Marked Interlude E

Intellectually, Colin knew that he'd been lucky to get off with a warning. Bugging the chapel in advance of getting a warrant had been questionable at best, but the clincher in Director Piggot's tirade had been the one he'd placed over the confessional. Colin hadn't thought much of it-- it was a convenient location about the middle of one of four walls in the church. When the director had heard about it, though, he'd briefly thought she would have a stroke. 

Part of him wished she had, simply so he could deal with a different director. In the past months his insistence on trying to take the fight to the gangs had obviously been a sticking point for their interactions, but today when the director had gotten to the paperwork for Colin's bug warrant, she had reserved a half hour on her schedule seemingly for the express purpose of chewing him out. That felt a bit excessive to him in a circumstance where a simple 'no' would have sufficed. And he was firmly of the opinion the preemptive observation in the case of a parahuman Master cape was not an abuse of power.

Colin didn't understand the bizarre deference that otherwise perfectly reasonable people had for ancient superstitions. As far as he was concerned, religions were economic vampires preying on the gullibility of entire segments of population who had been conditioned from birth to accept them. He didn't care one way or the other about people believing what they wanted but it shouldn't have any sort of sway when legality or public relations were involved. And, quite frankly, Colin DID resent how these illogical mythologies were intruding on him and his job. 

Her orders had been crystal clear. She had spent ten minutes outlining them quite exactingly, deliberately restricting herself to two or one syllable words. Retrieve all four of the bugs. Don't get caught. Stay out of costume. No tech. Deal with it. And if he could not find all four bugs then he had better pray-- he would be in a church so it would be a fine place for it-- that no one figured out what they were or Piggot herself would be driving the bus she threw him under.

But the crowning humiliation of her rant at him had to be when she'd paused for twenty seconds in her instructions to pull out a thesaurus and changed "understand" to "know what I'm trying to say." He was also fairly certain that the insult was calculated on her part. 

Which left Colin in the position of having to retrieve the bugs himself, without the benefit of his armor. Meaning he would have to find and remove each one of them by hand. They were small, of course-- miniaturization WAS his specialty, after all-- but he knew what to look for. The real trouble, of course, was going to be removing the one on the crucifix. 

Which is why he was here, drinking cheap Circle K coffee, while half seated on the bike rack in front of the gas station parking lot across the street. He took another sip of burnt bitterness that even the overpowering flavor of cheap hazelnut syrup couldn't cover, watching as Father DiMaggio and an unfamiliar clergyman-- one wearing the red sash/cummerbund of a bishop-- walked in the front doors. He wished he'd gotten there sooner; he'd much rather have done this before light, but that wasn't an option today. He'd had to acquire a conventional toolkit that would do what his armor could have done more easily, but Piggot would rather see him fail and possibly be arrested in his civilian identity than take even the slightest risk of getting caught as Armsmaster. In other words, more image and tiptoeing around public relations bullshit. 

As far as Colin was concerned, Director Piggot was being unreasonably paranoid about the incredibly unlikely odds of the bugs being discovered in the first place. It wasn't like the Catholic church had its own cape team, much less any tinkers on hand that would be able to identify the devices' functions or their maker. At most they'd possibly identify them as tinkertech, at which point they would logically seek the counsel of the PRT, which would put them squarely in his hands again. Given the reputation of the Catholic Church's clergy over the years, it honestly only made sense to have someone watching them anyways, didn't it? But he didn't even try to explain that to the director given her testiness. He might not be great with people but even he knew bringing up that sort of scandal to justify his bugs' presence was probably not going to go over well. 

As the door opened again a few minutes later, Colin pulled out his cellphone and zoomed in, taking several pictures. Along with Father DiMaggio and the out of town clergyman, followed a tall girl, mid to late teens, with the sort of absurd hair dye job that rebellious teenagers frequently got. Father DiMaggio had accidentally let slip that the cape who made the bread was female, and Colin would have bet six months of his tinkering budget that this girl was her.  It was out in public, so pictures were perfectly legal without a warrant; he could run facial recognition software on her when he got back to base, then based on what it turned up decide from there how best to set up surveillance on her. Best case scenario, she'd turn out to have a record and he could bring her in. 

There wouldn't be any dithering about though. He'd have something concrete to show Piggot, so the director would HAVE to acquire a warrant. Colin waited patiently for the three of them to get in the vehicle, then leave. He made sure to watch them turn the corner two blocks away before he got up from the bike rack, slowly walked to the street corner, and hit the walk button with a clenched fist. The chill of the metal was unpleasant even at the brief contact with the side of his pinkie finger. 

As the crosswalk light switched to "WALK" Colin started across to the other corner, only to skip backwards as an impatient driver gunned through the intersection, spraying gravel scattered from a pothole into Colin's face. He grimaced, shaking a bit before taking a steadying breath to help settle the adrenaline from his near miss. He mentally chastised himself-- yes, both metaphorically and now apparently literally, he'd always had a problem with tunnel vision-- as he looked both ways despite the signal being in his favor. Then he started on his way across. 

