Whisper had not been easy for Elise to tame. Even when he was at his weakest, he was all fear and anger, leaving her jumping at every noise and snapping at anyone who touched her. At night, he overwhelmed her and the sheer energy he granted her amplified those instincts a thousandfold leaving her unable to sit still and wait out the night in her apartment and forcing her to parks and cemeteries and rooftops, anywhere she could avoid people half out of a fear that they might harm her and half out of a fear that she might harm them.

Sometimes she did harm them. Sometimes the need to lash out grew so strong that Elise couldn’t stop Whisper. She never waited around afterwards to check if they were okay. Afterwards, she never found any matching reports in the news, but she never looked too hard out of fear of what she might find. It was better to live with the possibility that she might have killed someone than the knowledge that she had.

She saw Whisper as something like a werewolf, a curse that caused her to do terrible things. So she attempted to subdue him. First through a combination of force of will and sunlamps, then through magic, experimental science, or whatever other supernatural means she could find on the Internet. In time, however, she realized that Whisper was never going away. If she couldn’t subdue Whisper by force, she had to find another way. The method she eventually fell on was channeling his energy into something valuable and only holding him back from causing permanent harm. Becoming a superhero, then, was the most obvious way to do this; however, both she and Whisper hated the idea of being on STRIX’s leash, so she remained an unlicensed vigilante.

Although most superheroes performed regular patrols, Elise discovered that these patrols almost never led to any action, something she needed badly early on, so she focused on building a series of online personas which allowed her to keep tabs on reports and rumors of supervillains, enabling her to anticipate where they might strike next.

This was how she first discovered Shudder. In those early days, Shudder was mostly targeting armored transports. Those attacks were few and far between, and usually occurred just before or after some unrelated larger piece of supervillain activity dominated the news. She was so successful at flying under the radar that no one had yet noticed the pattern of instances of a cloaked figure who could strike intense fear in her victims with nothing more than a look.

Elise couldn’t follow a vehicle through the entire city, but by studying driving routes and the types of areas where Shudder usually struck, she was fortunate enough to catch sight of a Dawn Industries truck carrying experimental automated turrets suddenly sputtering to an unexpected stop as it was rounding a corner. Shudder appeared out of a nearby building holding a device which struck Elise as a combination of a jaws of life and a staple remover. She was a bit intimidating, especially with the black-and-yellow cloak marking her as a supervillain, but Elise was confused by the abject terror she seemed to cause in the truck’s driver and guards, who fled at the sight of her.

In those days Shudder frequently used advanced tech either built by Tlön or purchased on the black market. Elise wasn’t sure how she had stopped the vehicle, presumably some piece of tech hidden behind the door where Shudder had been hiding. The device Shudder held, however, was clearly meant to break into the truck.

Whisper demanded she attack immediately. He didn’t yet understand that immediately throwing a punch wasn’t always the best way to win a fight and Elise didn’t yet understand that he was intrinsically part of her and that allowing herself to be him was the best way to teach him. Instead she forced him down, slipped across the street using the truck as cover, and appeared in front of Shudder just as she was about to jam her device into the truck’s door.

Shudder jerked in surprise, but a moment later, she grinned. “Is this my first superhero fight?”

The sight of her gave even Whisper pause. She was a teenager, young enough that she hadn’t even finished puberty. This reinforced Elise’s belief that talking was the best choice.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Elise replied.

Shudder set down the jaws of life-thing, but drew a baton from her side. “Only way to avoid it is if you leave me alone.”

Elise shook her head. “I can’t let you steal weapons.”

Shudder gave her an indignant look. “Why not? I need them. You don’t. Dawn Industries certainly doesn’t. I have no other way to get them. What is wrong with me taking them?”

Elise was impressed by the conviction in Shudder’s voice. Most criminals she had encountered were at least somewhat conflicted about their actions, but Shudder was absolutely certain that everything she was doing was fair and justified.

