Electra

"You've done enough good here already to earn you lifetime tenancy," Stesha assured him, gesturing back in the direction of his other architectural accomplishments. "Not that I won't come calling next time I need a hand," she admitted with a laugh. "But being able to control the plants only goes so far. It's easy enough to keep my own little plant house alive and well, but the survivors are happier and warmer in their sod houses. To say nothing of what you built for the bees! If they manage to overcome their difficult start and build a sustainable society, and I hope they will, I'm sure you will rapidly become a figure of legend to them. "Beez?" Sensing she was being talked about, Bay-bee disengaged her round head from within one of the bell-shaped flowers and flew over. She smelled rather overpoweringly of lily-of-the-valley, as though she'd been rolled in perfume. Which wasn't entirely inaccurate. Flying right up to Tarrant, she came almost nose to nose with him, her giant multifaceted eyes staring into his human ones. "Bee room?" she asked.

"We'll take care of him," Miss A told Daedalus, breezily confident. "I've been navigating the internet for years, and this version of Sharl is considerably optimized from the one that came out. He's even virus resistant." With a chuckle, she walked over to the laptop and cracked her knuckles, looking at her two companions. "All right," she told them brightly, "this is it. Anybody have to take a potty break, speak now or forever hold it." She sat down in one of the comfortable chairs near the computer, closed her eyes, and went limp. A moment later, a form appeared onscreen in the digital environment of Sharl's "living room." It was female, but didn't look like Miss A. This woman was close to middle-aged, with roughened hands and features that spoke of life in harsh weather conditions and shocks of gray running through dark hair. She wore a trenchcoat and dark glasses, much like Sharl's. The woman waved at the people outside the screen, though from inside she could not see them.

"Time is good, it's definitely better than nothing," Wander told Supercape. "Thanks for all your help. It's probably me who owes you one now." She looked down as she felt Singularity go limp under her. The combination of Edge's absence and Trevor's most convincing voice had seemed to do the trick. Singularity was still gasping with exertion, her breath coming ragged and raspy in her throat, but she wasn't actively fighting anymore. With her cheek pressed to the metal-plated floor, her eyes darted here and there, the unbalanced powerhouse still clearly looking for the threats she perceived all around here. Wander eased up a little, but not much. "Good, that's good," she said encouragingly. To Trevor, she said, "We've got to figure the best way to get her to Blackstone from here. Mark can deal with the other refugees, he's still got like a million Freedom League contacts, and Sage has more money than God. I'm pretty sure we can't just teleport there, it's shielded or blocked or something."

"My central lab," Miss A told her, smiling now that her colleague's whereabouts had been ascertained. "It's a matter for strictest confidentiality, but I think you'll find it quite interesting. I'll clear you into my lab." She disconnected from the intercom and turned to face the doctor. "I trust Dragonfly implicitly," she told him. "No one but you and Citizen, my sidekick, know more about my precise methods of fighting crime. I'm sure she'll behave with the utmost discretion regarding anything you tell her or show her."

"Let me check if she's still in the Lab," Miss A told him. "It's after hours, but she often works late." Walking over to the intercom, she activated the circuit to connect to Dragonfly's lab. "Dragonfly, this is Miss Americana. If you're still around this evening, I could use your input on a rather interesting data set that's come to my attention." She waited patiently, knowing that when her colleague got very involved in a project, it tended to take her a long time to switch gears for something as mundane as talking to others.

"Much as I'm loathe to ever admit something falls outside my purview," Miss A said at length, after almost ten minutes of looking at the scans, "your brain scans are like nothing I've ever seen before. My specialty is dealing with the rebuilding of bodies and neural networks for largely neurotypical brains, so I haven't given this area the depth of study this case requires. But I have a colleague who I believe has, and could shed valuable insight on this case." She looked over at him, her lovely face set in lines of concern. "If you'll let me, I'd like to consult with Dragonfly."

