“Honestly, I’m kinda disappointed we never got to hear Maitreya talk.”

Zero gives me a look, like I just said something spectacularly stupid. Which, in fairness, I did.

“I mean, obviously I didn’t want to end up like its converts,” I clarify, “but I’m used to villain monologues. They give me something to work with. Insight into their psychology.”

This earns me an eye-roll, as Sandra takes a drink. Fortunately for her, the wound she sustained during our mission wasn’t especially severe. Without any significant internal damage to speak of, an hour under the Solberg-Normand Machine was enough to patch her up, without so much as a scar to speak of for the experience.

“This is why I could never be a cape,” she says, as her glass clinks against the metal table. “You people are all out of your minds.”

She’s traded her jumpsuit for a pre-faded rock band t-shirt and jeans, which feels like a ‘cool’ outfit put together by someone whose concept of cool is mostly informed by media and the internet, rather than interactions with other people. Be that as it may, Zero seems fairly comfortable out in public. I get the sense that she goes out fairly often, at least enough to be comfortable in a decently crowded bar in Pax. She probably just doesn’t meet people during those excursions. Being a part of the Council has to be alienating, since every ordinary relationship you ever have will be defined by the fact that you know who really runs the world, and they don’t.

“No argument here.”

Liquor seems to have loosened Lai’s tongue a little. She’s old enough to be drinking (or at least her ID is a convincing enough fake) but between her relatively young age and BMI, it hasn’t taken too much to get her to relax. In spite of her coaxing, I only had one drink before switching to nonalcoholic beverages, since I still have work to do tonight. Between the train job and the Maitreya fiasco, I’m not in the mood for anything stressful, but there are still cases I need to follow up on. Staying on top of my responsibilities in Pax was hard enough when I began working with the Front Line full-time, but adding in Council work on top of that means I’m going to be getting even less sleep than usual.

A few months ago, I probably wouldn’t have been dressed much different from Sandra, but after taking up the Hawkshaw name, I’d decided it was past time my wardrobe got a little more mature. As a result, when I was selecting an outfit for this outing, I chose a black turtleneck, like what Jason might have worn. The armor and trenchcoat needed a wash before I went out on patrol for the evening, so I was glad to accept Zero’s invitation when it came. It was her way of expressing gratitude for my unexpectedly valuable assistance in dealing with the rogue AI. My contribution was suggesting a place for us to meet. Flannagan’s is my second-favorite watering hole in the city, but bringing her by the Pale Horse at this time of night would have almost certainly meant running into a few friends of mine. And while the Council has almost certainly been monitoring me for long enough to know who to target if they want to hurt my friends, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t exercise at least a little caution.

“Really? Not even gonna defend your costumed friends?”

Discussing this kind of thing in such explicit terms would be an infosec sin, if it weren’t for the small grey cylinder Sandra placed on the table not long after we sat down. According to her, it renders our words unintelligible to anyone trying to listen in, turning our conversation into mere background noise. The casual use of neurohacking tech puts me off a bit, but not enough that I can’t appreciate its usefulness. If that device and the Fawkes widget were standard-issue for the less legitimate capes like myself and my team, it would save everyone involved a lot of effort when it came to keeping our secret identities secret.

People like Geas and Machina don’t need secret identities, and maintaining them would only serve to hold them back. But for me, or Vindicator, or Adamant, having some level of separation between our masked personae and civilian lives is important. None of us have any illusions, of course- at the higher levels of government, our real names are all on file. Given the scale of our operations, and the high profile we have, it’s just not possible to keep that kind of secret. And even if the government doesn’t, the Council certainly does. But even for all the embarrassments we’ve given the government, they haven't had cause to use that intelligence yet. That’s the ace up their sleeve, for if we ever decide to take out an important politician or CEO. It’s our version of mutually assured destruction. If any of us does anything that rocks the boat too much, they have the power to completely destroy our lives.

“Nah. You don’t put on a mask in the first place without being a little bit crazy,” I reply. “My friends just happen to be the good kind.”

Sandra raises an eyebrow over the rim of her glass, as if daring me to elaborate. This is a topic I’ve given some amount of thought, so it only takes a moment for me to gather my thoughts before I continue.

“Take Jason. He was fixated on an idea of justice, and felt like he was the only one who could see it carried out. That mindset usually results in domestic terrorists, not... well, I don’t like using the H-word, but you know what I mean.”

It takes a special sort of narcissist to be comfortable affirming oneself as a ‘hero.’ Neither Jason nor I liked to describe ourselves that way. First and foremost, I’m a detective. Just one whose cases tend to get significantly stranger than those of my contemporaries.

“That’s a much more ideological answer than I think you realize,” Zero replies, more enthusiastically than I might have expected. “What you’re basically saying is that your friends have the right politics, so it’s okay for them to operate outside the law, but the people you fight have the wrong ones, so for them it’s not okay.”

Even if that’s not what I meant, I can see how she came to that conclusion from what I said. However, I do worry that she took my words overly literally. Getting into an argument with someone over a statement they didn’t completely mean is rarely edifying.

“Well, taking the law into your own hands is inherently reactionary, no matter what your politics are. But plenty of people are willing to support the team, even fund our operations. So I don’t think our actions are unjustified, even if we aren’t legally sanctioned.”

