Cass laughed as Rose huffed, her displeasure evident as she surveyed the goodwill outlet they had just entered.

"When you said you wanted to go shopping for a costume, I expected an actual store, not a glorified garbage pit."

"Come on, making the costume is half the fun. And this place has cheap sh-- I can glue together and spray-paint."

"What are you even going for?" Rose wrinkled her nose and reached into her purse to pull out a thick pair of rubber gloves.

"I dunno. I figure I'll look around and see if anything tickles my fancy."

"So you have no plan."

"Nope!" Cass laughed. "Want to move together, or split up?"

"Together. Since I don't know what you're looking for, I suppose I'll just have to make sure you don't pick something to outrageous." And hurry you on out of here, Rose added to herself. She was used to order, not this chaotic mess of people pawing through unsorted bins of junk. At least she had her gloves with her. Ever since she'd fled her previous job, she'd taken to keeping a first-aid kit in her purse. And a tazer. Tazers were useful.

"Ooh! Sparkles!" Cass explained, and darted towards some garish piece of fabric covered in sequins. Rose hurried after her.

#

Rob stepped out onto the tarmac, surveying the desert facility that had grown to be his primary logistics hub. Uniformed security forces jogged on patrol drills while workers loaded and unloaded trucks and planes that shipped weapons and equipment all over the world. With a quiet hum, his Tesla pulled up beside him, no driver inside. Alice had taken to the logistics side of the business like a fish to water, and making sure that Rob's vehicle arrived exactly when and where it needed to was a simple matter to her, at least within the compound. Driving on public roadways was still outside her capacities at the moment- not because the calculations were particularly difficult, but because humans operating other vehicles introduced to many variables to make the operation resource-efficient, especially when human drivers could be hired relatively cheaply.

"Is Rose in at the office?" Rob asked Alice, as she directed his vehicle toward the facility's exit.

"No, she's currently off-duty. It is saturday."

"Ah, right. I've been working to much, haven't I."

"Would you like to drop off the samples at her lab before you clock out for the weekend?" Alice asked. The briefcase holding the blood traces Rob had gathered from the Russian crime scene, along with samples from the cadavers of Rob's men, was currently resting on the passenger seat of the vehicle.

"Yeah, I think that'd be a good idea." Rob said, taking the wheel as Alice cycled the gate open. "It'll be good to take a break. If any problems come up, just direct them to my second in command. Or Bill, If it's his area. Speaking of Bill, what's he been up to?"

"Bill's focus has primarily been the PLA project." PLA was, in this case, an abreviation for Pacific linear accelerator, the giant aquatic railgun that would boost payloads into space with minimal reliance on chemical rockets. It's chief utility would be in the reduction of onboard fuel requirements, though numerous other benefits had been paraded before investors by the CEO.

"Ah, yes. Bill always did dream big. Any news from our favorite martian?"

"The shooting competition experienced only a minor hiccup. All of the Daedalus manufactured firearms performed adequately, while one of the vacuum-optimised devices produced by a competitor suffered an explosive failure. No casualties, just a few scratches on the team's equipment."

"Fairly well, all things considered."

"Indeed. As planned, Lorian has stowed all Daedalus manufactured firearms in the locker aboard my mining drone. We should expect her arrival in a little over seven months."

"Seven months is still a long time. Still, it'll be good to see her again."

#

Sophia swallowed a handful of pills and glanced in the mirror of the airport bathroom. A simple T-shirt and pants, tight but not to tight, a denim jacket, and a knitted cap over her bleach-blonde hair. Not her natural hair color, but it had been a while since she'd gone without making some modification to her appearance. She'd been working for Vladimir since she was a little kid. little enough not to know with certainty how old she was. The early memories had been buried, so as not to taint them with the pain of later years. She figured she was in her teens, probably. The pills had changed a few years back, and all her hormones were out of whack. The first few months after she'd been introduced to the new meds, she'd been in unimaginable pain. She'd finally figured out why when the bone--claws had ripped out through her skin. now she wore gloves, and jackets. The docs had helped clean the wounds and made a few grafts so that the skin formed proper slits when she sheathed and unsheathed them, but even with the tats she'd had inked, the slits still had the potential to draw unwelcome attention. Her vision had been wonky too, her brain trying to make sense of the new colors she could see. The contacts helped, filtering out the upper and lower wavelengths so she wouldn't get distracted by things like the way bathrooms had started to take on a disturbing flourescense.