During the time that Tarrant had been distracted with building his castle, Stesha hadn't been idle herself. Bay-bee's fascination with flying rock had lasted perhaps ten minutes, after which she had begged Stesha into another giant flower, this one a lily-of-the-valley with blossoms the size of church bells. She hoped that would keep the little bee occupied longer than one big flower. Stesha had also had to pop home once to use the restroom, which happened all the time these days, especially when it was soccer-practice time in babyland. By the time the castle was built, she was back in her seat, and quite impressed. She gave Tarrant an enthusiastic round of applause. "It's amazing!" she told him sincerely.

Miss A studied the scans, considering what the doctor was saying. "Those are all possibilities," she told him carefully, "but I'm not convinced of the validity of your hypothesis. Given that you were exposed to "magical spells," shall we say, which were in reality punchcard programs to the difference engine of the universe, it's entirely likely that your mental illnesses may simply have been healed, whatever abnormality or imbalance had caused them cured by the force that you unwittingly unleashed." She walked along the row of scans, looking at them one by one. "We know from anecdotal evidence that these spells can be dangerous if attempted by the uninitiated, and that some even appear to be booby-trapped. You may have unleashed some force when you read the spell, but there is no reason to think that the entities you fought were in some way an extraordinary manifestation of your psyche, or that they are still lurking in some collective unconscious. In fact, Occam's Razor would rule that out until well after we have delved further into the nature of the spell that was used. It may be that your hypothesis was formed not from the facts so much as from your memories of the dissociative disorder and a lingering compulsion to see those aberrant mental patterns as truly distinct from yourself." Her voice was gentle rather than condemning, but it was clear that she wasn't planning to buy his theory anytime soon.

"They probably do," grunted Wander, even as she shoved her recalcitrant and screaming alternate self to the floor of Young Freedom's retrofuturistic control room. "Can you sort of hide your trail, or lock the door behind you somehow?" Both copies of Erin were showing the signs of wear, but Wander had the advantage of months of rigorous training to increase both her efficiency and her endurance. "Look, you're okay now!" she tried to inform her counterpart, even as she sat on Singularity and did her best to pin those dangerous flailing arms. "Pathos isn't even here, nobody from there is here. You're safe now!" Singularity, quite reasonably, did not appear convinced.

"Yeah, except I don't have the money," Erin pointed out with a fatalistic shrug. She chased a few last greens around the bowl, then pushed it aside. "And I don't really want any civilian job that's going to require a background check. I mean, I think my new ID is good, but there's no sense in pushing it. Though bodyguard might not be a bad idea, I guess," she said thoughtfully, cocking her head as she stuck her fork into the pie. "At least for somebody who's not looking for someone huge and imposing to show off their muscles." Erin certainly had muscles, but she looked more like an athlete than a brawler, which showed how deceiving looks could be. "You know anybody who needs their body guarded?"

"Come on!" Wander grabbed her double by the arm, which was something of a mistake. As keyed up as Singularity was, she automatically spun and took a swing at Wander that would've taken off anyone else's head. Even as tough as she was, the unexpected hit bloodied Wander's lip. "Right, the hard way..." She wrapped her arms around Singularity and pinned her bodily, the other girl tired enough from the earlier fight that she couldn't do more than struggle and growl. "Midnight, get over here!" she encouraged, "there's nothing left to wait for, he can get us all!" Above them, the ceiling began to open up, chunks of it lifting away like ice cream being scooped out of a carton with an invisible spoon.

Wander stared intently at the door, using old instincts to suss out the number of combatants, where they were, and the best trajectory to take them out as fast as possible. They were people, she reminded herself, they were mind controlled, but they were still living, thinking, feeling beings. For now, anyway, and they would stay that way if she did her job and helped stop what was controlling them. Turning to Harrier, she gave a curt nod, then jumped down into the hole he'd ripped into the floor.

Erin shrugged. "Getting a job, I guess. I'll have a diploma, so that's good, but all I've done for work is babysitting. That pays pretty well, but Avenger and Phantom aren't exactly going to take me on full-time for that. The market's not great, but I figure if I'm not picky, I'll get something. And I don't really have much of a secret identity to protect, so maybe being really strong and fast will help me out. Something with, like, insurance would be good, but that's sort of gravy." Truthfully, she was more worried than she wanted to admit about giving up her sessions with Dr. Marquez and the other psychologists she'd worked with. She wasn't going to share that here, though.

