The Girl

Grace Mallory The ability to wait and remain calm was one of the most valuable traits required by the Agency from its employees. It became even more precious the higher the position you held. Mallory had good reason to believe she had honed this skill to near perfection, yet the events of the past few weeks had been a trial even for her. Even now, sitting at her workstation and perusing important and often highly secret documents, Mallory couldn't shake off thoughts about the operation currently underway in the outskirts of Washington. Her project, born out of her paranoia and fervent desire to put an end to the "Vought" chaos, was now being tested by fire, and all she could do was wait. She had done everything possible on her part. Petraeus and Holder were terribly stubborn old guards, but they were more than capable of heeding the voice of cold arguments. She had managed to penetrate the director with the prospects of having such a valuable, yet deniable asset at the CIA's disposal. With Holder, it was slightly easier. The results of the medical examination and a broad outline of the situation helped. No, these negotiations were never easy, especially with the complicated situation following Assange's escape. But ultimately, all the necessary permissions were in her hands, requiring only a few fields to be filled and signatures to be done, after which Grace was ready to proceed to the next part of the plan. But further actions required Skitter's presence... and an assessment of her condition by several qualified specialists. And while Grace was still ready to trust the medics from "Vought" from a medical point of view, she would never trust them with the psychological state. Finally, a message about an incoming video call from Milk appeared on her computer screen. With a flick of a switch on her desk, Mallory isolated her office from prying eyes, then initiated the connection. Milk's face appeared on her computer screen, and his expression immediately caused Mallory some concern. "Status report?" "The subject is with us, everything went... without problems. All witnesses... have been eliminated" - Mallory turned paralyzed for a second. Yes, when it became known that a former member of the Seven would handle Skitter's van escort, such an outcome was undoubtedly discussed, but frankly, Mallory hardly believed that something like this could happen. But did they really manage to kill Marathon? "Even Marathon?" she asked for clarification. "The subject is covered up to the elbow in his blood and brains." "What happened, Milk?" - The elimination of even a former member of the Seven was a significant event. A very significant one. She needed to find out the details as soon as possible to mitigate possible.... unforeseen circumstances "We're not entirely sure, Vice-Director, but it seems Marathon got bored and attempted to rape the Subject. With the... deed, he apparently failed. Somehow. But the Subject reacted... negatively." Mallory exhaled noisily, clutching at the bridge of her nose. She anticipated a great deal of headache. On one hand, it was good that there were no witnesses left, on the other hand, now "Vought" would be more than motivated to find Ann. And Skitter was more than motivated to hunt them. Well, you win some, you lose some. "Can you dispose of the evidence quickly?" "It's relatively quiet on the road, but it's a highway... Frenchie seems to have grabbed something flammable, but I can't vouch for its effectiveness." "Understood. Burn what you can, then get out of there as fast as possible. When you find a safe place, ditch the transport and activate the beacon. I'll send agent Davidson with a car and further instructions. Is Skitter conscious?" "Yes. She's probably listening." "Even if she's listening, tell her... that she did a good job. Now I'm much more inclined to believe her story." Grace really hoped that the girl was indeed listening to their conversation and that it would work. She didn't know how true her theory was regarding child soldiers, but praise... praise was a harmless and almost universal method to defuse such walking nerve bombs. "I'll pass it on, though I think she knows everything already." "Good luck getting out. Mallory Out." After ending the call, Mallory leaned back in her chair and just stared at the ceiling for the next few minutes, carefully trying not to think about the children forced to kill and the fact that her charges had committed the murder of a US citizen on US soil. She desperately wanted to smoke. However, in the case of the CIA deputy director's office, windows were a structural vulnerability. Exhaling noisily, Grace reached for the intercom. "Jill, call Hodgson to me. As quickly as possible."