Of course, that didn’t mean she was justified. “Whatever trouble you’re in, there’s another way. Talk to me. I can help you.”

Shudder seemed to hesitate, a look of doubt crossing her face, but she shook her head. “You can’t possibly know that. If I don’t take these, I’m as good as dead. You might as well be killing me.”

Now it was Elise’s turn to hesitate. What if Shudder was right? What if taking those weapons meant certain death for her? The thought of causing a teenager’s death, even indirectly, over something as petty as a corporation’s property was terrifying to Elise.

Except…that was ridiculous. Shudder wasn’t going to die. Even the most ruthless supervillain wouldn’t waste the life of a superpowered underling over a single failed robbery. And even if they would, Elise could protect her.

Elise slashed at Shudder with her claws, forcing her to back away. She wanted to try to comfort Shudder, promise to protect her, but Whisper was roaring in the back of her mind, telling her that Shudder was lying, that she had to attack now or Shudder would seize the advantage.

Shudder lashed out with her baton, striking hard at Elise’s wrist and forcing it wide, allowing the cloaked girl to lunge forward and strike her in the chest, pushing her back.

Shudder smirked. “Darn it. I thought I could pull that one off.” She continued raining down blows on Elise, too quick and rapid for Elise to recover, anticipating Elise’s attempts to push an attack aside or grab the baton, and putting enough weight behind each to send shockwaves of pain through her armor. “But there’s something there, right? Fear is more than just making people run away.”

Elise had considered the possibility that Shudder might be psionic. But she had imagined knowing she was being targeted with a psionic attack. Instead, there had been no sense of something intruding her mind, no wave of fear to fight back, just her own doubts with no hint that they were being manipulated. It was more infuriating than Shudder’s blows.

Shudder paused for a moment, huffing with the cheerful energy of someone who had just completed a light workout. “Anyway, I’m Shudder. Nice to meet you.” Then she swung for Elise’s head.

The baton passed through her without connecting. Surprised, Shudder was slow to withdraw her arm, making it easy to grab her wrist and pull her forward, landing a punch in her stomach.

“I’m Whisper,” Whisper said.

It was the first time Elise had heard that name.

Whisper was in control now. Or, rather, Elise was more Whisper than Elise. She had dreaded allowing this to happen again, and had only allowed Whisper in trickles. He felt as much excitement as anger at the fact that he could now do what was needed to win the fight.

While Shudder staggered, he phased through her, then without pausing to look, hooked a claw around her elbow and flipped her over his back, slamming her into the truck. She was just able to break her fall with her arms, preventing herself from landing on her head. She kicked at Whisper’s leg and he took a step back to avoid it as she scrambled to her feet with impressive speed. However, her left arm hung limp. Dislocated.

She swung wide with her baton, desperate to keep him away. He could finish her now, but…why should he? He had given up trying to push away Elise’s docility when he discovered that it came with a rationality that seemed right in some way. Killing Shudder would stop her from becoming a threat in the future, but it would invite more threats. The authorities were usually uninterested in stopping a vigilante, but a vigilante who killed was another matter. The truck was protected and Shudder could no longer hurt him, so there was no need to continue the fight.

So he watched as Shudder ran away. Hating her and resolving to stop her future crimes, but also hoping she could be swayed from her path.

 

---

 

Shudder wanted to give up hope. It made the most sense. Hope meant anxiety about what might happen next, so shouldn’t giving up mean peacefully accepting whatever happened? Unfortunately, there was no escape from her thoughts when she was locked alone in a reinforced metal cell likely designed to hold someone with enhanced strength. Her imagination betrayed her, conjuring scenarios in which Quetzal burst in to save her or Arachne’s lawyers found some legal loophole that forced STRIX to release her or Hedge would miraculously awaken from his coma newly empowered and lay waste to the entire base. Her favorite, and the most far-fetched, was one in which she arrived at Singularity only to discover that Dr. Tlön had secretly seized control and was using the prison as a base of operations for a new plot.

