August.1



The woman in front of me finished paying, and walked toward the automatic glass doors with her bag. I stepped to the counter, and the middle-aged woman behind it looked up.



“I’m here to pick up an order.” My voice was rough, more than disuse alone would account for. “I paid in advance. Number 1729.”



The counter faced the store’s windows, so I was able to watch in telescopic detail when the woman looked up and her face softened, the lines on her forehead fading as those edging her eyes deepened. She reached beneath the counter and produced a conical bundle, carefully wrapped in brown paper and taped shut.



I took it into my arms, feeling the stiff cardboard sheltering the fragile cargo beneath, and turned my mind to the difficulties of the day to come. Social engagements had never been my preferred battlefield.



I had turned away to leave when she opened her mouth, closed it, and then spoke. “I’m sorry for your loss.”



I halted at her words. She misunderstood: I wore this black as armor against the world, not in mourning for my lost. But she was sincere in her condolences — and I did not wish to explain myself. So I thanked her instead, and left without turning back.



An old man, silver-haired and straight-backed, held the door for me as I stepped out into morning’s sharp-edged shadows. I nodded to him, and crossed the parking lot to a black Vespa. I opened the cargo container under the seat and carefully settled the package within before closing it and seating myself atop it.



I drew my new smartphone forth and doodled the unlocking pattern with my right forefinger. A little hunting and pecking led to the map application, and I studied the route back once more. A few seconds and three more taps later, and music played through my earpiece as I slid the silenced phone back into its fitted pocket behind my belt.



Wisp hadn’t blinked when I asked him the secret to the commercial-free radio: a smartphone playlist, with the day’s BBC news slotted in as another song. He’d even helped me set up my phone to do it automatically, though he’d apologized for the fact that the software wouldn’t arrange the pieces as artfully. Maybe he was right, but I couldn’t hear it: the pieces and juxtapositions were still beautiful, hinting at an ordered harmony complex beyond my hearing.



Accord’s plans, too, remained beyond my full understanding. Over the last month and a half, Wisp had started taking the occasional trip out of the city. I wasn’t sure what exactly he did during them, and wasn’t sure I needed to know; his absence was, in its own way, a mark of trust and a sign that things were going well… assuming he was actually absent, instead of wearing another’s shape.



I pulled out into traffic with a Bach gigue sounding in my ears, rode the stop and go of rush-hour traffic alone in a bubble of beauty. The growling car engines, the faint squeak of brakes, the bustling streets — even the thumping bass of a stereo system three cars back — all of it was familiar. And strange.



Signs advertised back to school sales and the end of the community theater’s summer run; a Labor Day picnic to be held at Riverside Park and a zoning hearing to be held in the local high school gymnasium on Saturday. I’d even been to the community theater, once, when my mother was still alive. I had fond memories of several summer afternoons in the woods here, reading in shade near the water. Nothing here had changed, and yet I found it disquieting.



Barely thirty miles from Brockton Bay, and hardly a sign of the disasters that we had faced. The people on the sidewalks wore clothes that were unpatched and even unstained; their cheeks were scrubbed and pink… and full. Still, the eyes were where the greatest difference lay.



I knew that the ripples had reached this far and farther still, knew that this small town had been whipsawed between poverty and prosperity as their nearest city vanished overnight — only to be replaced weeks later by one of the largest construction projects the world had ever seen. They had seen hardship of their own, and taken in almost a thousand refugees from Brockton Bay as well: no small feat for a town of barely six thousand.



Yet for all they had seen here, their eyes were unfocused. Vague. Life as they knew it had continued, and they expected that tomorrow would continue to be like today, as if that were the natural order of things. And if there were to be a disruption… why, they trusted that civilization would come from chaos, as dawn followed dark.



I found their faith disturbing. They could lose everything in an hour and it wouldn’t even take an Endbringer to do it, just the right parahuman on the wrong day. And yet they went about their business so very casually. It was like watching a blind man jaywalk across a busy street.