***

Special Agent Ashley Davidson Frankly, it was a miracle that Ashley passed her test for driving the minivans. The previous examinee was so bad that, by comparison, even Ashley drove like Verstappen. The guy had managed to flip the vehicle. Twice. On a range as flat as the Atacama Plateau. In short, Ashley had passed her test with a huge stroke of luck and had not had to use that part of her skills until today. Because until recently, she had been quietly and peacefully working in the analytical department, drinking lots of coffee and occasionally sighing about the romance of fieldwork during lunch with her girlfriends. But it took just one act of initiative for her superiors to fully capitalize on her skills. And the worst part - she definitely had no right to dispute the orders of her superiors. Because when the order comes from Mallory herself, you don't ask questions, you do as you're told, and pray to get through. That's the unwritten rule of survival in Langley. That's exactly why she had been stuck behind the wheel of a tinted minivan, owned by one of the Agency's shell transport companies, for the second hour now, heading to some absolute backwoods following a geolocation beacon signal to pick up her colleagues, along with Skitter. Leaving her semi-forgotten driving skills out of the frame, the trip was quite meditative. The road stretched into the distance, passing cars were a relatively rare sight, and the driver's seat was surprisingly comfortable, even equipped with a built-in massager, which was a pleasure. Meanwhile, Ashley tried to match the information she knew in her head, trying to imagine the possible further course of actions. She wasn't foolish enough not to understand that her participation in this Mallory initiative would not end with this trip. No, she was absolutely certain that she was now in over her head in a completely secret and definitely illegal operation by her own CIA on U.S. soil. On the one hand - it somewhat fulfilled her dream, but on the other - it promised a huge pile of problems in the near future. Based on what Mallory told her and the contents of her trunk, the operation went almost without a hitch, except for the fact that Ann herself had eliminated both escorts in... a rather brutal manner. Who exactly these escorts were, she didn't know, but could guess that "Vought" had sent some of their supers. Death... in the analytical department, people had a rather strange attitude towards death. More than once, she had to look at images and videos with dead bodies or the process of killing, sometimes even torture, but for the most part, for analysts, death was just another event, another line in the report. The murder of a Supe... Ashley had only seen such things in archival documents, and even then, there was no concrete data because she could only learn about the very fact of casualties by receiving a folder of documents directly from Mallory's hands. No, Supers die. Just like ordinary people. They succumb to alcohol, cancer, get hit by a train, or simply of old age. But violent deaths... such things were not known in official statistics. And even if something like that happens, it is definitely not commonplace. So it was reasonable to assume that "Vought" would boil over. The very fact of the escape, plus the death of one of their precious supers... it was too sensitive a loss for them, even if they obviously couldn't officially acknowledge something like that. And that meant that she was in for a lot of work... After a while, the navigator instructed her to turn off the highway onto a dirt road leading towards a line of trees. Ten minutes of solid shaking later, Ashley pulled up to a clearing where, according to the geolocation data, her colleagues were located. The first thing that caught Ashley's eye was the burned-out shell of a minibus. It was clearly torched from the inside, which even allowed the original white paint color to be seen. Almost immediately, as she stopped, three people emerged from the thicket. She knew "Milk" and "Leon", but the third in their company was strikingly out of place. Skitter was tall. Of course, she was far from Milk's height, but she was certainly a good inch taller than Ann herself. With black, long, tangled hair, oddly dressed in the traditional Initiate's robe of the Collective Church, which was clearly too big for her, she leaned against a tree trunk, appearing to be shrouded in black smoke, which turned out to be a swarm of insects buzzing around her. Ashley felt chills run over her skin. Swallowing, she took a deep breath, then rolled down the window and called out: "Hey, you there. Load up quickly. And don't forget to grab some clothes from the trunk." After waiting for all her charges to get loaded, Ashley turned the minivan around, and then, together with her four companions, they headed back. "Where are we going?" Skitter broke the silence. "New York, Girlie. The Deputy Director has found a place for you. Here, catch." She pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her jacket and tossed them to the super. "If I understand the geography correctly, it's quite a nice spot." Skitter caught the keys, then said, "Thank you, Ms. Davidson. My name is Taylor. Taylor Hebert." Glancing in the rearview mirror at the pale face of the girl in the back, the agent smiled. "Just Ashley, Taylor. Just Ashley. By the way, just out of sporting interest, which supe have you flatlined back there?" "Marathon." Upon hearing this, Ashley momentarily lost control of the vehicle and nearly crashed into a tree. "What?!"