The precarity of that argument isn’t lost on me. Plenty of terrible things have had high levels of public support before. But that’s been achieved through clever tactics, stoking fear and hatred in order to garner more support. The Front Line doesn’t do anything of the sort. We just do what we feel is right, and let the world decide if it agrees with us. We’ve courted controversy without fear, and it’s resulted in both increased and reduced support depending on the issue.

“Right, right. To be honest, I’ve always respected you guys, because you don’t pretend not to be ideological. Most capes act like they aren’t, and most people are stupid enough to believe them.”

There’s the misanthropy I was waiting for. Even if I don’t agree, I can understand why she’d feel that way. Being privy to the greatest secret in the world- quite possibly in all of human history -would naturally engender a certain condescension towards the ignorant. Her error is in attributing that ignorance to individual fault, rather than civilizational circumstance. It’s no more reasonable than blaming the poor for poverty.

“Sure. And they manufacture contention between one-another to obscure the fact that they’re all on the same side.”

The same principle broadly applies to political parties as well. Less relevant cultural issues are pushed to the fore, and the two sides can tear each other apart over them, while quietly voting together on things that actually matter. Knowing that the ‘rivalry’ between the Peacekeepers and the Royals is a fiction has made that arrangement more transparent to me than ever. Even if I don’t think that most people are stupid, Sandra isn’t wrong about the fact that most of the population blindly believes in a complete fantasy when it comes to this sort of thing.

Zero nods rapidly, glad to see that I agree with her on this. People with less mainstream beliefs tend to get overly excited when they meet someone who doesn’t need to be convinced to believe the same things as them.

“Exactly. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to expose. Of course, most of the really juicy stuff isn’t available digitally, no matter how good a hacker you are, which is why I developed the digital cloak and everything in the first place. I was going to get my hands on every bit of evidence against the system that I could find, and... I dunno, send it to a newspaper, or something.”

Being a master detective, I don’t miss the use of the past tense in that sentence. “But you ended up with the Council instead.”

Part of me is still wary of making explicit reference to the group in public, even with Sandra’s device active, but I ignore it. She frowns, but I don’t think it’s because of the security risk.

“Yeah. They recruited me before I could do anything I had planned. I’ll tell you what’s goddamn weird, too. Getting scouted by the Illuminati because of something ‘you’ did in a different timeline. And the old man won’t even tell any of us what we did to impress him so much.”

With all of the revelations of the past few days, that’s an angle I’d completely failed to consider. Gilgamesh had handpicked every single member of his Council, save for Jason, based on his knowledge of them from countless previous lifetimes. Some of the additions make perfect sense, like Pallas, who I can imagine being a major powerhouse in almost any timeline, but the others have to have done something specific in one of those alternative worlds to merit their inclusion. Thinking about it makes me intensely curious what other iterations of me Gilgamesh encountered prior to this timeline, but from the sound of it, he plays things close to the chest when it comes to that stuff.

“That’s gotta be frustrating.”

“Mhm. Some part of me wanted to refuse out of principle,” she admits, swirling the drink in her hand idly. “A secret society running the world from the shadows... pretty much exactly what I thought I stood against. But they told me I could do more good working with them than against them, and they were right.”

Zero is clearly still frustrated with the fact that she’d effectively been forced into the decision she made, but I respect her more for it. I’ve got no patience for capes without principles, but the ones I have real contempt for are those who hold their principles higher than anything else- even human life. Like the ones who refuse to kill under any circumstances, and by refusing, cause more people to die. As I see it, the key to being an effective hero is finding a space between compromising too much, and refusing to ever compromise. Unfortunately, too many masked heroes can barely even spell the word nuance, much less explain what it means.

“Doesn’t mean you feel any better about it, though.”

The look on Sandra’s face tells me I’m right. She takes another, longer drink before replying.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think the Council serves an important purpose. But we don’t do nearly enough. And the reason why... is ideology.”

The dramatic pause wasn’t emphasis enough- Zero waves her fingers spookily, to make sure I get how impressed I’m meant to be. Once we’re done chuckling, she continues, tapping two fingers against the rim of her glass as she speaks.

“Now, Gil doesn’t have any sort of ideology. The man has believed in everything at one point or another, and now he doesn’t believe in anything. He brought all of us together because it’s more comfortable for him if human civilization exists. Nothing else we do matters to him, and that’s fine, because it gives us plenty of room to operate. The tricky thing is everyone else.”

Gilgamesh hadn’t even bothered to show up for Zero’s briefing earlier today, which was a clear enough indication about his level of interest in the day-to-day operations of his group. At a guess, he only bothers to show his face when the matter at hand is an imminent global threat- the rest, he’s content to let the Council handle without him.

“I know Eric already gave you the rundown, so I’ll skip the details, but we do more than just play whack-a-mole with the apocalypse. Thorn uses his people to push governments and corporations away from unnecessary violence, Donovan makes medicine, blah blah. But none of us are doing nearly as much as we could be. All of us working together, we could end poverty, fix the climate, and colonize Mars within ten years’ time. I’m not exaggerating- I actually ran the numbers. Sure, we’re moving towards all of those things, but slowly, incrementally. Why? Ideology.”