Her target was Rob Hood. A high-level security consultant, often considered one of the best. He was also a member of the board of directors for Daedalus Technologies, a recently formed company that was quickly digging its fingers into everything. Thanks to the dossier her handler had given her, She knew that not everything Hood had his fingers in was legal. Supplying criminals with weapons and gear, illegal and tightly controled substances, and quite a lot of industrial espionage. Trade secrets had started cropping up in Daedalus products, though the engineers had the sense to remove the more obvious indicators of the original designers. Of course none of this could be directly tied back to the CEO, William Dare. His hands were suspiciously clean, in everything. Of course, sleuthing on the part of her handler had determined that Dare and Hood had been closely associated since middle school, when Hood had been mildly involved with a number of gangs. Was Dare just a good friend covering for his buddy? A mastermind in the shadows? Or simply a victim of blackmail? Sophia didn't care. Dare was simply a potential way to get to her target. There may be others. First, Sophia intended to get the lay of the land. Hood had been seen returning to his company office in the states, and had then traveled to his home in the suburbs. That was where she'd begin scouting. Her cover? A teenager with absent parents. It wasn't far from the truth- she hadn't seen her parents since Vladimir had acquired her. For a moment the thought crossed her mind of ditching her handler and just living, but the thought was fleeting. She needed the meds. The Docs wouldn't tell her what was in them, so there was no way to get them without vlad. And she knew enough about drugs from her earlier missions to know they weren't any of the easily available ones. These were custom. Something tailored to keep her dependent. Sophia hated Vlad, but she needed the meds. So here she was.

#

"I've got it! We can do an X-men theme!" Cass exclaimed as she held up a yellow trenchcoat. "I can be Jubilee, and you can be Rogue!"

"Fine. But I'm ordering my costume online, not splicing it together out of random junk. I have standards," Rose grumbled.

Cass shot puppy-dog eyes at her, but Rose stood firm. "Why the X-men?" "Alice said you were working on superpowers. I suppose we could find something more mad-scientist for you, but the heroes are way cooler."

"Superpowers? I suppose you could consider the research I'm doing on regeneration and bone manipulation to be superpower-esque, but It's not like I'm going to give anyone the ability to shoot lazers."

"Still, Your work is like, totally cool. I wish I had superpowers."

"It's not like my work is ready for implementation. I need to start actual human trials, but there's a high risk of rejection to the present serum. I made something that might have worked at my last job, but it was unstable, and I lost all my research when the damm ruskies burned down my lab."

"Wait, Russian burnt down your lab?" Cass swung around to gape at Rose.

"Forget I said anything. I'm not supposed to talk about my last job."

"No, seriously, what happened. You just sounded like a total comic-book character."

"We're talking about x-men, and you think I sound like a comic book character?" "Yeah. 'Damm ruskies burned down my lab' is totally something a comic-book scientist would say when they're complaining to the hero during an evil monologue."

Rose held up a finger. "One. I don't like the comparison of myself to an evil scientist. Two. I'm not supposed to talk about my previous job. It was a condition of my employment there. Three. We are here because you asked me to go shopping, and I'm trying to make friends with my coworker. If you're going to pry into my past, I'm going to need to leav."

Cass held up her hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dig. It's just that you never talk about your past."

"For a reason. Besides," Rose decided to change the topic, "Aren't you the one trying to develop a hyperdrive? If anyone's the mad scientist it's you."

Cass laughed at that. "You do have a point. Okay, I've got the jacket, now where can if find those 80's sunglasses and some blue boots?"

