“Hello, Stardust. I know you’ve been over your story already, but let’s walk through it again from the beginning.”

Stardust groaned and buried her face in her hands. Chevalier quietly agreed with the sentiment from where he watched the interview on a monitor in a separate, far away room. This would be either the fourth or fifth time they’d gone over everything—he had honestly stopped counting. Unfortunately, a Master abducting a member of the Protectorate who had served for five years, three of those as a ward, was a ‘grievous breach of security perpetrated by an at-large Master that must be accounted for with appropriate countermeasures.’ Or at least, that’s what the official paperwork called it.

Chevalier thought nightmare was more apt.

“Shuffle and I were out on patrol. I don’t remember the exact date or time, but I know it was a Wednesday evening because he wouldn’t shut up about getting a hump day hot dog at that one stand he likes after our shift. We got the call about Octahedron causing a disturbance in the library at UIC.”

“Octahedron being the group otherwise known as The Eight,” the PRT interviewer clarified. “Please continue.”

Stardust rolled her eyes but otherwise didn’t acknowledge the interruption. She had explained to the first two interviewers sent in that ‘Octahedron’ was the name for the group Octavia preferred in spite of the public dismissal of the unwieldy name. “We got there, and they were—”

“Clarify who ‘they’ are, for the record, please.”

“Oh come on,” the hero bemoaned. “We’ve been over this… I don’t even know how many times we’ve been over—”

Myrddin, who had been silently watching the interview at Chevalier’s side along with Director Travers, leaned forward and held down a button. “Stardust, again, I’m sorry you have to go through this, but until we better understand the power used on you, we have to take precautions.”

He released the button, and the three of them watched as Stardust’s rant was interrupted by Myrddin’s message being carried through to the secured interview room on an intentional delay. Stardust slumped a bit, seemingly chagrined, before resignedly saying, “We got there, and Bard, Monk, and Artificer were throwing books off the shelves as they searched for what they claimed was a tome. Said they needed it to dispel a curse.”

“Do you know the names or iden—”

“No, I only know those names. Didn’t even know that much at the time. I vaguely knew about the group in passing from PHO, but even then, I only knew them as the D&D capes.”

“Okay, thank you,” the interviewer pleasantly acknowledged with a gentle nod. “Please proceed.”

“Well needless to say, a group of three capes causing a scene in the middle of the library wasn’t okay, but it was especially bad because they were also causing property damage by being less than gentle with the books. We relayed to console—Bearach, sorry, he was on console—what was happening, then we engaged.”

It didn’t escape Chevalier’s notice that she still wasn’t referring to Octavia as a cape.

“Okay. What happened next?”

“Artificer started tearing apart books to make some kind of sword from paper, so Shuffle teleported as many of the books out of the way as he could to a more empty area of the library, and Artificer tried to attack him with the halfway made sword. I was busy with Monk and Bard, who had merged. See, Bard’s power lets him enhance who he’s in. Stronger, faster, healing—the usual stuff. I think he could only boost one thing more than the rest if he focused on just that, but I never confirmed that for sure, and I definitely didn’t know it then. Anyway, Monk was crazy fast and strong because of that, and I couldn’t keep up in my metal form, so I switched to wood, so I’d be a bit faster but still have toughness and would get regeneration. As soon as I did that, Octavia asked us all to stop fighting. The library was getting damaged more than we wanted, since we hadn’t been able to maneuver them outside, so stopping did seem like the best option. Then—”

“I’m sorry,” the interviewer jumped in, a look of consternation on his face, “but I’d like to clarify that point some more. First, who is Octavia?”

“Ugh, right, sorry,” Stardust apologized, running her hand through her close cropped, bright blond hair. “All these interviews are starting to blur together. Thought I’d already said. Octavia is the leader of Octahedron.”

“The leader? You mentioned three capes before: Bard, Monk, and Artificer. Where was this ‘Octavia’ at the time?”

“She was there too. She’s not a cape, so I guess it hadn’t occurred to me to mention her.”

“Not a cape?” When Stardust nodded, the interview pressed her, “But she asked you all to stop fighting, and… you did?”

“W-Well, like I said, we were trying to avoid causing additional property damage.”

“But this thought didn’t occur to you until Octavia told you to stop?”