Occasionally, someone questioned her, speaking over a loudspeaker so that she couldn’t manipulate his fear. She ignored the questions. No one fed her. She wondered whether they would starve her until her trial. Technically, there were laws which allowed the government to forgo a trial for a sufficiently dangerous supervillain whose crimes were undeniable. However, it was rarely evoked in modern times thanks to both technological advancements like webcams which allowed supervillains to attend their trials without endangering anyone and pressure from superhero groups who usually insisted on holding the justice system to a higher standard.

Eventually, she began to wonder if the rest of her life would be endless waiting in empty rooms like this. No one knew what Singularity was like, after all. Maybe they locked everyone alone in cells without anyone to interact with or anything to distract their minds. Maybe it was even worse. For all she knew, they could toss everyone into a dimension full of cells like this. Where they waited endlessly for something to happen, never growing hungry enough to starve or tired enough to sleep.

She began to worry she was losing her grip on reality, which was why she thought she might be hallucinating when Whisper stepped through the wall.

“Come on. We’re leaving,” he said, offering a hand.

Shudder looked up at him with tired eyes, taking a moment to process his words. He was Whisper. Her enemy. The root cause of all of her problems. Of course she couldn’t go with him. Except that, naturally, she couldn’t do anything else. As much as she hated him, she knew that nothing he would do would be worse than prison. So she stood and took his hand.

“Don’t expect thanks.”

Whisper led her through the wall and into a hallway. They walked briskly, completely ignoring the building’s architecture as they passed through walls, doors, furniture, whatever was in front of them. Whisper kept his eyes locked ahead, apparently uninterested in whether he might be seen, but Shudder tried to watch as much as she could. The building was quiet now. Was it night again? But it wasn’t completely abandoned. Shudder saw the backs of a few people in STRIX uniforms, but no one seemed to notice her escape.

Shudder found herself wondering how Whisper’s power worked. How could she breathe inside the walls? How were their feet still connecting with the floor? Her confusion only increased when Whisper stopped in a meeting room and said “Careful. We’re going to drop now,” and Shudder felt a brief moment of panic as the two sank into the ground.

They didn’t drop as if they were falling, at least until they reached open air somewhere below. Shudder stumbled as she landed, but managed to keep her footing. Whisper placed his free hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Sorry. I should have warned you about that drop.”

Shudder could see nothing but darkness. “Are we still in the ground?”

“Underground, yes,” Whisper replied. “Oh, you probably still can’t see, can you? We’re not phased anymore. It’s not a good idea to do it for too long. We’ll be taking Sapper’s tunnels back.”

Sapper was a supervillain from a few decades ago who had attempted to conquer the city with a private army hidden underground. He was the worst kind of supervillain in Shudder’s eyes. An asshole billionaire who already had immense power, but kept insisting on taking more. The enormous labyrinth tunnels he had produced—a nightmare for Fairfield’s city planning department which now had to account for an unmapped network of tunnels when zoning land—were a very useful way to get around the city.

“Sapper’s tunnels go underneath the STRIX base?” Shudder asked.

Whisper was tugging her hand, leading her somewhere. “They were blocked off, but like the rest of the tunnels, collapsing them entirely could be disastrous.”

Valuable information for anyone who wanted to target STRIX. Shudder wondered how many people knew about it.

“Where are you taking me, anyway?”

“Home.”

“I can’t go home. I was too close to it when I was picked up. STRIX is going to be combing the city looking for someone who managed to escape their custody.”

“I mean my home. STRIX will be after me, too, but they don’t know where I live. I have contact with Nova Legion and they trust me enough to keep STRIX off my back. As long as we lay low for a while.”

Shudder hesitated while her brain decided whether she had misheard this or not. Her worst enemy was offering to shelter her?

“Fuck no, I’m not going to your home. You ruined my life.”