It was therefore with a certain sense of relief that I left the town behind and merged onto the highway, slotting in behind a convoy of trucks. Even an immense amount of construction traffic vanished into the scale of a highway built to feed through even a medium-sized city, and we traveled almost alone on the road, with only the occasional convoy running the reciprocal route to break up the miles.



The men and women working for Fortress, Henderson, or any of the other myriad companies involved in supplying skill or materials were no less well-fed and no less blind, but what did that matter? They worked in my cause, and I was grateful for it.



BBC News, with Charles Connor. News from the war between Russia and the CUI: house to house fighting in Novosibirsk continues unabated. General Suvarov’s encirclement has cut off the CUI expeditionary force, and he has announced that he intends to leave not one invader alive. CUI forces, spearheaded by the Yangban, have driven the Red Gauntlet and Peach Orchard Exiles back into a burning Tianjin. CUI deputy foreign minister Liu Yesui warned that aid to CUI exile groups would be met with ‘harsher’ penalties in the future, noting that it could be considered an act of war. Officially, both Russia and the CUI are considering ‘all options’; unofficially, rumors persist that the attempted use of strategic nuclear weapons by both sides has failed due to the intervention of Scion. The United Nations continues to debate an appropriate response, but Russia and the CUI have united to veto consideration of every proposal thus far. Meanwhile, in Montreal, Quebecois independence will be coming up for a vote again, with PQ leader Pauline Marois citing concerns about the cultural and economic effects of the proposed free trade zone with the United States of America. BBC News.



As the news finished and the music resumed, the highway was entering the hills west of the bay. As the trucks slowed on the incline, I moved a lane to the left and gradually overtook them. A few minutes more, rising toward the ridgeline, and then the ground dropped away and Brockton Bay spread itself before me.



Even today, the scars were plainly visible. The city looked like a topographical map, with hills and ridgelines drawn with intact buildings, and lower elevations filled in with rubble. Crawler’s meandering path of destruction was as clear as a slug’s through a garden, as was the ring of ashes where three giants had fought.



The rising arcology drew the eye later — almost too large to recognize as man-made. From afar, it looked like a series of mid-rises being built atop a miles-long hill that naturally paralleled the shore. Closer in, it was a hive of activity: a constant stream of workers and material entering and leaving at every level.



As I entered the city, I had to deal with traffic once more. I wove a path between trucks of every size, shuttling equipment or people between staging areas and work sites, skirted around dense flocks of bicycles, and even had to make my way around a handful of civilian vehicles, before getting stuck behind a Step Van.



Shatterbird’s song had destroyed everything that used silicon, including critical parts in almost every car built since the mid-80’s, and the pumps for all the gas stations in the city, too. With so much of the city in ruins, there hadn’t been much occasion to use a car… except to leave. Many had, in those first bleak days. I myself had departed, briefly and with a purpose.



Now? Well, some people liked biking half an hour each way to work arcology construction. Some really didn’t, hitching rides in the back of construction trucks, or with a neighbour who’d bought a new car. And then there were some who would rather contribute in their own ways… like the vividly decorated falafel food truck I was following.



The native Brocktonites generally didn’t have much cash available — whatever their wealth might be when the insurance payouts showed up, or when the arcology finished and they could actually sell the equity I’d promised, most of them couldn’t use it today.



The imported construction crews, on the other hand, had had money to burn, but nowhere to spend it… initially. Bars, restaurants, gambling, even food trucks — a veritable boomtown of entertainment had sprung up around the reconstruction, and a sizable fraction of the city was engaged in that enterprise instead of working on the arcology.



Just as planned.



Contractors living in company dorms might want for entertainment alone, but their dollar did not vanish once spent. Profitable as it was to cater to the needs of all those contractors so far from home, the caterers had their needs too — and spent on them scarcely less freely than the contractors themselves. And so it went onward, as entire sections of the city’s economy rebuilt themselves, layer after pearlescent layer, around the intrusion.



This, as much as any work in concrete and steel, was the reconstruction of my city. A city is not its buildings, but its people and the patterns they wove among themselves — dense, dazzling… and delicate. Those fragile webs had been shredded by Leviathan and the Nine, and the remnants swept away in the desperate struggle for survival.



