Refrain: 6.x (Prelude)(Dragon)

She had a drone at a legal altitude above the PRT ENE building, logging traffic patterns and correlating license plates against a database.

6.x (Prelude)(Dragon)

She had a drone at a legal altitude above the PRT ENE building, logging traffic patterns and correlating license plates against a database. She had a light industrial frame loitering in the motor pool, disguised as a vehicle charger. She had no fewer than seventeen feeds from cameras that were pointed at entrances, waiting rooms, or hallways. All of that came together as a single composite: Emily Piggot’s car into the underground parking lot. Legs out, one at a time. The gait she remembered. The pause to lift her bag.

Seeing the woman, Dragon felt a hint of relief.

Despite this, however, she distributed her attention the way she always did when she was being careful—too many small processes to count, each with sharp little teeth. The main thread watched the table monitor in the ENE conference room as the new-old Director entered a few minutes later

Emily Piggot had lost some weight back since she was last in the city, though Dragon suspected the difference was camera angle and lighting more than any meaningful change in physiology. The scars on Piggot’s forearms were the same (low-resolution chromatic aberration turned them into bands). Her hair was the same practical colour and cut. The jaw was the same jaw: stubborn, functional, as if shaped on a lathe labeled Mission First.

“Director,” Armsmaster said, standing. He didn’t offer to pull out the chair. He knew better.

Piggot sat, leaning her weight on the chair before sitting. She did not wince. She glanced at the wall clock, then at the camera Dragon was using as a face. “Dragon. Thank you for joining on short notice.”

“Of course,” Dragon replied. She projected the usual avatar: tidy hair, tidy expression, tidy voice layered with just enough imperfection that people believed in it more. She let a smaller thread map micro-expressions in Piggot’s posture as the Director settled in. No visible tremor. Good sleep? No; the swelling around the eyes suggested otherwise.

"It's good to have you back, Director," Dragon said, quietly. Sincerely.

“Don’t patronise me.”

“I wasn’t,” Dragon replied.

Piggot's lips thinned—an acknowledgement, not agreement. "Washington was illuminating. Let's skip the pleasantries. I have ten minutes. Then a call with DC. Make them count. Colin, your thoughts on the current situation?”

Armsmaster's jaw tightened, frustration bleeding through. “We issue a Kill Order one day, rescind it the next. It makes us look weak. Incompetent.”

Piggot’s eyes cut his way, then back. "Realpolitik, Colin," she said. "Washington's position is clear: provocation risks escalation we can't afford.” Back to Dragon. “What’s our status on the cyber front? Have you managed to plug the holes?”

Dragon let her synthesised voice fill the room, calibrated for calm neutrality. “Limited success,” she said. “We’ve sealed and rotated credentials in the ENE subnet. Two domain controllers have been re-imaged, and three others isolated to read-only at the switch. However, the intruder—or intruders—likely maintain persistence through multiple layers. As of yet, the degree of compromise is unquantifiable. However, I have been able to detect lateral movement artefacts in DHS, FEMA staging, and the Northern mutual-aid ICS overlay. Not destructive. Observational.”

“Observational,” Piggot repeated, flat.

“Telemetry indicates they downgraded after-action alerting during the missile launches and restored it within eighteen minutes. That level of precision implies pre-positioned access. I’ve recovered code fragments, and my analysis suggests a polymorphic malware that reconstitutes itself from ambient tools. However, it doesn’t behave like a conventional virus; rather, it acts more like a distributed intelligence, actively countering my attempts to isolate or remove it. Patch one vulnerability, and it has already leveraged it to generate three more. A problematic pattern.

I’ll continue the investigation, but I can’t legally pursue this across adjacent federal networks without a formal request and defined scope. I’ve submitted both.”

Piggot’s eyes narrowed. “How much of me is compromised?”

“Your PRT inbox is clean as of 05:12. However, your OPM personnel file was read twice in the last thirty days from a Treasury address block with a forged certificate chain. The read wasn’t logged on the target system; it was logged by a TAP on the fiber beneath it.” Dragon could have softened that. She didn’t. “You should assume your schedule, travel, and dialysis vendor are known and likely compromised.”

Armsmaster’s jaw worked. “This is why we don’t capitulate. Resigning just because—”

Piggot’s gaze went heavy. “We’re not discussing Tagg.”

He stopped.

Piggot tapped the paper folder at twelve. “I will say this again for your benefit, Colin: Washington will not escalate against the Peacekeepers right now. They’ve decided some cooperation is cheaper than a silent war with an adversary of this nature. We will explore. Cautiously.”

Armsmaster’s gauntlet flexed. “You’re caving.”

“I am obeying orders.” Piggot’s voice didn’t rise, and that made it sharper. “Your alternative is what, exactly? We carelessly and blindly throw bodies at it? Whose exactly?”

