In the wake of the meeting with Snapshot, Shudder found her malaise quickly returning. While it was a relief to have confirmation that what she had witnessed was probably not an Uqbar, she didn’t know what to think about the possibility of Dr. Tlön returning. She missed her mentor terribly and hated the fact that she was trapped in one of the worst places in the world, but what would happen if Dr. Tlön appeared in her life again?

Surely she would want to build another Orbis Tertius, but did Shudder still want to create one? Everything about Orbis still seemed right to her. Everyone would be improved by it. There would be no more war or hunger. No children kicked out of their homes to live on the streets. That couldn’t possibly be bad, could it?

But Shudder couldn’t forget the anger and fear in people’s eyes after the Orbis plan became public. And she couldn’t forget who had been angry and frightened. People like White Tail and other members of Arachne, the various supervillains, crime lords, and occasional businessmen who hired her, all the people who would have been most changed by Orbis, seemed entirely indifferent to her past. Meanwhile, it was small fry and minions and people who worked in cafes, all people whose lives would have been measurably improved by Orbis, who looked at her with disgust or horror. Perhaps it was morally wrong to save people without their permission, but the only way Orbis would create a utopia was if it was allowed to change the entire world.

Maybe Dr. Tlön had come to the same conclusion. Maybe she would tell Shudder that they had both been mistaken all along, and that there was another way to save the world. Or, more likely, she would find a way to wipe Shudder’s doubts away. That would probably be the easiest outcome. The world was a confusing place. Everyone acted as if it was easy to discern right from wrong, but for Shudder it was an impossible task. The first time she had stolen something, she had cried from guilt, even though she had no reason to feel guilty for stealing what she needed to survive. And now she wondered whether helping the Yamosians had been wrong even though she was doing it to pay off a debt and being captured by the Yamosians was a far better fate for Sila than being assassinated by rival Nanzaran royals.

But Doc knew how to make sense of the world. She could distinguish right and wrong with perfect clarity, and explain it all in a way Shudder could understand. She could counter every objection, answer every question. If she wanted to build another Orbis, then there was no doubt that she could make it clear to Shudder why it was a good idea. But was that a good thing? If she blindly trusted that Dr. Tlön had all the answers, was she really thinking for herself? On the other hand, if she doubted Dr. Tlön, was she foolishly ignoring someone who had proven her superior sense of ethics time and again?

Dr. Tlön needed her protection. Shudder tried to reassure herself that that was all that mattered. Even if Orbis Tertius was the monstrous brainwashing device that everyone thought it was, Dr. Tlön herself deserved to be protected. It was the least Shudder could do in exchange for everything the doctor had done for her. But even with that resolution, the moral questions continued to swirl in her mind, constantly cycling through each other without ever reaching a conclusion.

In desperation, Shudder tried to seek solace by visiting Serpent’s Lair. There, she hoped, she could find a way to distract herself by dancing and socializing. However, she found that she didn’t have the motivation to dance, and the few people she got along with were not present. So instead she sat in a corner, drinking Shirley Temples and brooding.

After a time, she noticed someone watching her. It was another young woman, probably around her age. She had the perfectly smooth face of someone who, unlike Shudder, actually knew how to apply foundation, and her hair was red and fell in natural ringlets. Shudder suspected she was another small fry, Bodkin, but couldn’t be sure since she wore a green sundress instead of her usual hooded costume and mask.

Shudder feigned indifference and tried not to stare back. She and Bodkin did not get along well, but the woman eventually approached her table and sat down across from her.

“Hey, Shudder,” she said, confirming that she was, indeed, Bodkin.

“How’s it going, uh…?” Shudder hesitated. It wasn’t polite to use codenames when someone was out of costume.

“Marian.”

“Right, Marian. How’s it going?”

Bodkin ignored the question. “Listen. You know about psionics, right? Like, brainwashing and stuff?”

Shudder began to feel anxious. Whatever Bodkin wanted to ask, it was going to be trouble. “I picked up a little, I guess.”