I saw an opening, and accelerated into it, swinging past the truck and onto the seaward access road. To my left, the arcology rose, massive concrete bulk crowned with a forest of steel; to my right, the ocean swelled dark beneath the horizon’s bright bar; above it all a glowing white sky, a single hazy spot within it shining brighter still.



The access road curved left around the northern boundary of the arcology, but I rode straight on into the docks. They were again, as they had not been since I was a child, full of cargo and bustle. None of that was from shipping, not yet: the docks weren’t scheduled to open until January and we’d need every day until then to prepare.



I wove through the rhythms of the site restarting itself each morning, past the crowds of hard-hatted workers and lines of trucks, around the stately progress of a massive crane and the bobcats following it like ducklings, until I came to the trailers that served as site offices near the foot of the first wharf. Wisp’s black sedan was already parked out front, and I slid into the space conveniently left open to its right before dismounting and checking the clock.



Two minutes early: I had time. I stretched, and insects boiled out from beneath my dress, covering me in another layer of chitin. I took that moment to look in all directions about myself simultaneously, swarms elsewhere throughout my range joining in to fill out the picture.



Vast concrete plains stretched north, filled with metal containers loaded with supplies of all kinds, and beyond them open air depots laid out on hammered earth: steel and wood and so much else, laid up at a pace scarce faster than they were being used. West, a railyard was taking shape around the existing end of the line — a train idled there even now, while a crane transferred its load of containers to waiting carriers. Vehicles buzzed between the stacks, transferring containers to trucks which rumbled south toward the rising bulk of the arcology. Eastward, the shore did not so much limit activity as channel it: the first wharf already extended halfway to the horizon.



Three months ago, I had stood on a skinny pier not a quarter mile from here, the sunless sea at my back and a burning city at his. He’d stripped away my power, reduced me to empty words and a knife… had I ever come closer to death? And now, not even the beach where I beheaded him remained.



I shook my head, let my swarms scuttle back into concealment, and removed my package from the cargo storage. I took the steps lightly; the trailer door opened as I approached. Wisp loomed within, bowing me into the trailer’s interior; at the conference table David and Glenn stood from their chairs.



I set my parcel down on the table — the ceremony would not be until lunch, and the air conditioning would be better for it — and greeted them. Glenn raised his mug of coffee in answer, then drank deep; David waved a hand full of folders before tucking them under his arm once more. Wisp simply nodded, and opened the door again… and we trooped out to begin the morning’s inspection.



Glenn took the lead this morning, steering us west to the rail terminal and warehouses. “The major issue here isn’t really construction, at least not our work — we’ll have this up and running this fall, and you can see where the expansions will continue northward as tonnage rises. But getting the terminal perfect doesn’t matter if the line isn’t in good repair, and the line was never built to handle the volume of freight we’re projecting.”



“Problem?” Wisp’s voice was as expressionless as ever.



Glenn removed his glasses, wiped them with a piece of cloth, and replaced them before replying. “Not on our end. And I think Conrail is pushing this project — they’ve had a hard time hanging on, even with the strategic relief contracts, and need this to work as much as we do. Still, if you happen to know someone over there…”



Wisp’s head dipped slightly. “I’ll see to it.”



Glenn and David nodded back, faces grim. I wondered what they thought they were setting in motion when they mentioned external problems like these; wondered whether they understood the limits of Wisp’s power, or even the fact that every power had its limits. Without that understanding, their imagination would supply a parade of possible powers, each more fearful than the last.



If so, that was their mistake: Wisp wasn’t dangerous because of his power; Wisp was dangerous because he was a highly competent man (woman?) who found technical problems a personal challenge and moral problems a mild amusement. The fact that he was a shapeshifter as well was practically gratuitous to his threat level.



We retraced our route along the on-dock rail lines in a silence that lasted almost to the shore. Much of a modern dock’s physical plant by area was wide expanses of concrete on which containers might be stacked, but the heart of a port in time, trouble, and money went into where the sea met the land: the wharves, and how they went out, up, and down.