The church's door was, predictably, locked, but of course, Colin was prepared for this. Common handleset door handle, at a glance a top mounted five pin tumbler lock. After a brief glance around, making sure there were no cameras or people watching, he pulled out a small, cheap lock picking set case. Selecting a tensioner and an L rake, he gave the tumblers a careful pass, listening as closely as he could for the sound of the pins. He was in luck; it was an old lock and he heard the general shape of the solution within two passes. Opening the kit again, he replaced the L rake and pulled out a half diamond rake, then made another careful pass across the tumblers with it, and felt four of them settle. A tickle of the fifth, front-most tumbler, the lock yielded, and then Colin was inside, tucking the tension wrench in his shirt pocket. 

The narthex and the nave of the church alike were as immaculate as they had been two days prior. He still couldn't find anything in the way of dust, and the windows were spotless and streak free. Colin mentally upgraded his bet to eight months. He looked up at the door jam above the entrance, trying to spot the tiny spy device, before his eyes saw the slight bump in the surface of the lacquered wood. He reached up and scratched carefully at it, feeling it peel up a bit under the assault of his short fingernail. Then, the tiny device came free as it lodged unpleasantly beneath the nail of his middle finger. One down. 

The one in the confessional was harder to locate. Having launched it from the doorway, he hadn't actually seen where it landed. Bemoaning the lack of his visor, Colin swept the carved and beveled wood both visually and with the back of his hand. Nothing. It took a few more minutes but he finally found it nestled in between the bench and wall of the priest's side.

Checking his phone, Colin grimaced, and looked at the hanging crucifix. An inspection of the wall behind it and the stained glass didn't reveal the bug so the only place left for it was the cross. That was just going to have to stay there; he wasn't going to be able to reach it without a ladder. 

The last was the one over the door to the rest of the church building. And that one was half embedded in the moldings adjoining the door frame. Prying at it with his nail only ended up splitting the nail; annoyed, he chewed it off and pulled out the lock picks again. It took him a few seconds but he managed to break the larger of the L rakes off in the process of digging the bug out. The resultant small scar on the lintel above the doorway wasn't obvious, but still made him wince and wish for some spackle. Well, nothing to be done about it. He tucked the pieces of broken pick back in the case, the three bugs along with it, and hurried back to the narthex, peeking out the cracked open door. 

The coast was clear; he slipped outside, pulled the tension wrench out of his shirt pocket, and realigned the lock barrel to vertical. The pins quietly clicked back into place. Briefly, Colin debated picking the lock to relock it, before deciding that it wasn't worth the risk of being seen doing so. True, the lock would be unlocked, but nothing was stolen, and in the unlikely event that the priest didn't believe he left it unlocked somehow and called the police, the police would almost certainly make that same assumption. Job done, he walked on his way up the street to the shopping mini center where he left his civilian motorcycle. 

The gloss blue trim 2005 Honda Gold Wing roared to life beneath him, and he buckled the helmet strap securely. He popped the kickstand up, easing the clutch and shifting into first, throttling the gas low and slow as he pulled out of the parking space and up to the driveway. 

---

Returning to the Protectorate base and parking in the PRT affiliate parking lot was second nature to him. Colin had been doing it for years, now, after all. He got past the checkpoints and security zones, masked up, and headed to his lab. Getting within thirty meters of his armor would automatically download the audio from each of the bugs; by the time he reached the lab, all their content would be available for him to peruse, even if it was all completely inadmissable in court. Anything said could still be useful in more material ways, not the least of which would be identifying the Master cape's victims in the church and possibly a method of blocking whatever she was using as a vector. 

As he entered the lab, Dragon was already projecting her avatar onto his secondary monitor. "Colin. What happened? You're never away from your lab this long without some sort of disaster or emergency."

Colin grimaced. "The Director, in her wisdom," he began, pronouncing 'wisdom' with disgust, "decided that my placing bugs at the Saint Bosco's church was objectionable."

"Oh, Colin," Dragon replied with a note of disappointment. It was painful to hear.

"I had probable cause," he pointed out, "on the suspicion of the presence of a Master who is worming her way into the hierarchy of the church. Or at least, manipulating them."

"You'll have to outline your logic for me, Colin, because from what we know of her this far, I just don't see it."

He grunted. "I've made a point of researching all the power structures in the city, especially the last six months. The Catholic Church isn't the political juggernaut it was five hundred years ago but it still has a great deal of influence and soft power across the world. They're quiet about their official position on capes, but it's not a secret that they hold an inherent distrust of them. There are no sponsored cape teams endorsed by the Vatican, and even groups like Haven are independently managed and legally separated, at the behest of the Church itself." He pulled out the lock pick case and dropped it on his workbench, then called up a material requisition form on his computer. "You know the way the organized criminal element in this city has been losing ground to an unknown opposition; someone or something is dismantling them from outside the bounds of law enforcement or hero organizations."

"And you believe that this mystery player is attempting to subborn the Catholic Church," she finished for him. "Colin, does this have to do with the bread making tinker from two days ago?"

"She's not a tinker," Colin replied. "The priest let that slip. She simply created the food out of thin air. And I know enough mythology to be concerned about the church's reaction to that, especially because that's just not how powers WORK." He finished his requisition form, then hooked up his phone to upload the photos.