***

Madelyn Stillwell "Repeat that. I must have misheard," the vice-director said slowly, in the vain hope that her subordinate had suddenly lost his mind and got everything mixed up. "Ma'am... we lost the Subject... and Marathon... he's dead," the security service employee's voice trembled on the other end of the line. Stillwell felt the pen in her hand snap into two halves. Right now, she felt nothing but pure, unadulterated rage. "How.Could.This.Happen?" Madelyn enunciated each word slowly, impressing them into the consciousness of the person on the other end of the line. Damn it, she had sent Marathon there. Marathon! The idiot may have been a drunkard and a womanizer, but he was still a speedster - one of the most dangerous categories of supers under Vought's command. "It's too early to say, but it seems someone crashed into the truck... The Subject woke up, unbuckled the restraints, killed Marathon, and escaped, after first dousing the van's interior with some sort of incendiary liquid?" Such an uncertain tone and the absolute incompetence of her own employee triggered another fit of rage in Madelyn. "Do you know how this sounds, Laswell? It sounds like you don't know a damn thing!" "Ma'am, we only had half an hour before the state police and FBI arrived!" "Do you think I care about that, Laswell? We just lost a former member of the Seven and another potential one has either been kidnapped or escaped, and you tell me you only had half an hour? You could have paid those damn feds to back off. Or what do you need your huge operational budget for, to go to the bar on Fridays? Tell me at least you managed to retrieve the black box." "Yes, ma'am. We have the box." At least one piece of good news for today. "Make sure that in two hours, my experts are looking at it in person. After that… return the van back here. I don't care how you do it or how much you pay, but the van and the bodies must end up with us. And make sure the witnesses are tight-lipped. Your further career prospects depend on this, Mr. Laswell." "Understood, ma'am." When her interlocutor hung up, Stillwell raised her eyes and scrutinized the four department directors, who now had an extremely pale complexion. With a hand slightly trembling from contained emotions, she adjusted her glasses. "So, gentlemen. I will ask again. How could this happen, where is Wilborn, who is responsible, and what can we do about it? Any volunteers?" The director of Vought's internal analytics department, Jordan Peters, cautiously began: "Ma'am, based on the… rather scant facts that we have at the moment, it's reasonable to assume that someone helped Wilborn. They rammed our truck and doused the body with a fire mixture. We're not yet clear on how exactly they knew the date, place, and route of our truck, but it's quite possible that Wilborn was under surveillance from the moment she was admitted to the hospital." "Just don't tell me you think it was really the CIA. We've already dismissed that theory; come up with something more plausible, Peters." "With all due respect, ma'am, but we really only had three hours and virtually no information. But consider for yourself, everything that happened looks like a carefully planned and professionally executed operation. We had no suspicion that anything was amiss until our informants let us know that one of our vans was burning on the federal highway. Such a level of organization and professionalism is typical of a very narrow circle of organizations, of which we have reason to suspect only a few…" "My God, Jordan, do you hear yourself? You sound like just another conspiracy theorist," interjected Sirizawa, "With all due respect to your guys, but you really have too little information to make such conclusions. Better think about how this whole escape story fits perfectly with Wilborn's own words about Maximum Resistance. Honestly, I can hardly imagine an even more problematic version of what happened..." "But I can, Dr. Sirizawa. The streets of Washington. If the attack and escape had happened on the streets of Washington, half the country would be up in arms by now. It's hard for me to imagine how a covert operation could be the path of greater resistance than a massacre in Washington." "With all due respect, you're only considering predictable circumstances. If we're dealing with a more conceptual phenomenon, then predicting what truly constitutes the path of maximum resistance is decidedly impossible…" "Enough," Stillwell cut off the burgeoning argument, having finally managed to control her surge of emotions. There was indeed a rational kernel in the words of both Peters and Sirizawa amid tons of nonsense. They really knew too little to make any clear conclusions. "I understand that at this point we can only speculate about what really happened. Say so next time. Bouski, a former member of the Seven has just died. What can we do to prevent the press and shareholders from suspecting anything?" Aaron adjusted his tie. "Fortunately, our PR campaign accounted for the possibility of various... excesses, so in all press releases Marathon stated that he would take a short break to improve his health. I think we can tell the tabloids that he flew somewhere to the Bahamas and send one of our PR doubles there to appear in public a couple of times. But for the most part, we need a new big news story to keep the media from spinning the truck story. My guys suggest playing it dark, leaking information to someone like the NYT about one of our second-tier heroes and nudging them to publish. Yes, it will be uncomfortable, but at least no one will think to discuss some burned-out van when we have an entire super in the spotlight." Madelyn pondered the idea. Overall, it was quite sound. They indeed needed a new major media event to ensure the tabloids didn't sniff anything out, but setting up the Seven was risky. Yes, the reputation would be somewhat tarnished, but Vought had been through worse before. Yes, the idea sounded good enough to work with. Bouski's intuition was something she could trust; the man knew his business very well. "Yes, let's do that. Please instruct your department to prepare the campaign project and materials as soon as possible. The rest of you... Reynolds, Sirizawa, Peters - organize a team from your best people. When security brings you the black boxes, and then the van, I want you to find out everything possible as soon as you can. Is that clear?" "It will be done, ma'am." "Now go, I still have to figure out how to tell Edgar about all this without losing my job."

