The Weaver's Web: Book II, Chapter 8

Sitting in Homeroom, I found myself wondering where Aisha was. Had there been a change in plans? She was late, but…

Okay, Aisha had never been great with things like deadlines.

But now I heard…

What the hell? My bugs were picking it up. A group of figures marching down the hallway, and they were…

Shadow clones. There was no scent of humans about them, but they were also playing…

When the Saint’s Go Marching In?

And that’s when the door opened, and three shadow clones came in, playing…

No. One of the clones had a box in her hands. Better than most speakers I’d seen.

Had Aisha gotten someone to make a tinkertech speaker? But most of the other kids, after a little start, were laughing, pointing at the shadowy instruments in the clone’s hands. And then, they paused, and the clones dissolved, the shadows covering the one with the box for a second, and then Aisha was there.

“Thank yew, thank yew!” She said.

“Ms. Laborn… wasn’t your unveiling later this week?”

“Yeah, the official one,” she told the teacher. “But like I’m gonna be an open cape, so why not let you all know! Hey, I can even give the school newspaper a scoop if they hold publication until the official unveiling.”

Behind me, an intense girl thrust a clenched fist into the air with a hissed “yes!”

When Aisha sat down next to me, I waited until the teacher’s attention was distracted and glanced at her. “I take it nobody knows?”

“Assault does,” she whispered back. “You know that all the wards now have to have individual mentors? I got Assault.”

“Why?”

“Eh, some stuff that happened before. Winslow stuff.”

Shadow Stalker, and Aisha knows. But she wasn’t going to blurt it out in class.

Nobody had ever said that Aisha wasn’t perceptive.

“And this?”

“Hey, I ain’t gonna risk getting shot by some E88 ganger a day before the unveiling because he didn’t know…” And then Aisha looked around. “And Bro lives at the apartment. So if they don’t hit him in his civy identity because they don’t want to hit my family…” She shrugged. “It’s not like it’s hurting anything.”

“I see.” While I was talking to her, my bugs were working on a modified phone I’d put just outside of the school in a little hidden cavity in a tree.

Because it was time for Orb Weaver to make her presence known. There were places in the city where criminals would, not might, would, congregate, and in one of those places, I’d put my surprise. A few cameras, hidden by webs. A kitbashed dispenser ready to spread pheromones across the area…

And speakers. Some of them in the audible range, and a few just designed to put out ultrasound just out of the hearing range of humans. I’d read several papers stating that such sound could cause fear and unease.

It was a great deal of effort. But here I was, across town… and yes, a group of men were starting to exchange drugs.

I sent the command, and the pheromones were dispensed into the air. Moments later, moths started to rise up, attracted by the chemicals.

It was amazing how sensitive they were. Some could detect them from nearly a mile away and when I’d been putting my setup in place, I had loaded the dice by using my powers to bring a number of moths to the area.

The men started talking loudly as they saw the clouds rising and falling.

“I’m sorry…” a speaker said, my voice low and menacing. “Did you think I couldn’t see you? I am the city… and more importantly, I looked forward along the thread of your destiny to see you here…” The men were backing off, one pulling a knife and waving it around. I chuckled. “Ah, how… amusing. I have more important things to deal with today, and I am feeling generous… And well fed.” A few fled. The brave ones remained. My bugs made another few phone calls, my voice speaking to people.

I’d called Detective Harding before, and he’d arranged for some police to be in the area. I had “seen” the future, leaving it vague enough to match any likely event. The police were coming and…

“Your friends were cowardly, and I see them hiding from me,” I said. And then as police cars zipped into the area. “You are brave, and so will spend your days in a comfortable prison cell. Good day.” Then I sent the commands via my bugs to change the frequency of the ultrasound and disperse a counter agent to the pheromone. Soon, the moths were dispersing… as if a disembodied spirit no longer had any use for them.

There was a risk to this, of course. Armsmaster might drop by, but… that was why I picked what was, in the greater scheme of things, a very minor event. Just the scary cape going after a target of opportunity, nothing planned, nothing worth taking hours out of an already busy day to analyze a random alleyway. And not long after school, my bus would pass through the area, more than enough time to command bugs to pull the small bits of hardware away.

Back at school, Homeroom was over, and we were walking to Literature, a class I shared with Aisha. “So,” Aisha continued on, after telling me the (non-classified) bits about the Wards, “I heard a rumor about you.” We were far enough from the other kids that none of them could hear us. If someone had a bug on Aisha, they likely already knew about my identity as The Investigator.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Piggot is really happy about whatever you did to that asshole lawyer. She almost cracked a smile.”

“Good,” I said.

“And she also brought you up to someone else.”

“Who?”

“Oh, chick named Alexandria.” I didn’t stop, but outside of school, my bugs froze for a moment.

“Why would I be of any interest to her?” I asked. Aisha wasn’t stupid, and I could see that she was disappointed that her bombshell hadn’t triggered a response. Not any visible response.

But while I’d first, like any kid, dreamed of being Alexandria because she was strong enough to stand against the most terrible monsters of our world, I’d since realized that her strength was a distraction. I’d studied the big names and as many of the smaller names as I had been able to, and Alexandria didn’t carry the association with the great library by accident.

The order of oblivion… a group of masters who could implant memories in capes and mundanes alike who had hidden themselves behind minions who didn’t even know who they were working for… and Alexandria had dismantled them in a month. The East Coast Mafia, the Yakuza… It hadn’t just been her strength that had bested them.

Of all the people who could unravel my identity—both of them—Alexandria was very, very high on my list.

“After all, I’m not that important,” I continued in a calm tone.

“Piggot said she liked how you left the guy to the cops and lawyers,” Aisha said, then she glanced at me. “Really liked the thing with the asthma medicine.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“According to Assault, it was. Most freelancers like to showboat.”

“Did Assault tell you about the Director?”

“Yeah… and I heard a few other guys talking. I’m working on getting my Numbers to do stuff, and sometimes people talk.” Aisha glanced. “I’ve been thinking. If I can give ‘em swords for hands and stuff, why can’t I just make ‘em into dogs or birds or demons…”

“Have you tried?”

“Yeah, but they gotta stay humanoid. It’s really annoying, and when I asked Armsmaster about it because he’s anal retentive about that stuff, I got books to read on parahuman powers.” She huffed.

So, was this deliberate? A back channel way to show approval? The PRT and Protectorate had a fraught relationship with independents, many of whom eventually became villains, often because of the way they went about their heroing. Others joined the Protectorate because of incidents, many of them involving brutality or just underestimating their powers.

So officially, while the Protectorate welcomed independents, it always qualified that by saying it would be better if they would join.

On the other hand, how many conversations like this does Alexandria have in a day? I shouldn’t panic over it, not until I have more evidence. And it could be nothing more than what Aisha said—happy that I didn’t end up blowing up a few blocks in the fight with Uber and Leet.

Then Aisha sighed as we entered class and saw the books piled on the teacher’s desk. “To Kill a Mockingbird?” she said. “I had to look at that in Jr. High!”

“Did you finish it?”

“Hell no, It was boring.”

“So now it won’t be since you’ll be finishing it for the first time.”

The look Aisha gave me was a combination of Despair, Anger, and Betrayal.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.