The Web of the Weaver: Chapter 25

On the way home I talked with Aisha and Brian.

But I had more to think about.

PRT. That had been the word I’d picked out of the noise. That and a comment about a raid on the E88. I hadn’t been able to pick out everything but…

Little raid we did. And then PRT. And Boss.

The Undersiders didn’t have any non-powered members. And they only had two women. The first was Hellhound, an animal master. Violent, often attacking without provocation. Also, from the images I’d seen, stocky.

The second was Tattletale. Slim, a few images on PHO of her in a purple catsuit with more than a few comments about her body.

Supposedly a Thinker, rating unknown. Other powers unknown.

I had been standing next to a Thinker. Had she found me out? How much about my powers could she have gleaned? Had Aisha been in on it?

“Well, it’s been a long night, Taylor,” Dad said as we pulled up. “But I think you should do some things with Aisha. She seems nice… And…” He paused. “I know I’ve not been the best at supporting you, but… Not everyone will betray you.”

His words were cold water. I’d been with Aisha, I’d seen her. And… Could I trust her?

I didn’t have to. I could associate with her and be her friend. Trust could come later. And if I assumed that I was outed… I couldn’t do anything about it right now, so be wary but not panicked.

“Right Dad. I’d better get to sleep. School tomorrow.”

“Night, Taylor.”

I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight as my bugs poured out and took their place over the computer. It was time to get some work done.

There was only one male member of the Undersiders who even came close to Brian’s size. Grue. Who had been injured and arrested by the PRT. Now, he was a ward. He’d referred to his boss. That didn’t sound like a parole officer.

Director Emily Piggot was the local boss of the PRT and I’d researched her. A bit of a hard ass, former strike team, invalidated from front line duty after Ellisburg. Most information about that incident was classified, with only the outcome—the region quarintined, being public info, although there were images of strange creatures inside, and one thirty second video from a drone of a small army pouring out of some of the houses.

The drone owner had done three years for violating an S-class zone.

Whatever was in there, the PRT definitely didn’t want to provoke it.

She’d cleared Dad to tell me about Sophia.

Another criminal cape who had joined the Wards. Was this…

My bugs started working on the two computers I had hooked up, while I worked on my computer.

Grue was known as a small-time enforcer. Unless Brian had been lying about his age, he’d first shown up when he was fourteen, three years ago.

There were some pictures, a few rumbles, but by the time he was fifteen or so, he changed. He became a more professional looking parahuman, and the few pictures showed someone wearing a skull-masked helmet, using his powers to cloud the region around him. He’d been outside of the Bay until he—

No. The public believed he’d been outside of the Bay until he returned a year ago, to join up with the Undersiders. He could have remained in the Bay and traveled to the other places where he’d been sighted.

Thank God for obsessed cape geeks, I thought. But most of the limited information (Grue wasn’t nearly as interesting as say, the Butcher, as the age-locked forum: trying to score selfies with the Butcher proved, besides proving that certain people didn’t understand the concept of death) showed someone who avoided violence, or at least kept it controlled. Shadow Stalker had rumors about her violence, most of the comments about Grue, especially the couple of times he did bodyguard duty for smalltime celebrities was “professional” and “doesn’t talk a lot.”

Was this what the PRT thought they were getting with Sophia? Impossible to say. If so, they’d badly dropped the ball.

Some of my insects started spinning wildly. I calmed down. Sophia had been dealt with, as had the school. I needed to look forward, not back.

So, Grue may be working with the PRT. Probably the Ward they’re going to announce. There had been rumors about that. And everyone would politely nod and agree that he was completely different from Grue the criminal.

But Lisa… or Tattletale (not certain but I’ll give it 90 percent) had arranged to meet him. Putting a pin on whether her power would have outed me for a moment, she needed to meet him in a normal place, for a normal reason. Like convincing Aisha to go out to see a movie. I expected she was fully aware of Brian’s protective nature. You didn’t need to be a Thinker to see that.

“Think about it,” I murmured.

The Undersiders were maintaining contact with Brian.

They had engaged in an atypical raid against the E88.

And Lisa had used the word Boss. Had she been referring to Emily Piggot?

I doubted it. She would have said, your Boss.

So the Undersiders were working for someone.

Who?

Lung? The ABB only made use of Asians… although that didn’t mean that Lung might not have use for an off-books team, especially if they were in debt to him. Say, in return for him not finishing up what he’d started.

E88? No. Not unless they were raiding themselves.

Those weren’t the only gangs in the Bay, but they were the ones that mattered. Most other groups came and went with alarming regularity.

There was one other, Coil, but he didn’t make use of parahumans at all, at least as far as PHO believed.

Could he be using them as an off-books team?

I shook my head. One thing that every book on investigation I’d read included was a warning in not running away with assumptions, complete with case histories where law enforcement agencies and criminals alike stuck to screamingly inaccurate theories, because they fell in love with one theory and decided it had to be right.

I had a number of possibilities. Nothing more, not until I gathered more information.

The first step however was a smaller step. I did like Aisha.

Even if I couldn’t fully trust her.

That wasn’t a big problem, I couldn’t fully trust anyone.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t help her. Her mother was a problem.