#

Lorian let herself relax into the grip of the acceleration couch as the Falcon roared skyward. The mission to Mars had been a success. She'd been able to test and deploy several autonomous robots controled by a splinter of Alice's program, robots that would burrow their way outwards from the outpost in search of resource deposits to process into either food or equipment. The rest of the team hadn't been aware of quite wat the robots had been designed for, just that they were meant to test the feasibility of tunneling through the martian crust. The firearms had also performed well. Hopefully She'd get a nice bonus when she got back. Going to Mars had been fun and all, but she couldn't wait to take a trip to the beach, hang out with Cass and the girls, and catch up on a year's worth of missed tv-shows. Alice had been gracious enough to encrypt and transmit a number of books as they'd been published, but they were no substitute for a week-long veg-fest. Lorian reluctantly tore her thoughts away from home. It was still a seven month journey. If it had been cramped on the journey to Mars, if felt doubly so after having been able to roam the surface for three months. Even with the fact that they only had half as many crew members. Still Lorian wasn't going to spend the time idle. Several of the long-term experiments that had been managed by another crew member on the previous leg of the journey now fell to her to continue. Plus, there was the daily exercise routine. A good chunk of her energy each day was spent fighting the loss of bone density that long periods of low-g led to.

It was a few weeks into the journey that Doctor Smith threw up. The term that doctors are their own worst patients? It had proven itself once again. So, apparently, had murphy's law. Doc Smith had cancer. Bone cancer. The crew did what they could, but with resources tight, and having to ration the anti-rad meds so that none of the other crewmembers came down with it, they weren't able to save him. Two months into the return journey, Doc Smith's body was vacuum-sealed in a body-bag and stowed in one of the freezers. When they made it home, there'd be an autopsy. Lorian hated it, but The Doc's death would probably teach them a whole lot about cancer, seeing as the tumor had developed in a low-g environment. She just hoped there wouldn't be any other corpses joining his.

Unfortunately, the Enterprise's invalid also sucummbed to cancer. And by the time they were two weeks out from Earth, Lorian had been under the knife twice to remove tumors. The rest of the crews hadn't fared much better. They'd checked with Mars, and the crew there had managed a lower incidence of cancer, though they'd had their share of tumors as well. The scientists theorised that it was worse for the return crews because the ships were carrying less mass around the core to act as shielding. several of the water tanks that had armoured them the first time had been left with the starships in Mars orbit, seeing as they'd been emptied to resupply the starships after they emptied their onboard reservoirs to set up the planetary outpost. The gap in shielding had increased the Radiation dosage for those aboard.

#

"Rob, we need to talk," Rose said, stepping into the chief of security's office.

"What about?" Rob asked.

"Those samples you asked me to analyse. I recognise my work in them. Have you started human trials without informing me?"

"No. Those blood samples came from a competitor."

"Sh--. They wouldn't happen to be Russian, would they?"

"Why do you ask?" Rob fixed her with a rather pointed glare.

"Because some rather rude russians forced me to leave my previous place of employment by burning it down. I can only assume they stole my research during the process. I don't suppose you could recover it? If they've started human trials, I'll want all their data as well."

Rob clenched his jaw. "You had something to do with the monster that killed my men?"

"Monster?" Rose asked, a confused expression on her face.

"Alice, pull up the recovered and reconstructed footage of the attack." Rob ordered, and angled a desktop monitor so that Rose could see. A shadowy blur tore through Rob's forces in a nondescript warehouse, biting and striking with claws that sprouted from its forearms and boots.

"Is this real?"

"It's a reconstruction. There is, of course, nothing to indicate the origin of the creature's unique fighting style, but clearly it can take more damage than normal," Rob indicated where several bullets had torn through the attacker, not slowing it down in the slightest.

"I need that subject. The serum I developed was unstable. I can see some of how it's been modified from the blood sample, but without a decent biopsy I won't be able to figure out the details."

"Who, exactly, did you work for before you came to Daedalus."

"The CIA."

"And do you have any loyalty to that organization?"

"Not particularly, no. They allowed me to perform human trials without going through the mess of authorization I would have otherwise required. I conducted experiments on prisoners, developing a serum that was shown to increase skeletal and muscular fitness, and aid in regeneration. Perfect for a supersoldier program. The results were, however, less than satisfactory. As I have previously stated, the serum was unstable. Even with constant dosage, the serum increased the chance of pulmonary failure and the development of tumors. I have since endeavored to solve those problems, but much of my focus has been on rebuilding what was lost to the fire."