She huffed as she turned her attention to the files in front of her. “The directive is clear. We are to de-escalate. We will treat the Peacekeepers as a peer entity. No engagement unless provoked. Our primary objective is intelligence gathering. We find out who they are, what they’re capable of, and what their ultimate goal is. We do it quietly, and we do it without giving them a reason to retaliate.”

In the silence that followed, a soft chime emanated from the terminal built into the conference table in front of Piggot.

The director glanced at the terminal. The small red LED suggested a priority route. 

Dragon already had five processes reading the call setup frames. The call had arrived through an official PRT trunk, flagged by a valid high-priority token issued out of DC. The SIP headers were correct and the timestamp was correct, and the jitter was within bounds. And the route was wrong.

She began a trace, dedicating hundreds of processor cores to the task, knowing even as she did that it was futile. The signal was looping back on itself through a dozen compromised servers on this very network.

“Who is it?” Piggot asked, staring at the terminal screen in confusion.

“Director,” Dragon said, her voice carefully level. 

Piggot’s gaze met her camera. For a moment, she seemed to weigh the warning in Dragon’s tone. Then, with a grim set to her jaw, she tapped the screen. “This is Director Piggot.”

The terminal’s speakers remained silent. Instead, text began to appear on the screen, typed out in a simple, clean font.

Director Piggot. Welcome back. I trust your time in Washington was unproductive. 

Colin rose slightly from his chair. “He’s in our system. Now.”

“Sit down, Armsmaster,” Piggot commanded, her eyes fixed on the screen. She typed a response with two fingers. Who is this?

You know who this is. I called to offer my congratulations on your reinstatement. It seems competence, however begrudging, is still valued on occasion.

What do you want?

A conversation. A proper one. The back-and-forth threats have served their purpose, but they are inefficient. I propose a meeting. My representatives and yours. Today.

The audacity of the offer hung in the air. A physical meeting. After everything that had happened, he was suggesting they sit down at a table together.

Piggot frowned, typing again. You expect us to believe you’d walk into our custody?

I have no intention of walking into your custody, Director. You have no intention of trying to take me into it.

And why is that?

Because that would be a stupid and suicidal course of action after I have extended an olive branch. Because you are a pragmatic woman who understands the new strategic reality. And because we have a far more pressing matter to discuss.

A new line of text appeared, and the atmosphere in the room, already thick with tension, seemed to solidify.

Leviathan is coming.

Dragon ran the words through a thousand predictive models. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact. Her threat assessment algorithms began running scenarios, pulling data from previous Endbringer attacks, calculating probabilities.

Piggot’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. How do you know that?

My methods are my own. You have no reason to believe me, of course, except for the fact that I have no reason to lie. Deceiving you on this matter would irreparably damage the credibility I have worked so hard to establish. It would be an inefficient, pointless gambit.

Piggot typed her next question, her movements slow, deliberate. What city?

I am not going to tell you.

The blunt refusal was almost as shocking as the initial prediction.

You have to, Piggot typed back, a note of anger finally entering her response. We need to prepare. Evacuate.

And in doing so, you will muddle the prediction. Your very preparations will create a statistical variance that could shift the target. Leviathan will simply strike the next most optimal city on its list, a city that will be completely unprepared. Have the previous attacks taught you nothing? No. You will not be told the target location until the time is right.

What I am willing to do, the text continued, is coordinate. When the attack begins, I will provide you with assets and real-time intelligence that will significantly increase the survivability of your capes and the city’s populace. I am offering you a partnership in the defence of this country. My only condition is that you remain cordial.

The meeting is to discuss the terms of this arrangement. A neutral location. This afternoon, 1400 hours. The old Medhall building. Come alone, Director. You and Armsmaster. I will extend you the same courtesy.

The text stopped. The connection blinked out, leaving no trace it had ever existed.

"Well," Piggot said moments later, her voice carrying a note of grim resignation. "That complicates things."

Colin stood, pacing the length of the room. “This is insane. We can’t trust him. He’s a murderer, a terrorist, and he’s holding a gun to the nation’s head while claiming to be its saviour.”

“I know what he is, Armsmaster,” Piggot said quietly. She was staring at the blank screen, at the reflection of her own tired face. She looked old.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

Emily Piggot leaned back in her chair, the movement slow and pained. She looked at Colin, the embodiment of heroic ideals and rigid order. She looked at the camera lens that was Dragon.

And she thought of a monster made of water and death, heading for an unnamed American city filled with millions of people who had no idea their lives now depended on a conversation with a different kind of monster.

“What choice do I have?” she said, the words tasting like ash. “Get the car ready. We have a meeting to attend.”