Stardust crossed her arms, having grown visibly more uncomfortable at the line of questioning. “Look, I get it. It’s not normal protocol, but you weren’t there. Octavia’s a good kid. Excitable and weird, but she wouldn’t even harm a fly. She asked us to stop, and I didn’t question it.”

“And it’s at this time you decided to quit the Protectorate, correct? Because somebody you had never spoken to before asked you to.”

“It’s not like I agreed straight away,” she defensively pointed out. “She started talking about Octahedron and what they did, and after a bit I just… started to see the appeal. All the talk of traveling the country, seeing new places and people, even the roleplaying—it just seemed fun.”

“More fun than being a hero?”

Stardust turned away, her eyes set firmly on the door and her body tense. “Yes, alright? Yes. Being a hero was what I always wanted as a kid, but Octavia, she… has this way of explaining things. She has this charisma. It’s hard to say no to her.”

The interviewer hummed for a moment before asking the most important question. “Stardust, please repeat what I’m about to say: Octavia is a Master.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand what you just said,” Stardust replied, heaving out a frustrated sigh. “You all keep saying that weird gobbledygook and never explaining it. When is this going to be over?” She looked up and all around the room, undoubtedly searching for the tinkertech cameras they were watching the feed through, but eventually she settled on the more visible speaker in the corner of the room. “Myrddin, I’m sorry I left! Please can we just call this quits for now? I’m getting a headache from going over this again and again!”

Chevalier’s old friend sighed and leaned forward to depress the button once more. “We can take a break for a short bit after this interview, but we can’t stop just yet.” He paused for a moment then more softly added, “Thank you for being patient with us. We’ll get you home as soon as we can, Star.”

The message played through after a delay, and Stardust took it about as well as could be expected, buckling down with a resigned sigh and an impatient ‘get on with it’ gesture at the interviewer.

“Okay, let’s talk about what happened when the Eight went to Toronto and recruited Wavelength,” the interviewer continued, but Chevalier had already begun to tune it out.

“We’re not getting anywhere with this,” Chevalier needlessly pointed out as he turned away from the monitor to look at Travers. They had been throwing fresh interviewers at Stardust all afternoon to probe how deeply she had been mastered while hoping she might give up extra information, especially anything that might give them some notion of how to proceed. Unfortunately, they had all been progressing in roughly the same vein, which meant they had little to show for their efforts.

“And what else do you propose we do?” the Director of the Philadelphia PRT grunted in reply. “Whole situation’s fucked six ways to Sunday. There’s a Master loose whose power is so strong it seems they can get their victims to self-justify their changes in behavior, and the best information we have on them is they might be Octavia Thatcher, who also might just be a victim set up as a patsy. Then just to add insult to injury, UPenn’s initial estimates are well over a million in damages, and the both of you as well as Dragon got your asses handed to you.”

“You must see reason,” Myrddin argued. “I’m confident we’ll get something out of Stardust eventually, but we can’t keep pushing her like this. She’s been through enough.”

Regrettably, Travers was having none of it. “I understand she’s one of yours, Myrddin, but right now Stardust is one of our only leads, and she’s the best one. I’ve got people milking Artificer and Monk for information, but those two are holding their cards close to their chest. Dragon has other matters she has to turn her attention to, and nobody from Faultline’s crew has peeked their heads out of whatever bolthole they’ve scurried into. Push her until we get something actionable, understood?

“I want ‘Charisma’ found. Now.”

“We have visitors.”

Brood didn’t pause as she finished making final adjustments to the toxin-purification module she was hunched over. “The expected kind, I trust?”

“The Mel kind. And she brought the kid.”

Her lips set themselves in grim determination, but she didn’t immediately abandon her work. “Please ask Nineteen to see them in, One. I’ll be with them in just a tick,” she replied as she deemed the module ready and secured the myomer layer back in place before temporarily sealing the chest cavity. More work would be needed before her latest egg would be ready to properly replace Sixteen, but Thirty-Four had already temporarily relocated to Philadelphia so the project there wouldn’t fall even more behind schedule.

Seventy-Seven would keep for now.