Zero’s point is starting to make itself clear to me, but she’s clearly getting warmed up, so I let her keep going without interruption.

“If we wanted to do all that, we’d have to overthrow the governments, and I mean all of them. And we can’t, because we don’t share the same ideologies. All of us want good things, generally speaking. We agree that it would be good to prevent people from dying if possible, and advance technology, and all of that. But if we were going to properly commit to doing that, it would require us to have an ideological drive behind us. Instead, we’ve got a giant mess.” She chuckles bitterly, expression reflecting little amusement. “Blake has the socio-cultural sensibilities of the fifties, plus a bunch of weird alien shit he picked up off-world. Pallas doesn’t care about anything except ensuring a future for metahuman children. Geas and Machina are good little liberals, so obviously they violate peoples’ memories and build weapons of mass destruction. Network started out as some sort of anarcho-syndicalist, but holding all the levers of power in the world all at once has turned him into something I don’t think there’s even a name for. Donovan hates himself too much to have an opinion about anything, and Eric doesn’t really care about anything except science.”

As she speaks, Sandra picks up steam, until I’m having a little trouble following what she’s saying. Reducing complex individuals to pithy one-sentence summaries seems wrongheaded, but Zero has been working with these people a lot longer than me, and having a third perspective on them, besides my own and Jason’s notes, is valuable. Knowing where they fall politically and philosophically doesn’t do much in terms of preparing me for a potential confrontation, but it does help expand my understanding of them as people. That’s got its own use, considering they’re all suspects in an ongoing investigation.

“What about you?”

My cynical side suggests to me that her entire diatribe was simply meant to lead me into asking that very question in response. After all, the thing people love talking about the most is themselves. Telling me about their ideological affiliations was just an excuse to tell me about her own. And while the cynical voice is correct more often than I’d like to admit, that doesn’t mean I’m going to judge anyone on suspicion alone. To her credit, Zero doesn’t immediately leap into a lecture about her own opinions. In fact, she almost seems surprised that I asked.

“I don’t know if I’m anything. I used to think I was anti-establishment, or something, but now I’m part of the establishment, or at least the power behind it. And because of how the system we set up works, we can’t do much more than we already are. Pretending to have beliefs that I know I can’t act on would be childish. So... nothing.”

I raise an eyebrow in a way that I’ve been told reliably is infuriating.

“Hence Zero?”

A moment passes before Sandra gets the joke, and then she groans, sinking into her chair.

“Fuck you. That is so bad.”

Despite the admitted terribleness of my joke, it did succeed in its purpose, making her smile. Not just because I’m a kind and thoughtful person, though I’ve been reliably informed of that as well, but because it’ll help change the subject. She’s told me a lot, but if we continue down this line of discussion, it’ll inevitably turn to my philosophical and political positions, and how I feel about the Council in general. That’s not a conversation I want to be having with her, or with anyone, just yet.

“It wouldn’t be the dumbest reason behind an alias that I ever heard. Do you know the real story of how Sphynx got her name?”

As always, work eventually interrupts play. Zero and I talk for another hour, without exchanging any further information of real value. Despite her supposed disdain for capes, she was rather interested in hearing some of my war stories, and I had plenty to tell. Probing for information at this stage felt too risky, and it would have ruined the mood besides. Getting to know Zero better was value enough to make the entire exercise worthwhile. But I’d set a hard limit on how much time I could spend with her, and when that time ran out, I gave her my regrets. She offered to help- not by physically accompanying me, for obvious infosec reasons, but by providing ‘tech support.’ I refused, suggesting that she get some rest, but promised to call if anything came up that her specific skill-set was necessary for.

Being able to call on people like Sandra for help when necessary is one perk of being a Council member I’m fairly enthusiastic about. Most cases I’m perfectly capable of handling on my own, but their areas of expertise are vast, and considering how short the list of people I could rely on before was, I’m not going to refuse out of stubbornness. Though based on what she said, some of them will be more willing to help than others.

Lai having had a long day wasn’t the only reason I refused her help, of course. Accepting would have meant allowing her into my headquarters. We translocated there together from the Council facility, but I made sure she spent as little time there as possible. Leaving here there alone would have been an unnecessary security risk. And, once I’ve dealt with everything I need to tonight, I intend to crack open the mystery file I found on the Council’s computer. I don’t want the world’s best hacker within a hundred miles of me when I do that. Not when all signs point to it being a full catalog of contingencies for every member of the Council, including Zero herself.

After having handled Maitreya and Silver Serpent today, I’m almost looking forward to dealing with more mundane criminal activity tonight. As dangerous and miserable as it often is, it’s the closest thing I have to a comfort zone. No capes or secret cabals to worry about- just me and the city.