Rob pondered this revelation for a minute, then laced his fingers together. "Ms. Maplethorne, I think it's time that your work shifted from our public division to the division under my supervision. I can provide you with the opportunity for human trials. As soon as I acquire information on the competition's test subject, I shall inform you. Yes, the competition is Russian. They will soon discover just how bad an idea it is to p--- me off. I look forward to the fruits of your research."

Rose sat, her memory thinking back to a discussion in recent past about mad scientists and evil monologues. "I think this will be an excellent development," Rose finally voiced. "I'll go start writing my shopping list." As she turned to leave, she paused and added, "Cass and I are planning to attend Comic Con in a few weeks. You're welcome to join us. I'm sure you can find a supervillain costume somewhere around here."

#

Sophia jogged with her earbuds in, taking in the view that was Californian Suburbia. According to her intel, several high-level Daedalus employees lived in this very neighborhood. A fact soon confirmed as she spotted a woman in a bright yellow coat slip out of her car with an overflowing shopping bag.

"Hello," Sophia said as she jogged up. "Pleasant day out," she addressed Cass Weaver, one of the company's lead physicists.

"That it is. Are you new to the area?" Cass replied, swinging her car door shut.

"Yeah. Just moved in down the block. Parents are never around, so I started jogging to get out and meet people."

"That's so cool. I'm Cass, by the way," Cass extended a hand, the other hanging on to her groceries.

"Sophie." Sophia replied, shaking the hand.

"If you're looking to meet people, have you considered going to one of the conventions downtown? A couple of my coworkers and I are heading to comic-con this week,"

"A convention? Sure, why not. What are you planning to cosplay as?" Sophia wasn't big into geek culture, but she'd done a bit of research on American pastimes to fit in, and she'd heard of Comic-con.

"We're going with an X-men theme. I'm going as Jubilee."

"Great. I can be Laura."

"Laura?"

"You know, Wolverine's kid. with the claws."

"Oh yeah! I love that character."

"So, could I like, carpool with you?"

"Sure. It might be a bit tight, what with Rose and Seth, not to mention Sally, but we'll manage."

"Cool. Time and place?"

The two hammered out the details, exchanged contact info, and parted ways. Sophie completed her survey of the neighborhood, and returned home. All in all, a good day of Recon.

#

"So why did you say I should greet her?" Cass asked Alice as she put away her groceries.

"Scans indicated that she may be a metahuman. her density is far above normal, and she was quite extensively armed."

"I get that Rob and you take security seriously, but scanning everyone that walks in front of my house with sensors that would put a TSA station to shame is definitely an invasion of privacy."

"All data is anonymized and deleted if it proves irrelevant. It's not like the government isn't wiretapping all the cellphones in the neighborhood anyway."

"What?!?"

"Yeah, all the cellphones in the US route their data through this one mainframe that the government has running an analysis program on. I, of course, redirect all your calls outside of that mainframe. Your communications are quite secure."

"Still, it's a bit creepy."

"It's not as bad as China. They run all the cameras through a similar mainframe as well. So many hours of footage from the inside of pockets."

"Setting aside the issue of privacy, you think sophie's a metahuman?"

"She does match comic-book patterns. Recently arrived in town, no true past, just a false cover, no parents, mysterious bottle of meds she takes everywhere with her, heavy armaments."

"And why should I be talking to her?"

"It'll give Rob an excuse to investigate her. Rose is trying to track down some of her old metahuman research that may have made it into the field."

"And I invited her to comic-con. With Rose."

"I predict the results will be quite interesting."

Cass glared at the clock where she knew Alice had a security camera. "If she's armed, I want armor. Make my costume out of Kevlar. No, not Kevlar. Pick something stronger. I want it bulletproof."

"Fine. Are you sure you still want to go as Jubilee?"

"Yeah. Sparkles are totally my thing."

"It'll be ready in time for the convention."

#