I was developing a talent for making problems go away.

Not as Orb Weaver.

As The Investigator.

*****

The next day, I was at Winslow.

It still felt odd. There was no graffiti on the walls. Principal Thomas had introduced a new policy. Anyone caught using graffiti got to white wash the wall… and those who signed up could then illustrate it, so long as it wasn’t gang related.

The halls were quickly becoming colorful, and most importantly, I’d realized that the people who made those murals and paintings? Many of  them took pride in their work and were very protective of them… And if they weren’t making gang graffiti, many of them were still gang members.

From some conversations I’d heard, Winslow was starting to get a rep as a neutral zone, where you could talk to people you’d never talk to on the street. But every school had paper and microfiche records. In a world with TInker EMPs, nobody could depend on electronic storage.

And the good news was, those records went back five years until they were transferred to the district office.

The storeroom door was normally locked, but some spiders webbed the mechanism so that when the janitor closed the door, the lock didn’t engage. And I waited, continuing my work.

In Gladly’s class, we were going over the issues of law enforcement and parahumans. I’d picked King for my presentation on the dangers of not knowing all the information about a parahuman before engaging him. Some of the students got a little green as I discussed the first case when lethal force had been used against him, complete with some pictures of the consequences at the local high school.

Odd. They weren’t thatgraphic. Some people were just overly sensitive, I decided as Julia ran for the door and Mr. Gladly gave me an A five minutes in.

But then class was out. The students were flooding down, the security guards were watching them, and I went to the second-floor bathroom.

Not many good memories here, as I tagged everyone in the area.

Winslow didn’t have a full camera set up. Just for the main hallways, but not complete.

That had been considered, but Principal Thomas had gone with teachers.

You’re students, not Birdcage inmates, he’d said at an assembly.

And I knew where the cameras were. Only a few were in a position to see me, and they had moths flicker past them, just long enough to obscure me.

It was a risk, but a calculated one. I had moths flutter past some other cameras, to disguise the purpose, and well, Winslow had moths. If people were looking for them as a parahuman power, I’d badly miscalculated.

Then I was pulling the door open. No alarm. It wasn’t that kind of storeroom. I let the door close behind me and then moved into the room. There they were. Cardboard boxes.  I gloved up and started to go through them.

Aisha Laborn. A year back, before she suddenly moved to Arcadia.

Hopefully the PRT hasn’t… No. There it is.Student information.

I pulled out my cell phone and one of those flat magnifying glasses the elderly used.

That was all I needed as I shone a light through the microfiche and took pictures with my cell phone. I didn’t read them beyond ensuring they were legible in my storage.

I put the microfiche back and then closed the box, using my bugs to erase any sign of my presence and replace the coating of dust. I had what I needed. Name and contact information.

Then I left, waiting until the janitor moved out of the area, as I left the school.

I winced at the sound of the Winslow marching band.

Evidently, even the new order couldn’t do anything about that.

*****

I didn’t go home. I was going to have to do some work, online work, so it was time to hit a cybercafe.

I paid in cash, and wandered over to the nearest empty computer. The library had cameras, but the cybercafe didn’t. It was a place where teens and adults could browse to their heart’s content and without shame.

And it had a vested interest in not turning in its clientele.

Not that I was going to trust that.

I accessed PHO on a throwaway account, seeing what Void Cowboy had been bann—oh, yes, an erotic fanfic of Glory Girl and Moord Nag would do it. I really hope he doesn’t anger the wrong person. Dying because some diabolical alliance of bad guys had tired of my interference was one thing.

Dying because someone nuked the school I went to just to shut Void up was an entirely different thing.

But now I was ready.

The Bay had a publicly accessible prisoner tracking system, a relic of a lawsuit from 2005 where the police had been caught “losing” prisoners in the system, sometimes for weeks. Now, while they didn’t have to (and wouldn’t) post the full records, you had access to arrests, names, and what the call had been for.

Nancy Laborn… Fortunately the last name was a little more unusual but I—

The screen filled up. How many times had she been arrested?

Prostitution, public intoxication, resisting arrest, shoplifting, domestic disturbances…  I shook my head. Nothing individually terrible. Nothing to endanger the Bay, or bring down the FBI…

But enough to make a brother desperately terrified at even the hinthis sister might go back there.

How would I handle this? Directly targeting her…

It would be very hard to imagine the PRT not noticing that.

Parallel construction.

I thought about it while I downloaded nearly a hundred other individual records and put them on my USB. Anyone checking them would have to check every record, or maybe would just assume I was looking for someone else and drop it. Then I turned off the computer, manually, after clearing my caches. Leaving I kept thinking.

She had a lawyer if she was contesting guardianship. That kind of woman probably didn’t have a good lawyer. And it was very likely that said lawyer might be involved in issues separate from hers. Issues an investigator might discover.

I would find them, find their records, and then, if they were involved in any other criminal activity, I would investigate that.

And if that happened to lead me to Ms. Laborn… well, it was just a coincidence.

Nodding to myself, I headed for the bus. Tomorrow, after school, I’d start. But not just on this. I’d be keeping pressure up on the E88, after all.