Brood moved to the cleaning station and stepped into place, letting her device begin to dissolve the excess tissues and fluids coating her protective gear into base matter she would repurpose later. She stripped away her gear and set it aside for internal cleaning once the exterior was bio-matter free, then she started towards the hallway that would lead her to the room with her normal clothes. She looked to her dresser when she entered, and just as expected, clothes had already been laid out for her.

“One, please pass along my thanks to Nineteen,” she said as she put on fresh underwear before tugging the hose and slip into place. A nice blue dress meant for around-the-house wear was hung on the post jutting from her closet, and her chest tightened a bit at the sight. It was the sort of attire she used to wear all the time but hadn’t in ages.

In her mind’s eye, her sweet daughter looked up at her with a big smile complete with missing teeth as she skipped along beside her. Her nice blue paisley Sunday dress that matched her eyes bounced along with her blonde hair in time to each hop as they made their way down the street hand-in-hand. “Mommy, can we get ice cream after lunch?!”

She hummed as she pretended to think about it. “Maybe… if you’re a good girl.”

“I’ll be the bestest ever! Promise!”

The groan of warping, cracking wood drew her out of her reverie, and Brood hastily pulled her hand away from where she had been gripping the closet door. Keep going. You’ll get her back.

She didn’t want to make her guests wait, but she did need a minute before she could finish dressing and make her way to the room where they were waiting. The two of them looked up when she entered, and recognition and warmth lit up Melanie’s face as she rose to her feet from her chair. “Grace. It’s good to see you.” She eyed the dress with a quirked eyebrow then added, “You look well.”

Brood gave her the best smile she could muster. “And you, Mel. You’re looking at extra effort today, I’m afraid. Normally you’d be lucky to catch me in regular clothes, much less all of this.”

The smile on Melanie’s face grew a hair more strained. “Yes, I know. It hasn’t been that long.” Her posture shifted, something in her stance and gaze hardening, and she asked, “Are you ready to begin?”

“All business as usual,” Brood reproached. “It’s good to see some things don’t change. Won’t you introduce me to your crewmate?”

Melanie’s eyebrows rose. “One didn’t tell you?”

“She only mentioned you would be bringing along a crewmate who would be invaluable to the… interrogation,” she admitted as she eyed the young girl Melanie had brought with her. She had a natural sort of beauty that was apparent despite how… dressed down she was. The ripped jeans and oversized bomber jacket would have been easier to overlook were they not paired with a dyed purple streak of hair and a graphic tee that featured hands flipping the bird over the text ‘All I Have To Give.’

“Right, well, this is Aisha. She’s the newest member of my crew,” she introduced before gesturing towards Brood. “Aisha, this is Grace. She’s an old friend.”

The girl glanced from Melanie to Brood then back. “You two are more mismatched than two left shoes. How the hell’re you friends with Stepford Wife?”

She must get along splendidly with Newter, was Brood’s uncomplimentary thought.

“Aisha,” Melanie dangerously intoned. “Not the time or place.”

“Might be convinced to be nicer if you’d get around to tellin’ me what we’re doing here. Just a thought.”

Brood fixed Melanie with a look. It seems I’m not the only one who isn’t being told things, Mel.

“I told you I would tell you when we got here, and I meant that,” Melanie countered, unmoved by the teen’s snarky reply. “As it happens, I was wanting to explain once Grace was present.”

Aisha smirked. “And now she’s here. So spill.”

Melanie briefly returned Brood’s look, and she could practically imagine the other woman saying, “See what I have to put up with?” She returned her attention to Aisha and explained, “You recall Sebastian’s explanation about the Clutch, yes?”

“Androids are lurking among us, ready to shlorp the brains of our kids and take our jeeebs! Look out, ‘cause the future is now, and the past is yesterday!” Melanie released a longsuffering sigh, which elicited a chuckle from Aisha. “Yeah, yeah, I remember,” she added, squinting at Brood. “So this is ‘Zero,’ huh? Gotta say, I was expecting, like, anybody else.”

Brood fixed a smile on her face, doing her best to will herself to be patient. Mel wouldn’t have brought her here if it wasn’t necessary. Stay strong. “Just so. Though only my clutch call me Zero. I prefer the name Brood.”

The girl’s eyes and smirk widened gleefully. “That right? You def look the brooding type. I can see you now, perched on a rooftop while you solemnly contemplate what the evil villains have done to your city. You are the night! You are… The Brood!”