Even in Pax, detective work is a lot less exciting than one might think, especially compared to the kind of things I get up to with the team. Seven nights out of ten, I don’t have to throw a single punch. The majority of my time is spent collecting evidence. Before I target anyone, I have to prove their guilt, and give the courts a chance to convict them. It’s only when the system fails, or a situation that it can’t handle arises, that I intervene directly. Some people, if I told them that number, would insist that collecting that evidence is a waste of my time. Once I know someone is guilty, why not just go after them immediately? Then I would have more time to spend going after other criminals. It’s not nearly that simple, though. If there were constant threats that only I was capable of handling, I would prioritize them over digging through trash cans and reading private emails, but the fact of the matter is that there aren’t. If I skipped right to the end of each case, and put a bullet in anyone I thought was deserving, it might free up some time, but there wouldn’t be much to do with that time. That’s the trap most vigilantes who set out to emulate Hawkshaw fall into. They run out of deserving targets sooner than expected, and decide that they have to start finding more, to justify their own existence. Innocents end up getting hurt, just about every time.

Taking the easy road might seem like it gets results in the short-term, but it has negative consequences that aren’t always obvious. My first case of the night is a perfect example. Walter Lowell, CFO of a nonprofit called Helping Hands, embezzling from funds earmarked for the development of a homeless shelter in ‘the Belt.’ If I confronted him the moment I suspected, he might have stopped, but that alone wouldn’t have been justice. I don’t believe in executions for white-collar crime, no matter how disgusting I find it, so the courts will have to handle it. But for that to work, I need to be able to do more than just point to the nice new car he bought. I need proof- and when I went looking through his bank records, I found it. But I found something else, too. Lowell isn’t just taking a little off the top- he’s making payments as well. Regularly, and in increasing amounts, which correspond to an increase in the amount he’s taking from the charity’s coffers. Who he’s paying off, and for what purpose, I don’t know yet. But until I find out, I can’t close this case.

One problem with relying on evidence is admissibility. If I was a cop, my hands would be tied in a number of ways that they aren’t as a ‘private investigator.’ Almost all of the evidence I find is obtained illegally- but the DA’s office doesn’t need to know how I got my hands on it. Either the evidence itself, or a note telling them where to look for it, shows up outside their office in the middle of the night. At first, they refused to use it, but when they realized that the alternative to convicting the people Jason targeted was his own ‘sentencing,’ they had a collective change of heart. It’s a fairly hypocritical system, since I wouldn’t trust the police to conduct the same warrantless searches that I regularly make. But that hypocrisy comes part and parcel with being a vigilante. By wearing the mask, I’m putting myself above the law, because I believe that I have better judgement than the average cop or prosecutor. It’s arrogant and even dangerous in its own way, because if everyone believed that, we wouldn’t live in a society at all. But it works.

With all that in mind, I still can’t just beat a confession out of Lowell. A tape of him confessing would be thrown out of court by any judge, even if they knew it came from me- and they’d be right to do it. Forcing confessions out of people doesn’t work. If you hurt or scare someone enough, they’ll confess to anything, even things they didn’t do, just to make it stop. It might be a valid tactic if I just wanted to know who he’s paying off, but that risks alerting them to the fact that I’m on the case. Right now, I want to keep that quiet. So I’m headed to Lowell’s house, not to cuff him or intimidate him, but to plant a bug.

Pax isn’t laid out like other cities. It expanded radially, from a center point. The result is a circular city, whose major districts are arranged like rings. The Belt is called that because it’s one of the middle rings, dividing downtown from uptown. Not that ‘down’ or ‘up’ are entirely applicable with the city being built the way it was, but we use the common parlance here regardless. Closer to the city center is where the money gets made. Inside of the skyscrapers, people write articles and policy papers, buy and sell shares of stock, and otherwise immiserate the ordinary people of the city in a million different ways. On the streets, they call that part of town ‘the Core.’ From there, the buildings get progressively smaller, starting with the Belt. No towering concrete monoliths, but plenty of apartment complexes and housing projects. The conditions are shit, but rent is cheap- relatively speaking. Most of the people who live in the Belt work in the Core, but not at any of the high-paying jobs that make the world worse. They work to serve those people, as their janitors, their waiters, baristas, and anything else they might need. Then there’s uptown. The Crown. Where the upper crust sleeps. There’s enough empty space here to house half the city’s homeless population without displacing a single resident, but keeping property values high is more important, so instead of projects or shelters, there are luxury condos and McMansions. Being far from where they work in the Core would be a problem, if the Mayor’s office hadn’t approved an express line directly into the city center, passing through but not stopping in the Belt, just for them. It more than paid for itself, in terms of donations to his re-election campaign. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to save him when Jason and I discovered the woman who’d been tied up in his trunk when his car went off the Mondadori Bridge.

The Crown bleeds into the suburbs, where I rarely have cause to go. They aren’t technically part of Pax, but I consider them part of my responsibility to the city, even if there’s almost never anything there to investigate. Tonight marks an exception to that rule, though, because the Lowell family lives in the quiet town of Penshaw, about as far as one can get from the part of the city Lowell’s nonprofit ostensibly exists to benefit. I can’t judge him for not wanting to raise a child in that environment, but clearly being a father hasn’t made him a more empathetic person, or he’d have never decided to start stealing from Helping Hands in the first place. It could be that he’s being blackmailed, by someone who’s threatening to expose his crimes, but I doubt it’s that simple. Maybe Lowell is trying to keep something quiet, and began embezzling in the first place because of it. Or maybe someone is using their hold over him for more than just money. After all, there are any number of reasons why someone might want to scuttle plans to build a homeless shelter in the Belt, or to ensure that it’s built by the right construction company, or with the right additions made to the floor plan. Whatever the answer, I’m going to find out.