Building a structure over a thousand feet out into the ocean, strong enough to bear tens of thousands of tons of cargo securely despite wind, wave, and tide, was no small feat of engineering. And even once built, it would be all but useless without the cranes — all the gains of containerization against break bulk shipping rested on ready manipulation of the containers. Yet neither wharf nor crane had any meaning unless ships could navigate the channel into harbor, and Brockton Bay had not been commercially navigable for years.



As we set foot on Wharf 1, detouring around several massive holes, David cleared his throat. “They aren’t due in for another six weeks, but those are footings for one of the super post Panamax cranes.”



I nodded, but walked on without reply — I wasn’t as interested in what was on schedule as I was in what was threatening to slip. Wisp’s stride never faltered, and David and Glenn traded a glance before catching up.



We walked the miles from rail terminal to wharf’s tip under a clouded sky. It wasn’t finished — the dock project wasn’t a tenth as complex as the arcology, but the scale was still enormous. Incomplete as it was, I could still stand half a thousand feet from where the shore had been, look out to sea, and see pilings being sunk for as far out again, and farther; look left, and see the beginnings of a second wharf stretching out from shore.



This facility was being built to a scale equal to the busiest ports in the world, in a harbor that hadn’t been used for commercial shipping in a decade. There were reasons to think this would work — having the first facility on the East Coast capable of handling those mammoth ships had to count for something — but no way of knowing whether it would or not. Besides experiment, of course.



In the distance, a white geyser erupted hundreds of feet into the air; most of a minute later, a dull thump sounded. I nodded toward the sight. “How is the dredging coming?”



David’s huge hands washed each other briefly. “It’s a, ah, new technique. We haven’t seen results as yet.”



“The calculations are sound.” Wisp’s voice was empty.



David spread his hands hastily, nodding. “Of course! I, ah, I don’t have any experience with it, that’s all.”



Dredging the wide channels we would need to a depth of sixty feet would require feats of engineering to the same scale as above the waterline, and conducted in a more forbidding environment. The use of explosives was normal, if the seabed was hard enough to call for it; Accord’s innovation was the use of the natural movement of the ocean to empty a channel created by carefully sequenced detonations. David’s doubt was reasonable: the natural movement of the ocean had filled that seabed in the first place.



I raised my left hand slightly, palm toward Wisp. “Is the blasting on schedule?”



David nodded eagerly. “We’re moving inward on pace. By the time we plan to start receiving cargo, we should have a channel all the way to the completed wharf.”



Should was not the word I wanted to hear. Still, I had put my faith in Accord on other matters: no point in doubting him now — and no point in disciplining a man for doubting who was nevertheless on schedule. I nodded, as much to Wisp as to David, and turned for shore once more: the white spot amid the clouds was almost directly overhead, and the ceremony would be soon.



Three steps behind me, Glenn engaged Wisp in a discussion of logistics — conjuring earth and concrete on this scale was already nigh-miraculous; conjuring specialized machinery was still harder. David brought up the rear, eating granola bars one after the other.



As we crossed onto land once more, turning toward the site offices, I saw two figures coming toward the wharf. The taller bore my package and a briefcase; the shorter a cane. I turned to meet them, a smile rising to my lips.



“Miss Hebert.” Pete’s breath was short from the walk, but his smile was just as bright beneath a Red Sox baseball cap.



“Mr. Walker.” I inclined my head. “And Mr. Calle.”



Quinn smiled his easy off-center smile and offered up my package. I took it gently. “Always looking after me.”



“All part of the service.” He looked past me to Wisp, David, and Glenn. “Gentlemen.”



Wisp offered a formal bow in reply, and then stepped forward to shake Pete’s hand. David offered a granola bar, which Quinn waved off, and we turned back toward the southwest corner of the wharf, moving more slowly now for Pete’s sake.



Before us, there was a loose gathering of almost sixty construction workers, with more joining in. Most were sitting on the ground, or improvised seats; nearly all had food in hand. All were facing the column marking the southwest corner of the wharf, where two men stood, speaking to the crowd.