Whisper said nothing and they continued in silence for a while. Shudder imagined Whisper must be thinking that he could continue with his plan if he just ignored her objections. She had to follow him for now, since wandering around here without a flashlight would be foolish, especially since she was starting to feel dizzy from both hunger and thirst, but he couldn’t force her to stay with him. At least not without drawing a lot of attention to himself.

After a while, they reached an area that was dimly lit by a row of small bulbs which glowed even less than Christmas lights. They existed in some parts of the tunnels, though Shudder didn’t know whether they were installed by Sapper or someone else. It was just enough light to make some sense of the walls, floors, and tunnels around her. She considered dropping Whisper’s hand now and fleeing, but in her weakened state he would catch her easily. Besides, she had no idea what part of the city they were in. It was better to wait until they surfaced and she could orient herself.

“I suppose you would see it that way. Me ruining your life.” It was strange hearing Whisper’s raspy voice take on a sympathetic tone.

“Not just my life. Everyone’s. We were going to help everybody.”

Whisper halted and turned to look at Shudder with his expressionless mask. “Do you still believe that? Do you still think you were doing the right thing?”

Shudder stared back, but didn’t answer.

“From my perspective you looked like a girl being manipulated by a megalomaniac who was threatening the world with a mind control device. You might not believe that, but you can at least see how it looked like that to me, right?”

Shudder felt frustration well up in her, but she refused to give Whisper the satisfaction of seeing that he’d gotten to her. “Why are you bothering to help me now, anyway?”

Whisper’s mask stared blankly at Shudder. “Because you know someone at the lab had an Uqbar. And even if you believe Tlön’s every action was justified, you know how dangerous her technology would be in anyone else’s hands.”

Shudder shook her head. “There was no Uqbar at the lab. Snapshot told me it was impossible.”

Something gave Shudder the sense that Whisper was smiling at her. “So you’ve been investigating it.”

Shudder felt her face heating. It wasn’t something that needed to be kept hidden, but she hated the idea that Whisper had coaxed a secret from her.

Whisper turned away and began leading Shudder through the tunnel again. “Come on. We’ll talk about this at home.”

“Wait,” said Shudder. “Could we stop by my apartment and grab some of my stuff?”

Whisper agreed and Shudder gave him her address. The two continued on in silence for  a time. Eventually Shudder recognized some arrows painted on one of the walls by someone else who had navigated these tunnels and finally got a sense of where in the city they were. Shortly afterward, they reached the exit nearest her apartment, a shared basement of a row of stores nearby. Concerned that STRIX could be watching, Whisper insisted on Shudder waiting in the tunnels while he retrieved her costume, baton, spare cell phone, and a few other possessions. Once he returned with her things stuffed into her backpack, the two briefly backtracked before continuing in another direction.

To Shudder’s relief, Whisper’s home wasn’t far. After less than half an hour walking through the tunnels Whisper stopped suddenly and held out his hand for Shudder. She took it and he led her through the wall and into a brightly lit laundry room. The sudden light made Shudder wince, but it was clearly worse for Whisper, who gave a sharp intake of breath before his armor faded away like mist, revealing a young woman dressed in flannel pajamas.

Shudder had never seen the face of her enemy before. As much as she hated Whisper, she was not the vendetta type and she had never considered what might be hiding beneath the armor. Seeing the truth now, she found she could only think of one thing to say.

“Uh…pronouns?”

Whisper cocked her head. “What? Oh, right. Sorry, no one’s ever asked me that before. It doesn’t really matter. I guess if I have to choose, she/her now, he/him when I’m in costume. If that’s not a pain.”

“Not at all. I should have asked before,” Shudder replied, realizing how ridiculous that was even as she said it. When would she have asked? In between throwing punches?

She was probably in her early twenties, Shudder guessed. With long, split-end loaded hair and brown skin. She stood with a slight hunch, which as Whisper had made her look dangerous and on-guard but now made her look tired and indifferent.