"You're quite welcome," Miss Americana said briskly, moving to put her tools away. She left Victory to talk with The Patriot, not terribly interested in doing so herself. The official record of the Patriot's service in the Freedom League was clean and sterling, but there were enough shadows and whispers for her to doubt the veracity of the official record. Any government-backed hero during the McCarthy era had to have had a lot of pressure on him, if nothing else, and who knew what that had done to the Patriot? She wouldn't judge vocally, but a girl was entitled to her own opinions. The fact that his personality had apparently been uploaded to a robot was fascinating and germane to her own work, but she highly doubted AEGIS would share that research, grateful or no.

Bay-bee waggled her antennae at Tarrant with great interest, flying around him in a complete circle, perhaps to show how well she could observe things. "Cazzle!" she proclaimed, alighting for a moment on top of the bricks, then taking off again. "Helpzzz!" Nearby, Stesha watched the show and struggled not to laugh. Bay-bee loved attention and new things, so Tarrant's visit was quite an event for the young insect. "Just be careful," she called to Bay-bee, "and don't get in the way!" It was strange to think they were so high up, the island in the sky was big enough to give the illusion of ground. To busy herself, and channel her powers away from random acts of floristry, she began filling in the edges of the dirt islands with grass.

Stesha slanted a look in his direction. "It's worse than you think," she told him dryly. "I work in a florist shop! The last time I worked an outdoor wedding I stayed to clean up after the ceremony. After a half hour, I had more flowers around me than the happy couple, and it was just lucky I was sitting in the back!" All the talk of flowers did not go unnoticed. Bay-bee came spiraling lazily down out of the sky, her translucent wings beating like mad as she studied the offerings around Stesha. They were, of course, much too small. "Flowerzz!" she told Stesha sulkily. "You already ate," Stesha pointed out. "Gaian Knight is going to show us how he builds the castle now."

Wander looked for a moment like she might protest, but just as Trevor had when she'd done what needed to be done, she swallowed her words and nodded. "Just so long as you're with us," she told him. The noise was becoming more audible now, a sound like machinery, drills maybe, or large pneumatic shovels. She gave the ceiling a cautious look, then turned to Mind Master. "You have to get out of here," she told him. "We'll be all right, but the resistance can't afford to lose you. Thank you for all your help, we'll take care of Caryatid for you." She nodded to Supercape. "We're ready." Singularity was obviously very reluctant to join her assigned group, but she went anyway, practically hiding behind Wander as a means of avoiding Edge's eye. Trickles of dirt began to fall from the ceiling, emphasizing the many tons of rock hanging over their heads.

Stesha followed his glance to the fairy ring she was sitting in and laughed, a little ruefully. "It's sort of a new thing that's cropped up since I've been pregnant, and it's only gotten worse with the spring. Wherever I spend a lot of time, plants start growing and flowering, sometimes existing ones, sometimes new ones that pop up. It's not so bad here, but it gets a little bit strange when I'm at work, or in the car, or sitting at a restaurant. I don't know if it's just a sort of magical reaction to fecundity or if the baby is flexing her muscles. I just remind myself that there are worse side-effects to superpowers."

"As far as I know, there isn't much magic around here," Stesha told Tarrant. "Talking to the refugees, they don't know any stories of superheroes or modern-era magicians, just the same sort of ancient legends we have on Prime. I would be surprised if there's anything here that could crash your castle, and we're pretty out of the way as far as dimension hoppers go. Even so, I think we'll avoid building anything important underneath it." Even after just a few minutes of quiet sitting, Stesha's throne was developing new decorations, small flowers, vines and mushrooms springing up randomly, seemingly without any input on her part. "So now the castle goes on?"

