory actually getting a conviction would be unlikely as all hell. The treason charge would get laughed at. There just aren't many federal charges here. What about you?"

"I need to sit down with a case file and see what evidence we actually have," Berenger said flatly. "No way this gets done in two hours."

"Why not?" I asked.

She gave me a long look before turning to Calle. "Do you want to explain it?"

He shrugged. "Just because you did something doesn't mean Denise has to file charges. Or even that she can file charges. She'll want to be sure you actually committed a crime, of course. But she has to take into account what she can prove to a jury. Not all evidence can be admitted, and ideally, she wants to admit the minimum of evidence that proves her point. The more physical evidence she enters, the more witnesses she calls, the more opportunities I have to find a tiny little inconsistency that I can use to plant niggling little doubts in the jury's collective minds. And past a certain point a jury begins to wonder why so much extra detail beyond what is necessary is being presented. It makes them uncertain."

"Not quite how I would have worded it," Berenger said sourly.

"A lot of the crimes on the sheet are redundant. The assault charges, for one. Prosecute them all and a jury might decide she's throwing out charges to find something that sticks."

"I thought you said that was the point of it," I said.

"The point of it is to, first, intimidate us with what they could throw—and raise questions about the stuff not on it, of course—and second to give Denise and her colleagues options."

"Maybe this will make it easier," Goetz said. He turned to Alexandria and Tagg. "You two are out tonight. If your resignations are on Chief Director West's desk tomorrow morning, I will recommend deferred prosecution for extortion and misconduct, contingent on neither of you ever again taking a position or making public comment about the matter."

"Like hell I will!"

Goetz smiled. "In that case…Miss Militia, arrest him."

Miss Militia stood, a swirl of green energy solidifying into a black semiautomatic. "Sir, if you will relinquish your sidearm."

"Damnit, I'm the Director here and I'm ordering you to stand down!"

"If you will relinquish your sidearm, please."

"Wait!" Tagg held up a hand at her, waving it twice as though to ward her off. "Just-just wait." He glared across the table at me, and his voice was like poison. "Fine!" he spat. "I suppose you win again, then."

"It really doesn't feel like it," I said.

I watched as he drew a black handgun, cleared it, and slapped it down hard on the table before shoving it at Miss Militia.

"Your cases will have to be reviewed," Goetz said. "All of them."

"No," Alexandria said.

"That would put every case the PRT and Protectorate have handled under the microscope," Miss Militia objected.

"As opposed to letting a miscarriage of justice go?" Goetz asked harshly.

"Not at the expense of destroying everything," I said softly.

He turned back to me, "that's a bit melodramatic, especially for someone recently accused of treason, kidnapping, and murder."

"The Protectorate is the core of the Endbringer defenses. And they've been both shoring up hero teams around the world. This…

"We, parahumans, aren't in government, we aren't in business. We don't make policy, or really any kind of decisions. We have no say in our lives or fates. Miss Militia in charge of PRT East-North-East would start to change that, but only if there is a PRT tomorrow.

"I'm sure there have been abuses. Probably even to the point of kill orders and the birdcage because the Assistant Chief Director of the PRT doesn't just come out one day and decide 'I'm going to extort a confession for a change.' But if you put everything under the microscope now, while there's so much doubt and distrust, the Protectorate will shatter. The PRT might survive, but they won't have enough heroes to matter and then we're all fucked."

"So what, you think we should give them a pass?" Beringer asked. "They weren't willing to give you a pass."

"I want, I've only ever wanted, to be a hero. I might as well start somewhere," I said. "No, deferred prosecution like you said. And something has to be done in the PRT to prevent shit like today. And I'm not saying don't investigate. It just… It can't be public. The extent of it has to be kept quiet, at least for a time, because in a couple of years—" Alexandria straightened in her chair "—we're going to see something that'll make the Endbringers a joke. If we—as a species, I mean, not individuals—survive that, then maybe."

"Jesus," Beringer said. "You're serious?"

"Extremely."

"Steve and I will need to talk about this," Beringer said.

"That's understandable."

The two lawyers got up and walked out of the room.

"Thank you," Alexandria said.

"Don't," I said. "I didn't do it for you, or humanity. I'm pretty sure you and your friends have pretty much already fucked humanity well and good. I did it for them. They don't deserve for you to send your little boogeyman to kill them for doing their jobs."

"I assure you," she said, "when the times comes—"

"—humanity will come together around Cauldron the way dust is the core of a thunderstorm? All of us, hero, villain, working together to save our species?

Alexandria inclined her head slightly.

"You give humanity too much credit," I sagged in my chair. "You didn't have a trigger event, and you've lived ever since as a big-picture first. You really don't know what life is like down here, do you?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me," she drawled.

"When it comes, people aren't going to band together. They're going to decide we're all pretty much fucked. Some will go off to spend it with their families, or for one last wild spree. Others will figure it's one last shot to settle old feuds. The Case 53s will want answers, any way they can. Instead of uniting parahumans, you'll be the wedge that splinters us irrevocably apart."

"You'll fight."

"When have I ever not fought since the day your Ward pushed me into going out before I was ready?" I asked.

"I don't have to sit for this sanctimonious drivling," Tagg said. He got up. "I'll be in my office."

"You should thank Skitter," Calle said.

Alexandria likewise got up and walked out after him

When they were just walking through the door Calle called out: "She could have drowned you in bugs."

The door slammed shut.

"That could have gone better," Calle said.

"Taylor," Dad said. "What you just said… Is it—"

"True?" I asked. "Every last word."

Berenger and Goetz came back in. The latter looked his middle-age manager self, the former looked distinctly sour.

"I won't discus amnesty without actually looking at that paperwork," Berenger said, "but I will look at it, and I'll keep what you said in mind."

"Regent and Hellhound have both outstanding murder charges," Miss Militia said.

"Regent killed someone when he was under the influence of Heartbreaker," I said. "And Bitch's murder charges stem from her trigger event!"

Miss Militia's eyes widened slightly.

"New information for your files?" Berenger asked.

"It shouldn't be. Bitch was in foster care when it happened. You'd think someone would have investigated responsibly. Though since it happened in Maine, I suppose it's nice to know that Brockton Bay isn't the only place where things are fucked up."

"Why do I even…" she shook her head. "And you still don't want their past cases to be vetted?"

"I'd love for it," I said. "But not at the expense of the world. If you can do it while restoring trust and faith, have at it. I'm just not sure that you—"

In his office Tagg reached for a drawer I already knew the contents of.

"—Tagg has another gun in his office," I told Miss Militia as I squirmed gnats into its internal workings. She already had her phone out as I gasped: "Hurry."

A/N: And so what started four months ago as a 1200 word entry into my 'Meeting Points' sequence spawned something far different. As much as I like Worm's various lawyers as characters, the series' treatment of their profession left a great deal to be desired. Which begs the question. Why was Danny unable to find a lawyer willing to file suit against Winslow, the schoolboard, and the city of Brockton Bay, for a percentage of the settlement? There's probably a clever story somewhere in there that doesn't resort to 'blame the PRT' but I have no desire to go digging.