After changing back into my armor, now blissfully bloodstain-free, I decided to take the Deerstalker out. Jason’s detective fetish at work again. When he asked me to take up the mantle if he ever was unable, I agreed, but I also warned him that if he made me wait more than a year before returning to reclaim it, I’d rename all his vehicles. Aside from being named after a hat, it’s a fine vehicle. A more heavily armed and armored car has its uses, but it’s also much more conspicuous. If I took the Continental out every night, the Pax PD would eventually be able to triangulate the location of the garages where I keep it, simply by virtue of the fact that it’s essentially a tank with four-wheel drive. The bike is faster, more maneuverable, and much harder to track.

Unlike the car or the VTOL, the Deerstalker has no autopilot system, so I can’t simply sit back and wait until I arrive. Driving makes for a good distraction, so I don’t particularly mind. Better that than speculating in circles about the contents of Jason’s mystery file, or brooding about the Council again. Besides, it’s an opportunity to see the city from ground level. While the bike can’t drive itself, it does have an onboard navigation system, which helps me avoid stops on busy streets. I hardly have compunctions about running red lights, but when traffic is too heavy, even that isn’t an option. And unless I can’t avoid it, I’d prefer not to be stuck waiting for the light to change next to ordinary vehicles. That’s something I might have done before I was Hawkshaw. When the city knew me as Harrier, I could stop and wave to kids, or even give a clever retort when someone decided they felt like shouting an insult at me. But that’s beneath Hawkshaw, so it has to be beneath me. When the public sees me now, it has to be as a figure whose very presence is a deterrent to crime. That means taking a longer, more circuitous route to my destination to avoid being caught on camera waiting for a light to change.

Even though my basic mandate is the same, being Hawkshaw is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. There are so many minor considerations I have to keep in mind whenever I do anything. Am I damaging my reputation or image? Will this jeopardize the Front Line’s funding? Now I have to worry about whether everything I do is being watched by the Council, too.

By the time I arrive in Penshaw, it’s almost ten o’clock. Pax may never be at peace, but the same doesn’t hold true for the suburbs. All is quiet, which means I have to tread carefully. In a silent suburban neighborhood, the presence of my souped-up bike won’t go unnoticed, if anyone happens to be looking out their window. It’s not like I can just pull up in the Lowells’ driveway, especially considering how many of these homes are sure to have CCTV systems. Instead, I park the Deerstalker in a secluded spot near a baseball field, and make my approach on foot.

Off the bike, security cameras are no longer a concern, thanks to my digital camo. Nevertheless, I avoid streetlights and houses with the lights on. Ideally, nobody will ever know I was here. Aside from the people who have a tracking device in my arm right now. Suburban environments are frustrating to operate in, because the layout provides almost nowhere to hide. I end up approaching Lowell’s home from behind, moving through yards and gardens. Once I’m in his backyard, I reach into my coat and deploy Watson. Patching its camera feed into my helmet, I borrow its eyes, and run a full scan of the house. There’s no meaningful security to speak of, but I wasn’t concerned about that. The check is mainly to make sure that nobody is going to walk in on me while I’m planting my bug. Fortunately, it seems like everyone is asleep in their beds. Lowell, his wife, and their daughter. It’s not often that I have to take down someone with kids, and depriving a child of their parent is never a fun time. But considering her father is embezzling money meant to help build a homeless shelter, I somehow doubt he’d be a very good influence on her.

Once I’m satisfied that there won’t be any surprises inside the house, I release direct control over Watson, leaving it to hover over the house as my eye in the sky. While in overwatch mode, it’ll automatically detect any movement, or other disturbances, and alert me. Not that anything is likely to happen, but it always pays to be prepared.

The back door is secured with a keypad lock, so I won’t be able to simply pick it. A quick thermal scan shows me which keys are used most frequently, thanks to the lingering heat on them from consistent use. It’s much fainter than I’d expect it to be on the front door, but still distinct enough that I can see it’s some combination of three, five, and six. Those numbers ring a bell, so I open up Lowell’s file and scan it quickly, until the answer jumps out at me. He grew up in the city, in Building 3665, 97th Street. I tap the sequence out, and the lock makes a mechanical buzzing sound as it opens.

Humanity’s natural inclination towards patterns and habit of assigning significance to minor details is one major advantage any detective has. If people made every password and cipher completely random, it would be far more difficult to break their security. Most serious people do, but Lowell isn’t one of them. Whatever’s going on in his life, it still isn’t significant enough for him to have thought about upgrading his home security system. That was a mistake, and not just because it was easy for me to get in. If the regular payments he’s making are because of some sort of debt, that means he should be worrying about what happens if he can’t make a payment. Thanks to my efforts and Jason’s, there isn’t much organized crime left in Pax, but the groups that are still around aren’t the sort that would hesitate to hurt a man’s kid to get back at him.

