RWD - NO_ROLLBACK: 6.01 

The Medhall building was a monument to a dead empire. Emily felt the ghost of Kaiser in the ostentatious lobby, in the gaudy red-and-yellow crown logo etched into the marble floor, and in the sterile, echoing silence. It was a place built on crime, laundered money, and supremacist ideology, now reduced to a neutral, hollow space for a meeting she would have given a kidney to avoid. If she’d had any left to give.

NO_ROLLBACK: 6.01 

(Emily Piggot)

The Medhall building was a monument to a dead empire. Emily felt the ghost of Kaiser in the ostentatious lobby, in the gaudy red-and-yellow crown logo etched into the marble floor, and in the sterile, echoing silence. It was a place built on crime, laundered money, and supremacist ideology, now reduced to a neutral, hollow space for a meeting she would have given a kidney to avoid. If she’d had any left to give.

Two hours. That was the summons. No room for preparation, no time for her people to properly sweep the building. Just enough time to drive from the PRT headquarters, stewing in the city’s humid afternoon air, and to stand here feeling watched. She was certain they were being watched.

Beside her, Armsmaster stood rigid as a statue, his presence a compact bundle of tension and gleaming blue-black armour. The only sound from him was the near-silent hum of his power systems. He’d provided the earbuds, a direct link to the suite of biometric sensors and micro-expression readers built into his helmet. A lie detector, essentially. A beep in her left ear for a lie, two in her right for a truth. A crude tool for a complex situation, but it was something. A tether to reality in a conversation that was sure to be anything but. She could feel the weight of other eyes on them, too—the chief director’s, Dragon’s, and who knew how many suits in Washington, all observing through the button-sized cameras on her blazer. She was a proxy, a mouthpiece on a very dangerous stage. Damage control. That was her only objective. Keep the situation from getting any worse.

“You think he’ll arrive late?” Piggot asked.

“No,” Armsmaster said.

In that moment, as if in response to Piggot’s question  , the air shifted. A sudden drop in temperature, a subtle pressure change that made her ears pop. Then, the smoke came. It wasn't the acrid, choking smoke of a fire, but something thicker, colder. It billowed like a slow exhale through the lobby, an impossible mass of roiling blackness that swallowed the light and muffled all sound, spilling from nowhere and everywhere all at once, a thing more tactile than visual.

The smog poured across the marble floor, a silent, oily tide that obscured everything. For a few long, tense moments, Piggot stood her ground, expressionless. She'd faced worse than dramatic entrances.

Slowly, the smog began to recede, drawing back in on itself like a slow-motion inhalation. Two figures coalesced on the far side of the reception desk where there had been only empty space moments before, the smoke peeling away from them in reluctant skeins that hung before dissolving entirely.

The one on the right was Grue, his signature skull-faced helmet a stark white against the gloom, thin wisps of darkness still curling from the vents by his jawline. He was clad head-to-toe in matte-black tactical gear—a flexible bodysuit overlaid with a plate carrier, pauldrons, a ballistic helmet, a rifle slung across his chest. He was a soldier.

The man beside him, Hollowpoint, was his opposite. He wore a simple, bespoke black balaclava that covered his entire head, leaving no features visible. Over a tailored suit that likely cost more than her car, he wore a dark trench coat. He stood with a quiet, relaxed posture that was more menacing than any overt threat.

It was then that she saw it. The parallel. Hollowpoint and his subordinate were a mirror image of her and Armsmaster. He’d chosen a uniform to mirror her own—diplomat—and kept the militant at his shoulder.

Message received.

“Director Piggot,” Hollowpoint’s voice was soft, calm. It cut through the silence of the lobby without effort. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

Her own thoughts, her wandering observations, felt like an indulgence. She pushed them down. “Let’s not waste time on pleasantries,” she said, her voice flat. She gestured to the seating area a few feet away—a set of minimalist leather couches arranged around a glass table. “Shall we?”

He gave a slight nod. They sat, the two pairs opposite each other across the expanse of cold glass. Armsmaster took a position standing just behind her right shoulder, a sentinel. Grue mirrored him behind Hollowpoint.

Piggot leaned forward slightly, resting her hands on her knees. “You mentioned Leviathan. That’s the only reason I’m here. What are you willing to share?”

Hollowpoint tilted his head. “For the moment,” He said, “three things without condition, as proof of good faith.”

Right ear: two beeps. 

Truth.

Emily kept her expression inert. “Go on.”