One of them broke off and hurried to meet us. He was large enough to almost seem tall, heavy with muscle beneath his gut, and soaked through with sweat from the morning. He came to a stop before us, and breathed deeply from the half-run.



“Boss. Boss.” He nodded to David and Glenn, his eyes sliding uneasily over the rest of us before returning to them. “It’s just for lunch — I’ll have ‘em all back to their work sites on time.”



Glenn opened his mouth, but was forestalled by Wisp’s subterranean bass. “We’re here for the ceremony.”



I pulled back the brown paper, exposing the cardboard shell protecting the bouquet within: a spray of small blue and white blossoms, dotted with five-petaled explosions in red and orange, and single purple cluster of star-shaped flowers at the center.



The man looked at it for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s, ah, that’s decent of you.” His voice wavered as he had to breathe once more, and he turned and hurried back to the gathering.



We followed him at a slower pace, stopping at the edge of the crowd, just near enough for the rest of our little group to hear. The speaker at the column continued, hoarse voice shouting over the noise of the site. “… plaque in the memory of Donat Wisniewski. You all knew Donny, and this is our last chance to settle accounts. So, if you want to say something, or leave something, come on up.”



All? I didn’t know Donat. We’d never had a conversation, maybe had never spoken with him except at the very end. Still, he had died a hero’s death, fighting a foe far greater than himself to save the lives of others. My own included. I certainly did owe him, but what could I possibly say to settle that account?



While I pondered, a miniature convoy led by a pair of black SUVs pulled in on the southern side of the gathering, each vehicle reversing into park. As the rider of the last vehicle, a motorcycle, dropped her kickstand, every engine cut. Then each door opened, and twenty men and women in sharply creased uniforms stepped out.



Wisp’s head tracked around smoothly to watch; my own didn’t move. Didn’t need to move, though I watched from dozens of angles as they formed up into two lines, facing the memorial. The crowd returned their attention to the ceremony, as did I, though I kept most of my eyes on these new guests.



I hadn’t ever seen PRT agents in anything but their chainmail and bubble helmets: even with their faces visible, they looked impersonal, and perhaps inhuman. The dress blacks were part of it, but the way they all stood, the way they all held their arms, the blank non-expression they all made… it was less like a dozen people standing together and more like one person standing in a dozen different places, wearing a dozen different faces. Waiting.



The people making their way up to the front seemed to think that what Donat would have wanted most was vodka. Others had brought flowers, or envelopes, or packs of cigarettes… but it was mostly vodka piled at the pillar’s base. And shotglasses. Several of the speakers took a shot before talking; almost all poured one out.



Maybe that’s why so many of the stories involved drinking. “… and that’s when he said, ‘No, officer, I’m just drunk.’” Then again, maybe causation went the other way. Either way, I was glad the two organizers kept it to one shot per mourner.



The drunk stories were usually happier than the sober ones. “… so she’s not done dressing when Donny opens the door and we hear this… snap. Anyway, he goes white, reverses out, and guns it, leaving Donny standing there in the driveway holding a car door in one hand!” ‘She’ being his second ex-wife, just before the divorce.



The first one wasn’t here for this either. No kids. No family. No house. No steady work, not since the docks shut over a decade back. A terrible gambler, in either sense of that word. And yet…



People kept filtering in to join this service, on foot, on bicycles, and in cars — there was even a dump truck that pulled up with a group standing in the back. And half of them seemed to have a story about the time Donat emptied his wallet for them, or took them in when they needed a place.



Quinn was the first of us to step forward, smile as smooth as his stride. He wove his way through the crowd to the front, set his briefcase down, and produced a bottle from it. Not vodka — something golden, with a black band around it. A flicker of attention, and I saw the label in greater detail: Yamazaki. He laid it down delicately amid the forest of half-empty Smirnoff and made his way back to us, resuming his place at my elbow.