Next morning at slightly before the appointed hour, Miss Americana arrived in the computer room, dressed in a comfortable blue coverall with red and white trim. Everything was ready now, she'd prepared her physical body well against the rigors of a longer out-of-body trip, and figured she'd suffer no worse than eventual hunger pangs while she was gone. As she waited for the others, she inspected the newly buffered memory one more time, nodding with approval at its continued stability. This new piece of Tronik's foundation ought to do its job just fine, as soon as they were ready to let it.

Singularity watched events unfolding in a seemingly incomprehensible fashion, trying to hold onto the feeling that maybe things would be okay. Pathos wasn't in her mind, and that was very good, much better already, but everyone around her was tense and afraid, and that meant things were still very dangerous. Pathos and the others could still come after them. She stayed close to the man in black, watching him for cues as to how bad things were. He was trustworthy, hadn't he made Pathos go away when nobody else ever had? He seemed strangely familiar too, though she rarely trusted that feeling. She kept an eye on the others, the stranger who looked like Mom, the bad-luck man who was acting very unlike himself, the rock mover, the two little girls, and the two cowering civilians. It was far more people than she was comfortable dealing with, but none of them said anything to her or really looked at her, so it was all right for now. She startled when the man in the big cape appeared out of nowhere, seeming loud and out of place in the furtive group. She looked to the man in black, but his mask was on again. The others seemed relieved, though. Not a threat, till proven otherwise. Singularity returned to looking around, then stood very still, cocking her head and listening. Noises, rumbling. She tugged the man in black's black sleeve. "They're coming," she whispered, her voice hardly audible in the echoey chamber.

"Oooh," Bay-bee warbled, looking up at the new island in the sky. Stesha could only echo the sentiment. The little bee flew up for a closer look and Stesha let her, figuring there probably wasn't anything terribly dangerous to get into on a sky-island made of soil. "That's very impressive," she told Tarrant, once the ground had stopped shaking. "And who knows when we might need a network of subterranean caves for some reason? You never know who's going to want to move in next." She laughed. "Now will that just stay up there until you tell it not to? What's holding it there?"

Miss A listened dispassionately as Doktor Archeville recited the case study, though her mind was racing. Even before the kicker at the end, she knew what the punchline to this story had to be. The good Doktor was known to be somewhat eccentric, what genius wasn't, but if news that such an influential and powerful genius had such a host of mental issues was ever publicized, it would be a disaster. Not only for him personally and for his company, but for everyone who wouldn't be helped by an ArcheTech innovation because they were too afraid to use it. This was a matter that would have to be handled with the utmost discretion. "I see," she said aloud, her voice neutral and nonjudgmental. "And I'm assuming the newest sets of scans use the new equipment, and thus provide a better and higher-quality view of the brain chemistry and behavior? That should be helpful in future comparative studies, but for now we'll work with what we have." She sent the parade of brain scans to another wall screen where they hung looking almost decorative, if not for the host of illnesses they bore witness to. "What can you tell me about the energy field you were exposed to, the one that suppressed the symptomatic disorders?"

Stesha looked around, impressed by what she could feel moving under the surface. Gaian Knight did not do in small steps what could be done in giant bounds, she knew that from previous experiences watching him build. Bay-bee obviously sensed something as well, she abandoned her pursuit of nectar and made a beeline for Stesha, all but trying to fly into the plant-controller's lap for reassurance. "It's all right," she told the big beeling, simultaneously patting her head and trying to push her away a few inches. "Gaian Knight is building his house. Just watch!"

"I was," Miss A agreed, bringing up the schematics on the wall screen next to them. If she was startled by his sudden appearance she didn't show it, but then, androids didn't have much of an adrenaline response. She was still dressed in her work outfit, a subdued blue pantsuit with maroon accents, subtle yet designer and quite expensive, for those who noticed such things. "It's fascinating stuff, very possibly revolutionary. I already see things I would like to incorporate into my own projects as soon as we have working prototypes." She turned away from the screen to face the doctor, perching on the edge of an empty lab table and folding one leg over the other. "At the same time, I didn't see anything that would warrant this unusual level of secrecy. Care to tell me what's going on?"