“What are your thoughts on the Mindbreaker thing?”

Shudder tried to recall the name. “I don’t know what that is.”

Bodkin’s eyes were wide. “You haven’t heard? Mindbreaker is…actually, maybe it’s better if I show you.”

She stood, apparently expecting Shudder to follow her. Shudder was a little reluctant to go anywhere with Bodkin unless they were both being hired by the same person, but something about the worried tone in her fellow small fry’s voice convinced Shudder to stand.

“Are we switching into costume?”

Bodkin shook her head. “No, it’s better if we don’t advertise ourselves.”

They left the bar and, after a few blocks of walking, reached the same underground clinic that had cared for Shudder after her fight with Nova Legion. Like Serpent’s Lair it was neutral ground, providing care to both poor neighborhoods and various criminal communities. It was unclear who funded it, but most were too grateful for its services to ask questions. Superheroes generally left it alone, but on occasion the police had taken notice and it was forced to move. Now it sat in an abandoned shop, its huge display windows boarded up to conceal what was within.

Bodkin led the way inside, to what was a familiar sight. Well lit, sterile, well supplied, thanks to the assistance of Arachne this clinic provided the criminal world with a safe, neutral place in order to get treatment. There weren’t many patients right now, only a handful of the beds were occupied, but the nurse on duty tonight—Nancy, if Shudder recalled correctly—looked exhausted. She was currently sitting at a desk, trying not to nod off.

“Marian, Shudder,” the nurse greeted them. She shook her computer’s mouse to wake it up. “Here for treatment?”

“Just visiting,” Bodkin replied.

The nurse nodded, and gestured towards the back of the clinic.

Bodkin led Shudder through the one-time shop’s back room, which was mostly used as a storage area of medical equipment, then up a set of stairs to a door which seemed to lead to an area just above the clinic.

“Just a warning,” Bodkin said. “This is going to be a difficult sight.”

She opened the door, revealing another clinic. This one had two rows of around a dozen beds each. There were no curtains to separate them. However, almost every single one was occupied by a person who stared up at the ceiling with blank eyes.

What struck Shudder, however, was the massive amounts of fear coming from each one, practically choking the entire room. Normally the fear she felt wasn’t infectious, but either the fear itself or the knowledge that something must have invoked it immediately set off her fight-or-flight reflexes and she took a step back, desperately wanting to put as much distance as possible between herself and whatever was happening here.

“What the hell is this?” she asked.

“They started appearing a couple of months ago,” Bodkin explained. “Mostly minions. Some Arachne members. Even a couple of small fry.”

“Someone named Mindbreaker did this?” Shudder asked, trying to grasp what Bodkin was telling her.

“We think so. A few of them are coherent enough to speak. When we ask who did it they say ‘Mindbreaker.’”

Reluctantly, Shudder stepped into the room, examining one of the victims more closely. He was middle aged, with a little bit of white starting to appear in his brown hair. His lower lip moved slightly as if he were trying to speak but couldn’t think of what to say.

“There are types of psionics who can sort of ‘attack’ someone’s mind. It doesn’t quite fall under other categories of mental projection. So it’s different from a telepath who can communicate mentally or someone like me who can tweak emotions. A weak psychic like that can give someone a headache. A stronger one can knock someone out. I’ve never heard of one causing permanent damage, but if there’s a psychic who can, it’s probably one of those.”

“Do you know anyone like that?” Bodkin asked.

Shudder continued down the row, examining each of the victims. “Not anyone I’d suspect of being an unlicensed hero. We’re assuming that’s what Mindbreaker is, right?”

Bodkin nodded. “All of their victims are criminals.”

Unlicensed heroes were a mixed bag. In many cases, Shudder preferred to face them over licensed heroes. There was no risk of Whisper taking her to the police when Whisper himself was a vigilante, after all. However, some became unlicensed heroes in order to live out violent fantasies against those who they believed they could freely target. They would be willing to kill, torture, or leave someone catatonic with a psionic attack.