“I didn’t really think this through,” she admitted. “I just heard what happened and came to get you as soon as I could, so I guess I’m going all in and trusting that your little pirate’s code or whatever will ensure you don’t screw me over. I’m Elise Hargrove.”

“Elise,” Shudder repeated. “Please tell me you have some food upstairs.”

Elise frowned. “Did those STRIX assholes not feed you?”

Shudder shook her head.

“Shit. Right, elevator. This way.”

She led Shudder several flights up to an apartment which was nominally better than Shudder’s. It was around the same size, but significantly less run-down. It appeared that Elise was able to get the landlord to do repairs on occasion, as well. And the inclusion of a few horror movie posters made the apartment feel almost as if someone actually lived there.

Shudder rested on the couch while Elise worked in the kitchen. She left the lights off, which was a little uncomfortable, but Shudder waited patiently as she tried to imagine what would happen in the next few days only to discover that she couldn’t even imagine the next few hours.

Soon, Elise set a bowl of instant ramen on the coffee table before her. “Right, let’s compare notes.”

Shudder scooped up some of the noodles with her fork and desperately blew on them, trying to cool them enough to put in her mouth. She wasn’t particularly interested in this conversation right now. “There’s not much left to tell you. We were hired to steal the detector, someone else got there first, and it seemed like they had an Uqbar but they probably didn’t.”

“Hold on, let’s take a step back,” Elise said. “Who hired you?”

“That’s none of your business,” Shudder replied. She decided to chance the noodles and stuck them in her mouth. They were still far too hot, but she resisted opening her mouth and making her mistake clear to Elise.

“We need to exchange information if we’re going to figure this out.”

Shudder was becoming annoyed with Elise. Supervillains didn’t share each other’s secrets with superheroes. Everyone knew that. She quickly chewed and swallowed the searing ramen, but her stomach demanded more. “Why does everyone want to know about him, anyway? He’s got nothing to do with this. It was the other thief who had the Uqbar.”

She began blowing on another forkful of ramen, but Elise grabbed her wrist and lowered the fork back into the bowl.

“Shudder, listen to me. This goes beyond the usual superhero vs. supervillain dynamic. We’re on the same side right now because it’s in both of our best interests to investigate this. I’ve already gone against my ‘side’, for as much as STRIX can be called my side, so I can’t even be thought of as a hero any more. Besides, do you think any of your criminal friends would be interested in helping you stop this?”

Shudder scowled at Elise, wanting to argue, but she knew that Gremlin, Quetzal, and Bodkin would all say the same thing; this was hero business.

After a moment of silence, Elise spoke again. “Exactly. You can’t rely on them. Orbis Tertius is an existential threat. Any loyalty you have is irrelevant.”

“Fine,” Shudder said. “His name is Giaour. But good luck finding him because he disappeared after giving us the job. Even Snapshot doesn’t know who he is.”

“See? Isn’t that weird? And did this guy plan the heist, as well? Like what time it would occur?”

Shudder thought back to the conversation with Giaour she’d only half paid attention to. “Maybe. I don’t remember. He gave Grem a lot of instructions, so probably.”

Elise leaned close, her frustration having become excitement. “Two heists occurring at the same time is a strange coincidence. And then you add in me showing up based on info from a contact who also disappeared and it starts to look like someone wanted us to see the Uqbar.”

Suddenly, Shudder’s hunger was forgotten. She remembered all the reasons why it was unlikely, but what Elise was suggesting changed everything. “You think someone was trying to warn us that someone’s recreating Dr. Tlön’s tech?”

Elise shook her head. “I’m not sure. But…well, I remember you stealing cognicrystal. Was that for Orbis Tertius?”

“We used it for pretty much everything. It can store thought or project artificial psionic waves depending on how you hook it up.”

Elise’s tone was surprisingly insistent. “How much, though? How many grams of it went into Orbis?”

Shudder tried to recall the way in which the cognicrystal had been processed. “I don’t know, maybe ten grams?”

Elise’s eyes were wide. “Then what would someone need one hundred grams for?”