“Not that kind of Brood,” Brood started to explain, only for Melanie to cut her off with, “She’s being purposefully dense, Grace. Please ignore her.”

“I see... Well, before we proceed downstairs, may I ask why it was important to bring Aisha here?”

“Of course. Aisha’s power is the ability to copy others’ powers. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but to summarize, she can only copy powers for so long at a time.”

Brood’s eyes widened. “Ah.”

Melanie’s lips quirked up into a smirk. “Yes.”

“Let’s head down,” she murmured as she turned to lead the way and waved for her guests to follow.

“Sooooo,” Aisha drawled as they made their way downstairs and the lights changed from the homier lights of the living room into the utilitarian variety also used in her lab. “You ain’t gonna kill me and use me for parts or nuthin’, right?”

“Your body is safe from me,” Brood wryly responded. “I only make my clutch from materials derived from the bodies of virgins sacrificed under a full moon.”

Aisha chuckled and quipped, “Pretty sure tonight’s a full moon, Stepford.”

“Sorry,” One interrupted, “but the next full moon begins tomorrow night.”

Aisha stopped in her tracks halfway through a step with wide eyes. “The fuck was that?”

Brood paused. “I could tell you,” she replied as she engaged the motor functions of her hair and made the strands writhe as she silently prompted One, who finished for her, “but are you sure you want to know?”

The teen stared at her for several seconds. Brood didn’t need to turn around to see. She could see the girl’s reactions just fine through the optic refraction of the prisms interwoven with the myomer strands that made up her hair. “Damn Stepford, you ain’t gotta turn the freaky dial up to eleven. I already knew you were one of the bots. Chill.”

That caught her off guard. “Oh? What gave me away?”

Aisha shrugged nonchalantly. “You ain’t got the spark, so you ain’t a parahuman. Only sparks right here are mine ‘n’ Boss lady’s plus whoever that familiar spark is further downstairs.”

‘Spark’… An expression of her power? Such a thing was difficult to work around, since every power was unique in some way. They could be similar, but no two powers were truly the same. But she can feel the girl downstairs from this distance? Extraordinary. “I see. You are both correct and wrong, I’m afraid,” she replied as she resumed guiding them.

“Nah,” Aisha denied. “No spark, no power. Those’re the rules.”

“A word to the wise, dear,” Brood pointed out as she walked up to the monitoring room and its door slid open. “Powers are more complex than you know. There will always be interactions you can’t predict.”

“Jesus fuck on a candy stick,” Aisha muttered as she stepped into the room and gaped at the monitors. “I knew I recognized that spark, but without lookin’ at her… What the actual fuck are you playing at here?”

“For example,” Brood continued, as if Aisha hadn’t interrupted, “did you know that one could acquire powers by drinking the contents of a bottle?”

Aisha’s eyes whipped from Brood to Melanie and back a few times before landing on the latter, whose eyes were resolute as she watched the screens. “What the shit is she talking about?”

“This is why I waited until we were here to explain, Aisha.” Melanie stepped further into the room until she was by Brood’s side. “You already know ‘Case-53’ is the term used to refer to capes like Gregor and Newter. An individual with a unique appearance and a power who woke up one day in some unfamiliar city, unsure who they are or how they got there. Gregor, Newter, and even Elle have been setting aside a portion of their take from each of our jobs to pay for the investigation into the origin of Case-53s. Until recently, I pursued this investigation just for them, hoping I could give them the closure they sought.

“Now things are different. I caught wind of a lead in Philadelphia and followed up on it. I learned something I hadn’t expected: Their case was likely related to ours.”

“‘Ours’?” Aisha parroted, glancing at Brood.

“Ours,” Brood affirmed as she watched her prisoner begin to wake up as she slowly tapered down the sedative without killing the stream entirely. Her honey colored eyes were left unfocused still, and her shoulder-length brown hair hung somewhat limply, though its wavy texture was still discernible.

“So the PRT were actually right to get pissed off at us,” Aisha pointedly remarked with evident irritation. “Color me surprised.”