“Arachne probably has a database somewhere of people with superpowers. Looks like they’re all men, too. I wonder if that—” Shudder halted as she took a look at the last victim in the row. A skinny young man in a patchwork coat. “That’s Hedge!”

Bodkin looked down at him, sadly. “Oh yeah, Mindbreaker got him, too.”

Shudder threw her a scowl. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Bodkin sneered back. “You aren’t exactly one of us, are you? You don’t get to expect us to be your friend after you tried to mindwipe us.”

“It wasn’t—” Shudder paused. She wasn’t going to get anywhere having this argument again. “Look, I recently worked with Hedge. On a job to steal psionic tech. You don’t think that might be relevant?”

Bodkin’s sneer melted away. “Okay, I see your point. You think whoever hired you was Mindbreaker?”

Shudder shook her head. “Someone else stole the psionic wave detector before us. And for a while I thought that whoever it was might have had an Uqbar—a piece of Dr. Tlön’s tech. I was afraid someone was building another Orbis.”

She could see Bodkin was about to say something so she started to speak more quickly. “But now I’m wondering if this Mindbreaker might have built something with a similar effect as the Uqbar as part of research into psionic attacks, not emotional manipulation.”

“So they use the Uqbar when they want to steal stuff and the other device when they’re fighting crime?” Bodkin asked.

Shudder nodded, then looked back down at Hedge. “Poor Hedge. He’s kind of a newbie, isn’t he? He seemed nice.”

Bodkin frowned. “He’s a bit of an incel, but he doesn’t deserve this.”

At that moment Nancy appeared in the doorway. “Cops are here. You need to hide now.”

Shudder had been so distracted by Mindbreaker’s victims that she hadn’t noticed the blinking red and blue lights in the window. Looking outside, she saw a collection of police cars and a pair of larger armored trucks.

Bodkin joined her at the window. “They look kind of weird.”

Looking more carefully, Shudder saw that she was right. They had a sleeker design and lower roofs, almost like sports cars. It was hard to tell at night, but it seemed as if their windows might be darker, too.

“Should we go for the roof?” Bodkin asked.

“Get to the closet,” Nancy said, pointing impatiently. “They’re here for me and my patients, not you. Stay hidden until they’re gone.”

There was no time to argue, so Shudder and Bodkin brushed past the curtain that served as the closet’s door and hid in the darkness inside. From her position, Shudder was able to crouch down and watch what happened through a small gap between the curtain and door frame.

Nancy returned to the first floor and for a while nothing happened. Then the door flew open, admitting a group of people who were decidedly not police. Most of them looked like robots or cyborgs. Each made of metal or a combination of metal and flesh. Each was unique, not a single matched design. Likewise, each carried a unique gun, all with strange designs that Shudder didn’t recognize. She imagined that few, if any, fired bullets.

The one member who looked like a normal human was a brown-haired woman in a lab coat and holding a tablet, who was dwarfed by most of her companions. The leader almost looked human, too, aside from a cybernetic implant on her face, but Shudder quickly realized that her skin was made of some kind of plastic-like material. She wore a simple blue costume with a vaguely military look to it.

The non-cybernetic woman made her way down one of the rows of beds, checking patients at random. Touching them, shifting them, throwing aside sheets to examine them.

“Your analysis, Dr. Hunt?” the leader asked.

“They seem to be healthy,” the woman in the lab coat replied. “A few of them may have some atrophy, but in general they appear to be undamaged. Of course, further analysis will be needed to check for spine and brain damage.”

“The brains are unimportant,” the leader replied.

Dr. Hunt clicked her tongue. “Then I’m not sure what you expect me to look for. I don’t know how to tell whether you can use their souls.”

“They fell in battle to this Mindbreaker,” the plastic woman said. “As long as they die from those injuries, I can take their souls. Whether Mindbreaker damaged them or not remains to be seen, but even damaged they’ll be useful. If their bodies can be used for parts, then all the better.”

