SRFMAW: Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The room was a sterile box of beige walls and unremarkable furniture, a temporary accommodation that felt more like a holding cell. It was one of a dozen identical apartments in a secure downtown building, hastily repurposed for Protectorate members displaced by the recent… incident. Hers was on the third floor of a municipal annexe that had been emptied two years ago when funding dried up. She didn’t like it, but it was not like she had much choice in the matter. The PRT headquarters for the north-east region, which would have normally hosted her in such a situation, had sustained what the official report would call ‘extensive damage’—a bureaucratic euphemism for it being systematically dismantled. The Protectorate’s own spiderwebbed, listing building was little better than a ruin.

A sigh, thin and sharp, escaped Rebecca Costa-Brown’s lips as she floated through the open doorway. The door clicked shut behind her, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room. It smelled like dust and disinfectant and a hint of damp cardboard. A chair, a cot, a metal locker, a desk with a laptop plugged into a nest of orange extension cords. She didn’t bother with the lights. The city glowed outside the reinforced window, a sprawling tapestry of electric light marred by the dark, ragged patches where the power grid had failed, where he had torn through it.

For hours, she had been a blur of motion and force, a living tool of disaster relief. Now, the adrenaline had begun to recede, leaving behind a residue of cold fury. She was still wearing what was left of her costume, supplemented by a hooded cape she had ripped from Eidolon’s shoulders. It was a practical necessity. Legend’s laser had scoured the back of her own uniform to tatters, leaving her indecent. The memory of it, the sudden, searing heat and the indignity of the exposure, was a fresh irritant on an already raw nerve.

She peeled the borrowed cape from her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. The remnants of her own costume followed, piece by piece, until she stood in the dim light, a monument of pale, unblemished skin. A quick, brutally efficient shower washed away the grime and the lingering scent of ozone and burnt concrete. Wrapped in a simple bathrobe, she felt the first flicker of something approaching normalcy.

It didn’t last.

The laptop on the small desk, a standard-issue PRT device. As she entered the room, its screen lit up with an incoming call. Secure channel. Encrypted.

She sat, the damp terrycloth of the robe rough against her skin, and accepted the connection. Doctor Mother’s face appeared, framed by the familiar, spartan office that served as the nerve centre of their enterprise. The image was crisp, the audio clear. No pleasantries. There rarely were.

“Legend?” the Doctor asked, her voice as flat and uninflected as ever.

“Conscious,” Rebecca replied, her own voice a low murmur. “Thirty-two minutes now. Still recovering. Concussed.” 

“Good.” A slight, almost imperceptible nod. “We have a development. Contessa has found a Path.”

Rebecca didn’t blink. The word had weight. “To what end?”

“The end. Scion.”

Silence. The generator hum. The desk felt colder through her forearms.

“The new variable,” Doctor Mother continued, “the cape. He is essential.”

Rebecca’s mind, a perfectly indexed archive of memory and information, began to collate data. The Doctor’s insistence that she be the first on the scene at the crash site. The carefully worded, almost casual instructions. A piece clicked into place, sharp and clean.

“Your directive for me to be the first responder,” Rebecca stated, not a question. “It was related to this.”

“Yes.”

Another piece. “And my role in this… Path?”

“Is to ensure he is properly aligned.”

A dry, humourless smile touched Rebecca’s lips. “Aligned. He levelled a third of the city, beat three promising capes to the verge of death and put Legend in a medical bay.”

“The initial contact was… suboptimal,” the Doctor conceded. “The Simurgh’s interference was unexpected.”

Rebecca’s thoughts flashed back. Three days ago. The Simurgh, stirring from her orbital slumber, a premature and unsettling shift in her pattern. A brief, targeted psychic scream over Boston, just before the Triumvirate was meant to engage the newcomer. A diversion. A calculated move to draw them away, to ensure the first contact would be violent. And it had been. Contessa’s initial plan, a carefully orchestrated de-escalation, had been derailed before it even began.

“She wants him,” Rebecca said, the conclusion inescapable.

“She wants to influence him,” the Doctor corrected. “To what end, we can’t be certain. But we can’t allow it.”

“We could have contained him,” Rebecca countered, a flicker of her earlier frustration surfacing. “The moment the Endbringer’s interference was confirmed, Doormaker could have opened a portal to an uninhabited Earth. Trapped him.”

“It was considered,” Doctor Mother replied calmly. “The path was modelled. Contessa’s assessment predicted the complete destruction of at least two inhabited Earths, the near-total destruction of this one, and the deaths of thousands of capes, including a significant portion of our own assets. He would not be trapped for long. We believe the Simurgh has contingencies to release him. Attempting to kill him outright yielded a similar, if slightly more condensed, path to catastrophe.”

The laptop chimed softly. A file transfer. Rebecca opened it.

The screen filled with data, charts, and analytical reports. The cape—designated ‘Kratos’ in the files—was a monster. The numbers were stark, unbelievable. Durability on par with an Endbringer. Flight speed that theoretically exceeded the speed of light. Strength that dwarfed Behemoth.

She clicked on a video file. It showed the cape shattering one of Eidolon’s force fields. A construct that had previously withstood five blows from Behemoth, that had held against the Leviathan. He had broken it—two punches, one hand, no visible bracing.

Another file. NORAD tracking data. The cape, leaving the atmosphere, accelerating. The numbers climbed at an impossible rate, past escape velocity, past anything their technology could properly measure. He had left the solar system in minutes.

A cold, heavy certainty settled in Rebecca’s stomach. “He was toying with us,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Almost certainly. Number Man’s analysis suggests he was assessing your capabilities… or more likely, entertaining himself.”

She looked back at the screen, at the cold, impassive face of Doctor Mother. “What do you need from me?”

“The Simurgh’s interference has complicated the Path,” the Doctor said. “Originally, the path was clearest if you remained unaware of the specifics. Plausible deniability. Now, we must be more direct. We can no longer afford subtlety. Contessa believes he will return. And when he does, he will be… volatile.”

“And my part in this?”

“A honeypot,” Doctor Mother said. “The Path to Victory requires you to seduce him.”

The statement was absurd, grotesque. Yet, Rebecca’s expression did not change. She felt no shock, no revulsion. It was merely another variable, another unpleasant but necessary step in a long and brutal equation. Her life had been a series of such steps since the day she’d chosen this path in a sterile hospital room. She was a pragmatist. She was a weapon. Weapons did not have the luxury of indignation.

“What is required of me to succeed?” she asked, her voice as cold and hard as the steel of her helmet.

“The initial stages are complex. There are steps you will need to take, actions to perform when he returns. Contessa will provide them as needed.” Doctor Mother paused, a final, chilling note entering her voice. “But the primary condition, the one upon which the entire path rests… is simple.”

“And that is?”

“You only need to survive his rampage when he returns.”