“One: a consultation. Today. You have procedures for evacuations that work when you have time and authority. You rarely have both. I can give you a checklist and a set of decision trees that will compress preparation time by forty percent if adhered to. You’ll save hours you don’t have, which translates to lives.” His gloved hand settled lightly on the tabletop, an index finger making a small motion as if tracing a box. “Two: thirty-six hours prior to landfall, I’ll identify the target city.” He paused, letting the statement hang in the air. “Privately. To you, Director. You’ll decide who else knows.”

Beep-beep. Truth again. The confirmations were doing little to soothe her nerves. If anything, they made this worse. He wasn’t lying about the freebies. The price was coming later.

“Three,” Hollowpoint continued, “I’ll commit assets. Personnel with clear chains of command, dispersed across the designated city and nearby municipalities, to assist with evacuation and, when appropriate, to engage the Endbringer directly.”

Beep-beep.

Piggot narrowed her eyes. “And what about after the ‘good faith’ runs out?”

“Then we discuss terms,” Hollowpoint said smoothly. He folded his hands. “There are other offers, contingent. A technology exchange. I have devices that matter in an Endbringer fight— delivery systems, payloads, some of which are… exotic. We license. You license in return—dimensional technology and the projection barrier that protects PRT headquarters in places like your Brockton Bay office. Second: compensated intelligence. On your nominal adversaries. The CUI, the Russians, lesser competitors. As well as counterintelligence for you and your allies. You are compromised more thoroughly than you realise.”

Beep-beep. Another truth. 

“In exchange,” Hollowpoint continued, “for the last two: amnesty for myself and my associates. A formal designation of Brockton Bay as a special administrative zone under joint control and protection of the PRT and the Peacekeepers. And we codify red lines between us. I won’t cross yours. You won’t cross mine. A treaty of sorts.”

Piggot almost laughed. It came out as a dry, humourless scoff. “You are overreaching. The public hates you, even if this city is pretending not to. The people who sign papers hate you more. You are not a defendant we can plausibly paint as reformed. You are a walking case study in why the protocols exist. Domestic terrorism.”  She ticked a finger. “Racketeering.” A second finger. “NFA violations, plural.” Third. “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violations. Espionage. Cyberterrorism. Wire Fraud. Obstruction of Justice. Impersonating a Federal Officer. Aiding a Prisoner's Escape. Interfering with a Federal Prisoner Transport. Harbouring a Fugitive. Illegal Wiretapping. Kidnapping. Doxxing. Solicitation of Murder. Murder. Mass Murder. Unlawful Imprisonment. Extortion and Coercion. Terroristic Threatening…  Shall I continue?”

Piggot leaned back, letting her hands relax. “Amnesty is out of the question. A ‘special administrative zone’ is a fantasy. You’re a terrorist, Hollowpoint. You’ve declared war on the United States government. Did you think we’d just forget that? The optics alone would make your demands impossible even if the law didn’t.”

Hollowpoint didn't react. He simply listened, his masked face betraying nothing. When she finished, he spoke again, his voice still unnervingly placid. “Director,” he said, sounding almost kind. “Law is a function of power. Enforcement is a function of the same. If you can aggress with impunity, your law matters. If you cannot, it doesn’t. I am not saying this to offend you, but, the United States government, in this context, cannot aggress me with impunity. Therefore, its laws, while certainly its preference, have no true jurisdiction over my conduct. You cannot enforce them without suffering a cost you are unwilling to pay. As such, they are irrelevant to this discussion.”

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the clink of Armsmaster tightening gauntlet. Piggot chose her next words carefully, ignoring the fury radiating from the cape behind her. Denouncing the statement was pointless; Hollowpoint clearly believed it. Agreeing was impossible.

“Regardless of your political theories,” she said, keeping her tone level, “amnesty and joint control of a U.S. city are non-starters. Congress would never approve it. The President would never sign it. It is impossible.”

Hollowpoint tilted his head again. He seemed to consider her words—not the content, but the framing. “Then I’ll adjust the calculus,” he said. “A separate offer. I will attempt to kill Leviathan in the coming attack. If I succeed, you will meet the demands as stated—amnesty and the zone—and we will discuss additional compensation.”

For a long moment, Piggot simply stared at him. The sheer, unmitigated arrogance of the statement left her speechless. Kill an Endbringer. Men and women, a hundred times more powerful than anyone in this room, had tried for twenty years. The Triumvirate, the Guild, thousands of capes had thrown themselves at the Endbringers. All they had ever managed to do was drive them away, and at a horrific cost.