Dr. Hunt sighed. “Alright. Fine. I’m not going to question the biggest haul we’ve had yet.”

The leader looked at the other cyborgs. “Start loading them up.” Then she faced Dr. Hunt again. “It could turn into an even bigger haul if any of them can lead us to Mindbreaker. The reports of their activities suggest that they would make a prime recruit.”

Shudder watched with terror as the cyborgs lifted the patients out of their beds one at a time, carrying them away before returning for more. All the while, Dr. Hunt and her boss chatted about them as if they were objects. When it came time for Hedge’s turn, Shudder had to stifle a whimper, but she remained still, knowing that she could do nothing to help. Eventually, the group left, and the flashing lights vanished shortly afterwards. After a few more minutes of waiting, Shudder and Bodkin stepped out of the closet and made their way back downstairs.

Nancy was sitting at her desk, writing something. She had a black eye. She didn’t look up when they returned. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

“Do you know who that was?” Shudder asked.

Nancy shook her head.

“I’ve heard rumors of weird cop cars picking people up,” Bodkin said. “But everyone’s been more focused on Mindbreaker lately.”

“I spoke with Snapshot recently,” Shudder added. “She mentioned someone named Valkyrie who makes people disappear. I bet that was her.”

“Valkyrie,” Bodkin said. Like Nancy, she seemed dazed by what she had witnessed. “I’ll put the word out there. Make sure everyone knows.”

Bodkin and Shudder departed, leaving Nancy to her work. Shudder made her way back towards her apartment, walking slowly as she tried to figure out what she had just seen. This evening she had just learned of two huge threats. She couldn’t decide which was worse, Mindbreaker putting people into catatonic states or Valkyrie making them vanish for unknown purposes. She was so deep in thought that she nearly missed the seven foot tall metal man walking in the other direction until she was nearly upon him.

Prometheus must have been on patrol. He was only about ten feet away and they were walking directly towards each other. He wasn’t looking at her, but if she did something unexpected he would certainly notice, so Shudder kept her eyes ahead of her and tried not to draw attention to herself.

Prometheus did a double take. “Wait a minute, Shudder?”

Shudder winced reflexively, which was a major mistake. If she’d feigned confusion she might have been able to talk her way out of this. But now she would have to run.

However, before she made it more than a few steps, her left wrist was pulled behind her and she nearly fell as she was halted. Prometheus had turned his right hand into some kind of cuff, completely seamless and inescapable without cutting off her own hand.

“I guess tonight wasn’t a waste of time after all,” he said.

In a situation like this, there was only one option. Every small fry knew how to grovel, should the circumstances demand it. Sometimes it was a particularly violent employer or a newbie unfamiliar with how to treat fellow villains. More often it was an unusually brave cop or a superhero desperate to make a name for themself. Shudder was particularly proud of her groveling skills. The key wasn’t to seem pathetic or to flatter, rather it was to seem small and insignificant.

“H-hey, I’m off duty. I’m out of costume,” she said, affecting a stammer.

“So what?” Prometheus asked. “You’re still a criminal.”

“Come on. I-I’m nobody. Just a small fry.” She quivered slightly to signal her fear.

“You tried to kidnap my friend,” Prometheus protested.

“It was just a job, I swear. Nothing personal. L-look, I’ll explain how it works. With little guys like us, you heroes don’t come after us when we’re not working. You look for us when we’re on the job and use us to find the big guys we’re working for. Ask your friend, Stray. He’ll explain.”

That was only a half-truth, but Shudder was sure Stray would back her up if Prometheus contacted him. He hated prisons as much as any supervillain.

“Then lead us to the mercenaries,” Prometheus said.

Shudder felt a stab of relief. Maybe she really could talk her way out of this. “They’re working with Arachne. I swear, that’s all I know.”