***

Marvin T. Milk Watching the passing cityscapes of New York, Taylor suddenly broke her many hours of silence. "I'm really not in Kansas anymore..." Turning his head, Marvin asked, "What do you mean?" Taylor nodded towards Manhattan, which could be seen across the river. "Manhattan. I've seen it completely different." "Another Manhattan. What do you mean by that?" Taylor turned to him and studied him for a few seconds. "So the Vice Director believed me... and didn't trust you. I'm... not from here. A parallel reality. That's why I'm not in the databases." "Merde, so that's why they were so interested," Serge instinctively reached for his pack of cigarettes, but a sharp look from Milk stopped his attempt to light up in the car. Yes, this was the kind of revelation Martin had been expecting. Otherwise, the whole story had too many logical gaps and inexplicable oddities. "So, What's your Manhattan like?" "Central Park... what's left of it... is several times larger. There are skyscrapers, of course, but significantly fewer. Almost no historical buildings left, mostly everything is new." "Did you guys have an earthquake or something?" asked Davidson, clearly interested in the conversation. Taylor gave a bitter smile. "If only. No, it was the Behemoth." "Behemoth?" For a second, Hebert hesitated, seemingly searching for the right words. "Ever heard of Godzilla?" Ashley nodded. "We have them back home. Call them "Endbringers". Behemoth... is one of them. Much smaller in size - the biggest one about fifty feet, but many, many times more dangerous. This particular one... Behemoth. Lives underground, absolutely insensitive to temperature. An absolute Dynakinetic. Any form of energy you can think of... he can control it within a huge radius around himself. Radiation, electromagnetic storms, clouds of pure plasma... And this thing likes to pop up at random places on the planet and destroy all living things there, leaving behind smoking craters contaminated with radiation. And there are others. More terrifying, more horrible, more lethal." All this was said in such a somber, yet matter-of-fact tone that Milk even flinched slightly. It was the kind of thing he'd heard from comrades who had been through hell and lived to tell the tale. "Tell me you're lying, and I'll laugh at a good story. Please," Davidson said in an unusually quiet voice. "I really wish I were," Hebert replied grimly, turning back to the window. The rest of the journey was once again spent in complete silence.