Lowell’s home is perfectly ordinary. The back door opens into his kitchen, and I switch on night vision to make navigation easier. Not only would it be embarrassing if I tripped over something, it would probably wake someone up, and I’d rather not deal with that if possible. Fortunately, I can move in near-total silence, and I know how to ensure that I don’t leave any traces of my presence once I’m gone. My first task is to plant listening devices. It’s a simple design- a powerful adhesive on the back, and a mic on the front. They’ll transmit everything they hear back to me, with extraordinarily high fidelity. There’s no question of whether these came from the Council- they’re the same kind that the US government uses. Of course, their preferred method now is to use phones and other wireless devices as surveillance tools, but that hasn’t kept them from developing newer models of traditional bugs as well. Not to mention, using a generic model means that if they’re discovered, it won’t necessarily point back to me. I leave one behind the fridge, and move on.

Passing through the dining room, guest room, and den, I leave a bug behind in each one. The odds of picking up anything relevant on any of these are pretty low, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Lowell’s office is where my real task starts, though. I already have access to his personal and work email, plus his bank account, but there could be something on the computer itself that I haven't seen yet. It would take too long to sift through all his files right now, so I plug a small thumb drive into the monitor, and infect the computer with a virus. It won’t impact the device’s function in any way- in fact, it would take an expert to even notice its presence. What it will do is mirror everything on Lowell’s hard drive to my own servers, and quietly log his every keystroke. Then one of my automated programs will sift through every bit of captured data, and highlight anything unusual for me to review. Zero could probably do all of this faster and totally remote, but I only intend to ask for her help when it’s strictly necessary, not just because it would be more convenient.

The drive goes back in my utility belt, and I leave a bug behind the desk for good measure. Only a few things left to do here, but the next part is going to be riskier. I need to tap Lowell’s phone, and despite my many resources, that’s still something I can’t do by remote. That means I’ve got to get my hands on it, and I know exactly where it is without even having to look. Sitting on his bedside table, right next to where he’s sleeping.

Atop the stairs, Lowell’s hung a painting- probably purchased with his dirty money. I stick a bug behind it. Fortunately, the door to his bedroom doesn’t creak when I open it. Carpeting is another small blessing, since it reduces the risk of a loose floorboard giving the whole game away. His wife sleeps closer to the door, so I’ll have to go around the other side to get his phone. While it’s within reach, I grab her phone and take a moment to bug it as well. Nothing I’ve found so far indicates she’s involved, but it pays to be prepared. Lowell’s is next. A few years ago, having a man I know is guilty within such easy reach would have been torture. I’ve since learned the virtues of patience. Seeing the man sleep contentedly just makes me pity him, because he has absolutely no idea what’s coming his way. The ‘bug’ I’m planting is actually another virus, which does pretty much the same thing as the one I used on his computer. All the information on both phones will be mirrored to me, and all ongoing activity, including calls and messages, will be monitored. If I’m really lucky, it’ll even let me take all the passwords he has saved on this device, which will make my job much easier. To his credit, he doesn’t use the same password for his email and bank account, but cracking them ultimately wasn’t very hard. Having a list of all the different ones he uses would just save me time.

My last task here isn’t even in the house. Retracing my steps, I exit via the back door, locking it behind me, but rather than head for the bike, I walk around to the front. Lowell’s shiny new car would be a dead giveaway that he’s embezzling, if he drove it into work. Instead, he just drives it to the train station and takes that the rest of the way. It calls into question what use he even has for a luxury car, other than as a status symbol, but that was probably the only reason he actually bought it. However, thanks to the tracking device I attach, if he ever goes anywhere else with it, I’ll know. With that done, I recall Watson, and return to the Deerstalker. My night isn’t over yet.

The rest of the night goes smoothly. No collars, just unglamorous legwork for a handful of ongoing investigations. By the time I head back to HQ, it’s one in the morning. Even at this hour, there are plenty of people on the streets, but I have plenty of experience avoiding prying eyes. Not to mention, a few advantages that make navigating the city without being seen much easier. I take the bike into an empty alleyway, and park in a very specific spot. A signal from my suit activates the hidden elevator, and we descend into the tunnels below the city.

Aware that he couldn’t leave his expensive, dubiously-legal vehicles parked on the street while they weren’t in use, Jason devised a system to keep them hidden, and connect his various facilities through the city at the same time. At great cost, and over more than a decade, he created a network of hidden tunnels under the city. No amount of money would allow one man to create that from scratch, and certainly not in secret, but Jason didn’t have to do it all alone. His tunnels were designed to intersect with the city’s subway system, both abandoned, unfinished, and active tracks, as well as the sewers, and even the city’s forgotten catacombs. There were already hundreds of miles of tunnels under Pax’s streets. All he really did was create pathways between those pre-existing areas, and establish secret entrances around the city that we could use to get into them. We’ve been using them for so long that it was inevitable the Pax PD would discover the fact of their existence, but they’ve never gotten further than that, thanks to the fact that the entrances and doors within the tunnels will only open if you’re transmitting the right frequency. Though the tone of the commissioner’s report to City Hall was professional, it was impossible to miss the bitter rage beneath it, at the fact that we could be running around literally right under their noses at any time.