After a long pause, she found her voice. “You believe you can kill an Endbringer?”

“I believe I have a good shot at the task,” he replied.

In her right ear, a sound she had not expected. Beep-beep.

It was a truth. He believed it.

Before she could even begin to process that, a tone ticked in Emily’s right ear, the prelude to another voice. “Piggot,” Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown said, crisp and authoritative, “put me through.”

Piggot turned to the stunned Armsmaster beside her who, after a moment, returned a curt nod. 

“One moment,” the armoured cape said, reaching into a compartment on his thigh armour and producing a small, silver puck. He placed it on the centre of the glass table. A beam of light shot upwards, resolving into a flickering, blue-tinged hologram of the Chief Director’s head and shoulders. She looked severe, her eyes fixed on Hollowpoint.

“Hollowpoint,” she said. “I’m told you dislike wasted time.”

“I do,” he said.

“So I won’t waste yours. Is your method, weapon, or device exclusive to Leviathan?”

“No,” he said. “It should work equally on all Endbringers of the current generation, given the information I have.”

Right ear: double beep. He believed it. The left stayed uncomfortably quiet.

Rebecca’s breath was audible through line conditioning that should have made even silence inoffensive. Her eyes flicked once, left, perhaps to a second monitor, perhaps to someone in the room telling her how many immovable boundaries were being renegotiated at this very second.

“If we take this seriously,” she said, “we need to understand your price. What additional compensations do you require—beyond whatever Director Piggot has the authority to discuss?”

“For now,” Hollowpoint said, “vials.”

Emily frowned before she had decided to frown. The word was too mundane to be significant. “Clarify,” Rebecca said, crisp.

“Three C-0-0-7-2 ‘Balance’ vials,” Hollowpoint said. “Three O-0-1-2-1 ‘Aegis’ vials. Three F-1-6-1-1 ‘Deus’ vials. Three X-0-7-9-6 ‘Division’ vials. Five C-2-0-6-2 ‘Prince’ vials. Five ‘Unary’ vials. Two ‘Well.’ Five ‘McCoy.’”

He recited the list from memory, each designation precise and clear. Piggot stared at him, utterly lost. The names and numbers meant nothing to her. From the slight flicker of the hologram, she suspected they meant nothing to Costa-Brown either.

“This list is not for you to understand,” Hollowpoint elaborated, his tone still mild. “The individuals who are able to fulfil this request will be informed of it. They will understand its meaning, and the utility of the service I am offering, far more keenly than you.”

Right ear: double beep.

Even more silence. The implication was staggering. He was speaking over their heads, sending a message to a third party he knew was listening—a third party with access to resources that were valuable enough to matter in a discussion regarding the death of an Endbringer.

Costa-Brown’s expression was unreadable stone. “I will need to consult with the White House and others,” she said after a moment. “We will be in touch.”

“Of course. I'll await your response,” Hollowpoint said, inclining his head. The projection winked out, leaving them in the empty conference room with afternoon light slanting through tall windows.

"Thank you for your time, Director," Hollowpoint said, turning to Piggot as he rose smoothly from his seat. “I hope to hear from you soon. Very soon.” He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod to Grue.

Black smoke flooded the room again, thicker this time, completely obscuring her vision. She heard no footsteps, no movement, just the gentle whisper of smoke flowing around her. When it cleared, they were gone.

"Armsmaster," she said quietly. "Did you get all that?"

"Every word," he replied, his voice tight with barely contained frustration. After a pause, he continued, "Director, my tech isn't infallible. We might have been deceived. There's also the possibility that Hollowpoint's perception of his own capabilities is overblown. Going into this with the wrong expectations could be—"

"Whether it's overblown isn't the concern," Piggot cut him off. "The fact that he believes it is. A weapon that can't destroy an Endbringer isn't necessarily useless. If what he has hidden away is even a quarter as potent as he believes, then the Peacekeepers are a far greater threat than we initially assessed."

Piggot stared at the empty space where Hollowpoint had sat moments ago. 

"Contact Strider and arrange a trip for me heading back to Washington," she said, already dreading the conversations to come. "And Dragon, please run those vial designations through every database we have access to. If they mean something to someone, I want to know who and why."

“Copy.”

Outside, Brockton Bay continued its daily rhythm, unaware that its fate—and possibly the fate of every Endbringer-plagued city in the world—had just become a bargaining chip in a game whose rules she didn't fully understand.

The real question wasn't whether Hollowpoint could do what he claimed. The real question was what would happen to the world if he actually could.