“The majority of capes get their powers from triggering,” Melanie continued, ignoring the jab. “You have the worst day of your life—are pushed to the breaking point then pushed right past it. Most of these capes got their powers… organically, we’ll call it. Life put them into such a situation naturally. Capes like Grace and I, however, were put there on purpose.”

“Mommy!” her daughter wailed as she was taken away by the man who introduced himself as Adam before stabbing her.

“Put her down!” she screamed at the monster pretending to be a man as she desperately tried to put pressure on the gaping wound in her side. “Leave my daughter alone!”

“I can fix her! Please, let me fix Mommy!”

It was only thanks to her complete control over her body’s autonomous functions that Brood didn’t flinch as the memory washed over her. Keep going. You’ll get her back.

“We found each other while looking for answers,” Melanie continued to explain, “and we’ve been searching together for those responsible since. Our methods may differ, but we’ve always been after the same goal. I found paperwork in Philly that suggested the people who forced us to trigger may be behind Case-53s, and strangely enough, I found her name on a list of their clients who got powers out of a bottle. Now, we could probably use… less savory methods to force her,” she nodded at the monitor, “to talk, but we would undoubtedly get better answers if you interrogate her instead.”

“Torturing this bitch would be the nicer method,” Aisha disagreed as she glared at the image of a severely disoriented Octavia Thatcher on the display. Apparently her hatred was enough to overcome any shock from the revelations she was being bombarded with. “You’ve seen what she did to Junebug and El.”

Brood watched silently as the two of them shared a long look, clearly communicating through unspoken words. She knew enough about the situation from One to understand. June and Elle—they were the girls Octavia had kidnapped and whom Sixteen had died trying to save. The attempt to rescue them had provided the cover necessary for her Clutch to abscond with the incapacitated Master and the Breaker within her, an unexpected prize whose corona pollentia had yielded fascinating data that she was even now trying to incorporate into her latest eggs. Whether the concept would prove successful remained to be seen, but if it did, then Seventy-Seven would likely be the first completed egg with the advancement.

“Fuck, I’ll do it,” Aisha finally responded. “Way I look at it, serves the bitchsicle right to get a taste’a her own medicine.”

Melanie pulled a small box out of the pocket of her black slacks, and even before she opened it, Brood readily identified the communication system she had rushed to upgrade for Melanie’s crew in preparation for the rescue attempt at the library. The tinkertech was outside her specialty and had accordingly been a pain to develop, but it had been tangential enough she thankfully hadn’t been left to fly alone in the dark, metaphorically speaking. “I know your power works better with proximity and eye contact, but we can’t send you in with no protection. You remember the upgrades we discussed prior to UPenn, right?”

“Yeah, I remember. Things’ll block out all of what she’s saying and let me hear you.”

“Almost all of what she’s saying. There’s still a risk. This is your last chance to back out.”

“You already forget who broke their motherfucking legs in that shithole swamp to get Junebug ‘n’ El out? Gimme the damn earbuds, Boss.”

Several minutes later, Brood watched with grim anticipation as Aisha entered the room where Octavia was being held. Shadows burst from the girl and writhed over her skin in a tight weave as she changed, growing pudgier to the point that her jeans and shirt were ill fitting and her bomber jacket actually looked to be a more appropriate size. This could be it, she thought, properly allowing herself to hope. Five years. She had languished over the kidnapping of her daughter for five years. This interrogation, what they learned here, was going to change everything. Every one of her bodies she had stationed in labs across the country paused in their work as all of her focus, for once, rested solely on one location.

In Arizona, the original Brood twitched within the enclosure she used to synchronize with her bodies, and One turned from her command center to examine her directly in concern. Unable to grow naturally, One’s big, blue eyes remained a painful reminder of her daughter—a picture of her beautiful baby girl, frozen in time.

“Whooz yooou?” Octavia slurred as her eyes attempted to focus on her doppelgänger. “Whhhyyy you like... liiike me?”

“Look left. Look right,” Aisha began ordering, pausing only long enough for the impaired Master to attempt to follow the directions.

After a few questions, Brood cut the flow of her specialized sedative, letting its effects wear off at an accelerated rate. The Master power should have taken effect by now.

Apparently Aisha agreed, since she finally started the real interrogation. “Tell me everything you know about Eden.”

You be a good girl and hang on, Riley. Mommy’s coming to save you.