Prometheus pulled a phone out of his pocket with his free hand, typing something. “Not good enough. We already know that. So unless you can lead us to them, you’re out of luck.”

Shudder’s relief quickly turned into panic. “Wait, wait, come on. Throwing me in prison isn’t going to do you any good.”

“You’re the thirty-seventh most wanted person in the world!”

“Only by STRIX!” Shudder pleaded. “Not by governments or anything. And that’s only because I was involved in something big years ago. These days I’m nothing.”

A portal opened, doubtless courtesy of Lucas, and Prometheus roughly pulled Shudder through.

What followed was hours of questions, paperwork, waiting, and pleading, all of it accompanied by scowling STRIX agents who barked orders, until Shudder was finally led to a small cell just as the sun was rising. It was an ordinary concrete room with a wooden bench and toilet. She had always known she would end up here at some point. There were few potential outcomes for supervillains, though she wondered if death would be better. On the other hand, maybe she would end up at Singularity. Maybe that was what Snapshot had meant when she’d said that Shudder would see Dr. Tlön soon.

 

---

 

Adam was stuck at the STRIX base for longer than he intended. He had occasionally turned in criminals to the police, but never to STRIX. It turned out that there was significantly more paperwork, as well as waiting on the phone for responses from government agencies, answering an endless cycle of questions from increasingly higher ranked officials, and receiving an uncomfortable amount of congratulation.

By the time he was leaving, morning had arrived and people were already flowing past the administration building’s checkpoint for the day shift. As he made his way through the crowd he caught sight of a familiar face. Dr. Hunt.

“Adam!” she said cheerfully. “I hear you hunted down your first ‘most wanted.’”

“Not hunted down, exactly,” he replied. “More like randomly bumped into.”

If he had successfully hunted down a supervillain it would have been Ifrit, someone well into the hundreds on STRIX’s most wanted list. His encounter with Shudder, number thirty-seven, so early in his career was yet another stroke of chance that had him looking like an all-star crime fighter. He didn’t feel great about that. Something about receiving all this praise for apprehending a teenager who barely even had a superpower left a bad taste in his mouth. A feeling which had only grown since he had learned a few hours ago that the only reason she was even on the most wanted was because she had been an assistant to some mad scientist.

“Random or not, you picked up a piece of trash that Nova Legion couldn’t be bothered with,” Dr. Hunt said. “Don’t get me wrong, their work is important, but they alone can’t secure this city if they’re too busy to arrest vermin like Kevin Gold.”

“Uh, who?” Adam asked.

“The man you just apprehended.”

Suddenly the trajectory of this conversation was clear to Adam. He didn’t want it to continue. He didn’t want to learn what he was about to learn. But he was helpless to stop it.

“I apprehended a girl.”

Dr. Hunt rolled her eyes. “Come now, Adam. You don’t think scum like that deserves the respect of having their chosen name used.”

He wanted to hit her. Probably more than he’d ever wanted to hit anyone. It was frustrating that even as someone who had explicit permission to punch people, he couldn’t do that now.

“Yeah. I do.”

Dr. Hunt gave a heavy sigh. “You understand that STRIX policy is to use legal names for supervillains wherever possible. You wouldn’t expect us to put names like…” she waved her hand as she tried to make up some examples. “...’Stab Man’ or ‘Mr. Arson’ or whatever. Why should it be any different for Kevin?”

“I don’t know. I guess because it probably hurts her?”

“If he didn’t want his feelings hurt, if he didn’t want to end up in a men’s prison—assuming he’s lucky enough to avoid Singularity—he shouldn’t have broken the law.”

Adam felt nauseous. Any pride in what he had done was gone. He should have talked to the Outcasts, first. Shudder had even told him to contact Stray. A teenager was going to prison because of him, it no longer mattered whether or not she was a criminal. And he’d gained nothing that could help Sila, only undeserved accolades and no doubt a new slew of interview requests. He desperately wished he could undo it all.

He glared at Dr. Hunt. “I have to go.”