He hadn’t spoken — that must have been deliberate, for I’d never seen him at a loss for words. But… why? What did he understand about the social dynamics here that I had missed, that he chose silence? Or did his gift carry meaning or history, as my own choice of flowers did?



Pete nudged Quinn as he returned, whispering hoarsely “Not cheap.” Quinn’s smile widened for an instant, skewing crooked, and he winked in reply.



The longer I looked at the PRT, the more I saw that there were differences between them. They just weren’t ones I understood: I couldn’t read the rank insignia, or the colored bars on their chests. Still, I was pretty sure that either a man with temples going to silver or a woman with dark, Italian, skin was in charge: those two had the only unique rank insignia here.



A ripple of laughter drew my attention back to a meandering story about how, one March, Donat bet that this would be the year the Red Sox would break the curse… and every October after, he’d offer double or nothing, with a new reason why next year would be the year. For over a decade. “Man owed me a new house by now, you know? But I just never…” The speaker broke down crying, and was led aside.



Those who took his place had shorter stories to tell, but graver. There were eleven people who’d survived Burnscar immolating the Palanquin nightclub. Six of them were here for this, and to a man they swore that if Donat hadn’t broken down the blazing doors, no one would have made it out alive.



While they spoke, Pete shuffled his slow way up. When he got to the front, he placed both hands on his cane and bowed his head for a moment, and then withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket his windbreaker. Shakily, he knelt and laid it on the pile; painfully, he stood.



As he turned to make his way back, the man with silver temples barked “Present… arms.” Twenty salutes snapped out. Pete drew himself up, and brought his hand to the brim of his cap, and then down. He walked back just as slowly as he’d come, but his back was ever so slightly straighter.



Officially, we’d both been promised anonymity. Unofficially, there had been dozens fleeing that boathouse who could have seen what we did — far too many to guarantee silence. Then again, officially, they hadn’t said anything: just saluted. Coincidentally, deniably… unmistakably.



No one wanted to follow the speakers from the Palanquin — to be fair, it was pretty hard to top a tale of heroism like that. There were witnesses who could have spoken of his attack on Jack Slash, but what could any of us say? ‘He died heroically — and futilely?’ Or worse, ‘He failed, but I succeeded?’ Hardly a proper thanks. So none of us spoke, and without more speakers to focus the crowd’s attention forward it began to shift, swirling like the ocean at the change of the tide.



Quinn raised an eyebrow at Pete’s return, darting a glance at the memorial. Pete smiled and shrugged as he spoke. “I kept a copy.”



My phone buzzed and I ignored it, choosing instead to watch what formed as the structure of the ceremony began to dissolve. Some mourners had brought foods still relatively rare in Brockton Bay: fresh fruits, pies both savory and sweet, even tuna salad — it was developing into a proper wake.



The PRT formation melted into something more informal as my phone gave the short voicemail buzz. Some of the agents stepped forward to join the groups around the food; others congregated around their convoy. The dark-skinned woman in PRT blacks traded salutes with the older man and left on her motorcycle; he clasped his hands behind him and surveyed the crowd. While the Harley’s roar dopplered away, someone called me again.



I thought I recognized Kurt at the center of a knot in the crowd, sporting a new beard, and though I didn’t see Lacey here… well. I was pretty sure Kurt hadn’t baked those nut breads himself. He looked healthy, if verging on sunburnt, and I was glad to see it — if annoyed at whoever kept calling me and hanging up after one ring.



There were still those leaving their tokens at the memorial, working their way through the thronging wake to pay their unobserved respects. This, I thought, was more to my preference. I took a step forward… and stopped as that voicemail buzz sounded once more.



Instead, I turned to my right and handed the bouquet to Quinn Calle. He took it, eyebrows rising. “Not going to lay it yourself?”



I shook my head. “You’ve represented me before. And today, I’ll honor him better by leaving.” I nodded. “Gentlemen.”



I didn’t wait for their answering nods, and swung into a fast walk back to the trailer. Once I’d gone ten yards, I moved into a jog, and then into a dead run.



Those hadn’t been calls; there had been a pattern to the buzzes, the beginnings of a message. And I knew what came next.