"If I understand you correctly, you're saying that she's trying to infiltrate the church with some kind of Messiah impersonation."

"Or outright mastering key individuals," Colin confirmed. "I did some reaching out to the homeless shelters in the area, and got a hit from Rough Sleepers, the shelter near the Boat Graveyard. Almost two hundred rolls. The rolls don't appear to be a vector for any power but they recognized the girl when I described her. Their descriptions match the girl that walked out of the church this morning."

Dragon sounded outright exasperated now. "Colin-"

"I wasn't there pursuing her; the Director ordered me to remove my surveillance devices without risking my cape identity," Colin said as the facial recognition software started up; he selected the girl's face in the three clearest pictures and set them as parameters with an averaging algorithm for greater resolution. "So no use of costume or tinker tech. But I know I'm right. She came out of the church in the company of the priest managing the church and a bishop." 

That brought Dragon up short. "But the priest called you only two days ago. Assuming that he only learned she could provide her power shortly before he asked you to test the food, that is a very short time to be introducing her to a bishop, if I understand the ranking of the Catholic church. You believe she is mastering them." 

"Or she's impersonating a holy figure with her powers to insinuate herself into the church," Colin replied. "But I suspect a Master situation, especially in light of the-" he froze, cutting off, as he got a hit from school district records: a fifteen year old girl named Taylor Hebert. Legal guardian, her father Daniel Hebert, mother deceased, only child, no other relatives listed. 

Sweeping the shared law enforcement files, no missing person report filed, and enrolled at Winslow High School, which burned down over the weekend. Footnoted in an incident marked as school hazing from last week resulting in a hospital stay. 

"Tessa, look at this," Colin said, forwarding his screen cap to her. "Winslow burned down the day after she was released from the hospital after a school prank ended in her being hospitalized."

"I know it was investigated because a Ward is enrolled there, but it was an open and shut case; the culprits were caught in the act. The Winslow fire was the work of Empire arsonists," Dragon pointed out. 

"Who didn't attempt to escape, only tried to make the fire bigger even while they were being subdued and placed under arrest," Colin countered. 

"Strange behavior for arsonists," Dragon agreed almost reluctantly. 

"Do you agree that there's a pattern here?" Colin asked. 

Dragon's avatar frowned, as she conceded, "Maybe the beginnings of one, but it's very thin. Circumstantial at best." 

He put his hands on his hips, feeling frustrated. "In the case of a human-controlling Master, the only reason we have even this much evidence might be because she's still inexperienced with her power. And suspicious behavior, regardless of the director's inexplicable resistance to acknowledge it, IS adequate reason to declare Master/Stranger protocols."

"You can't plot a curve with only two data points, Colin, no matter how much the two points have in common. Especially in the case of something this nebulous." 

Colin grimaced, calling up the surveillance logs. Two of the three devices hadn't picked up much, but the third, the one that had been so hard to dig out, had picked up plenty. Colin began playback on the most recent file, marked as six forty this morning. 

The first voice was young sounding, female. [I]"I should leave a note for Father DiMaggio, let him know I'll be back soon. Here's the plan. We know the time differential is about seven to one, right?"[/I]

The respondent was an older female, perhaps middle aged. The language she spoke sounded like nothing he'd ever heard, with an almost melodic cadence. He couldn't even begin to guess the language family it seemed from.

The first voice responded, [I]"Yeah. That's the idea. The idea being, I can set you guys up on a computer at the library, with an easy escape route, then take the mansion back here to meet with Father DiMaggio and the Bishop he wanted to introduce me to."[/I]

A male voice spoke up now, briefly. The language was the same, but there was a different accent to it, something with harsher aspirant consonant sounds and throatier long vowels.

[I]"Uh... they're the information machines I was talking about before. That connect to the internet. On the most basic level, they manipulate numbers in binary at extremely high speeds, billions of operations per second on higher end chips, doing layers on layers of calculations to process information and do, things. Display images. Create games to play. Store and retrieve information. Control other machines. Communicate with other machines. They're really versatile; I have a class-- HAD a class-- at Winslow that I was doing really well in, despite the students... Well, never mind. Point is, I can teach you the basics of browser use quickly, and since you have perfect memory, Nax, you'll probably figure out more than I know by the end of the day, if you have that long. The library opens at seven thirty which is more than enough time to walk there from here- or crawl, for that matter."[/i]

The other woman's voice replied, and while Colin wasn't an expert, the general tone sounded almost flippant. 

[/I]"Just make sure you don't bump into anyone or anything,"[/I] the first voice said, soundly mildly reproachful. [I]"Especially low flying planes or..."[/I] Pause. [I]"On second thought, do your level best to not fly too high, or you might run into a traffic helicopter while you're invisible, and that would be disastrous."[/I]

[I]"Huilicopter?"[/I] both the other voices asked. 

The girl's voice gave a small groan. "I'll explain on the way." 

That ended the verbal audio. 

Colin and Dragon were both silent for several seconds. Finally, Colin announced, "The director needs to hear this. Immediately."