If they wanted, the cops could probably blow their way in, but we made contingency plans for that. Not to mention navigating without having a map would be next to impossible. But the police more or less gave up on trying to actively bring Jason in a few years ago. Their official position is still that Hawkshaw is a criminal, but behind the scenes they’re aware that it would be a waste of resources to go after me, especially when the federal government’s policy towards the Front Line and its members is one of grudging tolerance. If that changes, it’s not going to be the cops coming after me, it’ll be capes- a lot of them. Good thing I have contingencies for that too.

There are about a dozen facilities connected via this tunnel system, most of which only Jason and I know about. We’ve also got a handful that aren’t a part of the underground network, in case it’s ever completely compromised, but aside from occasional visits to replace the outdated gear in the caches with new models, we haven't had cause to use them yet. I’m headed for HQ, the center of the proverbial spider’s web. Not the first place Jason ever operated out of, but the largest and most well-equipped. It’s also located underneath the apartment building where I live.

As Jason’s operations scaled up, he decided he needed a new central base of operations. He’d also decided that he needed a facility directly underneath the Core, so he’d be equidistant to any part of the city when his presence there was necessary. Before, he’d worked out of a base in one of the city’s major ‘trouble spots,’ which had more or less been the private kingdom of a notorious crime lord before Hawkshaw got involved. That meant his response time for local incidents was high, but when something happened on the other side of town, he couldn’t always get there fast enough to prevent casualties. By basing himself in the very center of the city, he eliminated that problem. Of course, it was only made possible by the purchase of an entire apartment building, and the total conversion of the fallout shelter underneath, which disappeared from all official records not long after. Jason never gave me all the details of how he managed it, which makes me suspect the Council’s involvement. I moved into one of the apartments shortly after, at Jason’s suggestion.

The route to HQ takes me across train tracks, something that scared the daylights out of me the first time I tried it. Now it’s barely a consideration, even as I can hear the express train approaching, and see the headlights at the far end of the tunnel. Being able to overcome fears and anxieties faster is another perk of my power. It takes a baseline level of bravery and recklessness to be a cape in the first place, but even the most overconfident people in the world have natural physical reactions to obviously dangerous activities. Repeated exposure is the best way to beat it, and thanks to my ability, that process is faster for me than most. From here, it isn’t far to HQ. I arrive at the final door, and stop the Deerstalker. The frequency my suit is transmitting won’t be enough for this one- Jason felt there should be an additional layer of security for the entrance to our home base.

“Baker Street.”

It’s not just a password, of course- without my voiceprint, the words wouldn’t matter. But I roll my eyes all the same. Jason hadn’t wanted to just call it ‘HQ’ all the time, and when it comes to naming a detective’s base of operations, there’s really only one good option. Not that that stopped me from giving him shit about it.

With my identity confirmed, the doors open, and I bring the bike in. Half of our facilities have their own garages, whether large or small, and as a general rule I try to have at least one vehicle available in each, so I can get on wheels from as many points in the city as possible. Being my main base of operations, Baker Street has the largest one, and even with two of the larger vehicles already sitting on their lifts, there’s ample room for the Deerstalker.

Leaving the bike to be refueled, I walk over from the garage to the mission computer. When transforming Baker Street from a Cold War-era fallout shelter to a slick, modern secret base, Jason knocked down a number of walls, giving the facility something similar to an open floor plan. No doors separate the garage from the central hub, just a short set of metal stairs leading up. The same goes for most of the other stations, like the forensics lab and gymnasium. Folding plastic dividers separate each of those areas, rather than concrete walls, which mean I can change up the layout whenever I want. I’ve wanted to make a few specific changes for years, but it wouldn’t feel right to start shifting things around so soon after taking up Jason’s mantle.

Baker Street’s central hub is a raised platform in the middle of the main room, where the mission computer is located. By conventional standards it’s highly advanced, with six monitors and a supercomputer mainframe. Compared to the Council’s setup, it’s almost underwhelming. At least I know how to use this one, though. Leaving my coat on the back of the chair, I sit down and link up. Everything that I’ve saved to my suit’s internal drive since my last sync is automatically downloaded, but I’m only really concerned with one file. Having the cipher logged, even on the mission computer, would defeat the whole point- but I can’t manually decrypt the entire file either. Instead, I input the cipher myself, with the system set to purge all records of it the moment Jason’s file has been decoded. It’ll only be in the system for an hour, but it still makes me a little nervous. There shouldn’t be any avenues by which Zero could access the mission computer- unless I say otherwise, nothing in this facility can make remote connections. Our adventure in Korea suggests that staying offline provides some level of protection against her, since the entire reason she didn’t know Maitreya had progressed faster than expected was because their whole facility was off the grid, but I can’t be certain that she wasn’t downplaying her capabilities specifically to fool me.

Further brooding on the subject is unlikely to be productive, and there isn’t much I can do while the file is being decrypted, so I leave the mission computer and head down to the workshop. There’s a temptation to continue tinkering with my armor like I did this morning, but that work is precise enough that I don’t trust myself to do it right. Not at this hour, anyway. Instead, I leave the armor at the workstation and go around the partition to the gymnasium. It’s less high-end than some of the other facilities here at Baker Street, since building an entire olympic gym down here would be an unnecessary expenditure when we can just use public facilities. However, having some exercise equipment down here is useful for situations precisely like this, where I have time to kill but can’t simply leave HQ to go work out.

According to my training regimen, today’s workout is for the upper body, so I hit the salmon ladder. Normally, I’d have done this in the morning, but I skipped that to visit Luke Chambers instead. Since I don’t have the luxury of being able to rely on my powers alone in a fight, I have to keep in top shape, and adhering to a strict exercise schedule is a key part of that. Plenty of capes assume that they’ll get enough exercise just by being in the field, but often they learn the hard way how untrue that is.

Like working on the suit or driving, exercise is easy for me to get lost in. Before I know it, my timer goes off, informing me I’ve spent half an hour on the ladder. Hopping down, I switch over to the treadmill for a light jog between more intensive workouts. That only lasts for about ten minutes, before I get off and move over to the rowing machine. By focusing on maintaining my rhythm, I can avoid falling into a spiral of paranoid thoughts. Easy as it would be to blame it on the Council, I can’t. This was a problem well before I even knew they existed- I would just be spending that time worrying about whether I did whatever I did that day as well as Jason would have.

The timer goes off again, its harsh screech snapping me back to reality. A moment later, as I get back down to the ground and grab a towel to wipe the sweat off my face, the mission computer makes a much more pleasant noise, to inform me that the decryption is finished. Tempering my anticipation, I take time to towel off and put my shirt back on before stepping up to the central hub and approaching the computer.

A quick check confirms that the cipher has been completely purged, leaving no physical or digital record of it anywhere except inside of my head. No intrusions were detected during the decryption process, but it seems unlikely that even this computer’s security would be sufficient to detect Zero’s presence if she wanted to get in. Like with so many things these days, I won’t be able to know for certain one way or another- just proceed with caution. My only option is to assume that everything is compromised, but act as if it isn’t.

Finally, I open the file. One look indicates that I guessed its contents correctly. Each member of the Council has their own folder, as does their headquarters. There are files on their translocation system, computer network, and a number of other things I don’t recognize yet. But at the very top is a folder labeled ‘Me First.’ Leaning back in my chair, I use the mouse built into the armrest to open it.

Surprisingly, the folder contains a video, rather than a text file. When I hit play, Jason appears on the screen. He’s sitting right where I am now, and he looks tired. The video doesn’t have a date attached, but I can tell by his appearance that this was recorded not long before he disappeared.

“Kellan. If you’re watching this, I’m dead or otherwise indisposed, and you’ve taken my place as Hawkshaw, and as a part of the Council. If anyone else is watching this, I can’t do anything to stop you, but I promise you that Kellan will find you, and he will make you wish you were still just dealing with me.”

Hearing Jason speak is strange. Hearing him speak about me is even more strange. He wasn’t afraid of giving praise when he thought you’d earned it, but listening to him talk about me to someone else, and even go so far as to suggest that they ought to be more afraid of me than of him, went beyond a simple compliment.

“As you’ve no doubt surmised, this file contains information on the members of the Council, their resources, and methods of dealing with them should it become necessary, beyond what was included in the hidden files on the mission computer at Baker Street. If the Council was behind my death, I can only assume that they searched all of our facilities to protect their secrets, and I couldn’t risk them discovering this file when they made that search. So I hid it right under their noses instead. Good work finding it, by the way.”

Exactly how he managed to conceal this file on the Council’s own computer, without Zero, Machina, or any of the others discovering it, still escapes me. But considering what this file is, I can only assume he’ll reveal that in one of the folders I’ve yet to open.

“Before you read any of that, though, there’s something you need to understand. It concerns the nature of the Council itself, and is almost certainly the reason I’m not there to explain this to you myself.”

If we were actually talking, this would be the part where I told Jason to get to the point. He was always overly fond of the dramatic reveals, another result of his fondness for classic detective fiction. In a pre-recorded message, though, he can draw the reveal out as long as he wants.

“Whoever explained the Council’s nature to you will have said that Gilgamesh brought them together to prevent the end of the world. They all represented power and influence that he knew could be used to avert the apocalypse scenarios he saw in his previous lives. That’s only half true, but whoever told you that wasn’t lying- at least, not intentionally.”

Another pause, to build suspense. It’s been so long since we’ve spoken that I can’t even bring myself to get annoyed with him, though if he’d done this in an ordinary conversation I would have probably been rolling my eyes for a while already.

“Yes, they’re all exceptionally powerful and influential. Yes, they were brought together to prevent the end of the world. But I discovered something that none of them know, except Gilgamesh himself. A secret he’s been keeping since the start- and almost certainly the reason he’s going to try to silence me.”

Even if Jason is still taking far too long to reach his point, he’s at least giving me some useful information while he does it. I had been hoping to avoid any sort of confrontation with the old man, since nothing in Jason’s files or my conversation with Zero indicated that Professor Superior’s description of him as the most dangerous person alive was inaccurate.

“There are a number of other people he could have recruited if saving the world was his only goal. Myself included. But he didn’t- and not merely because he felt that his group was the best of the best. He chose those eight people for a reason. Because each of them, in one timeline or another, was personally responsible for the end of the world.”