Director Piggot sat in her office with the lights dimmed, her high-backed executive chair framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows behind her. Two battered laptops and overstuffed trays of paperwork crowded her desk.

  In front of her, spread open and filled with photographs attached to reports, was a sizeable document folder. Headers read: Fenrir’s Chosen Incident, Brockton Bay, 05/26/11. It was the after-action report of various sources, both internal and external, of the Fenrir’s Chosen incident. Specifically, the details of the interaction between Victor, Othala, and Apex. Contained within it were internal assessments, confidential interviews, photographs of some of the aftermath, stills of CC Camera security footage from the Headquarters building, and more.

  There was also a pair of multi-page phone transcripts from the PRT’s anonymous tipline. Each of the transcripts detailed horrific abuse, mistreatment, torture, threats of mutilation, and a multitude of near-death experiences. All at the hands of the brand new head of the Protectorate ENE. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about who had called those reports in.

  Piggot pulled the top drawer of her desk open, pulled out a long, thin, black cylinder, and stuck it between her lips. She flipped to the next page of the report, her eyes reading over every line in close detail. Meanwhile, her plush cheeks pulled, and wisps of smoky vapor rolled out between her parted lips and nostrils.

  It was a fucking mess. It always was with parahumans.

  She took a drag from her vape and slipped it out of her mouth, holding it between her fingers, and let out a long exhale of lightly menthol scented vapor.

  As much as she wanted to say that and leave it, if she was being completely honest with herself, it tended to be a fucking mess regardless of whether it was parahumans or not. It certainly wasn’t the case that the PRT officers were innocent angels without their own reports of abuses of power sitting in the stacks on her desk, or in the archives of her computers.

  Stuffing the vape back in her lips, she continued reading.

  Next was Apex’s detailed report of the events as they related to the Victor and Othala incident, along with her thought process and the decisions she’d made throughout. There were references to a television show documentary from Aleph that was about a particular method for handling juvenile corrections issues. Scared Stiff.

  Piggot snorted, blowing vapor out of her nostrils like a dragon.

  Those actions, and some of the reasoning behind them, were risky, dangerous, stupid, reckless, full of potential liabilities and lawsuits. Not S.O.P. And while Apex wasn’t technically acting “in uniform,” there were standards of conduct that were expected of members of the Protectorate, that doubly applied to those in leadership positions. Standards that applied at all times.

  But things regarding Apex were tricky and nuanced, too. Apex was a pseudo-Case 53 cape. She was unable to effectively do her job while maintaining a dual identity, and therefore, there was some legalistic gray area present that blurred the lines between officially sanctioned actions and actions taken when “off duty.”

  Piggot twiddled the pen in her fingers as she thought. A few strands of her bob fell out of place, and she straightened them back to where they belonged. It was late, well after midnight. She should have been home hours ago. She was probably going to sleep on a cot downstairs. Her legs under her orthopedic socks ached, and were reminding her that she was overdue for several items of self-care and maintenance.

  A part of her wanted to call Apex into her office right now and strip her down for what she’d done.

  Apex’s report, and her reasoning for her actions were concise and logical. She’d wanted to send a message, first and foremost. Then, she wanted to capitalize and further disrupt and drive division behind the largest villain organization in the city. Finally, she wanted to make it known to the existing villain population that there was a change of leadership and a realignment of doctrines and practices.

  Piggot drummed her fingers on her desk and puffed on her pen.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She didn’t have a scrap of loyalty to Apex. Apex would have to earn that from her, beyond simply posting some podium positions for outstanding PRT goals. Big goals, like ending the Endbringer threat, but still. A single act was just that. Strongly worded suggestions had come down from the chain of command regarding bringing Apex on and appointing her to the position she now occupied. Piggot didn’t think she’d earned it, nor was she ready for it. And she had said that, both to her superiors, and the girl herself directly.

  She’d told Apex she didn’t agree with the decision. She’d told her to her face that she didn’t think she was fit for it. And Apex had nodded and agreed with her, and promised that she’d do her best to meet her Director’s expectations.

  If it came right down to it, Piggot could, and would, follow the procedures in place, to the exact letter, to cut Apex loose and demote her. Regardless of what her bosses thought. But Piggot was a soldier at heart, and she followed orders. So for now, Apex was where she was. But that begged the question, what to do with this report? She had to file her own summary assessment of the report and personally sign off on it.

  Piggot was a fighter. A tactician. She knew this to be true, and it was core to her identity, no matter what it was she might look like. Obese. Stiff. Slow. Disabled. A bureaucrat in a chair too expensive to justify, hiding behind a desk, memos, and chain-of-command protocol.

  She frowned and sucked a big lungful off her vape pen.

  She told herself it didn’t matter. What she looked like, how she moved, how people saw her, the comments and jokes they made behind her back. She had more important things to worry about. She had traded career, blood, and bone for the right to sit behind this desk and dictate orders. She made the hard calls, the ones that others who desired her position wouldn’t want to stake their careers on, or would do so, foolishly. But some mornings, when the suit didn’t quite button properly, when the chair creaked beneath her, when a junior PRT Officer glanced away too quickly in a briefing–she remembered exactly what she’d given up. And what she’d become. It should be a suppressed automatic rifle in her hands, and not a mouse and pen.

  Piggot grunted and licked her lips. Idle thoughts were disrupting her workflow. It was too late, and she was having trouble staying on mission. Back to the report. She needed to make a decision, and then she’d go to sleep in her makeshift quarters downstairs.

  In any other circumstance, with another member of the Protectorate or the Wards, Piggot would be filing a formal reprimand and appending it to their record.

  Apex had always been odd. Even when she was Phoenix Strike, she’d stood out from her peers. The decisions she made, the things she did, never quite made sense. But Piggot could not argue with one thing. The girl, the woman, she corrected herself, had delivered results that were considered unobtainable without extreme costs. Costs that would simply not justify the means to the end. She’d done what the rest of the PRT and its branching organizations had been trying to do for twenty years. And she wasn’t even twenty years old.

  There was another factor Piggot mulled over. Apex had always been honest, nearly to a fault. Honest in her reporting, her self-assessments, and to Piggot directly. She didn’t squirm under her gaze, nor did she crack jokes or show her ass the moment Piggot’s back was turned.

  Piggot made her mind up. She pulled out a drawer, grabbed a self-inking stamp, stamped the reports in three places, and followed each of them up with a date and signature.

  She didn’t like the methodology. She didn’t like the concept. It conflicted with and would cause issues with the broader mission statement and goals the Director had. Ones that Apex herself professed to want to dedicate herself to. Reputational harm was a very, very serious word in her office. But Piggot could simply not deny two facts: one was that Apex’s pet project outside the PRT was delivering results hand over fist. Brockton Strong was mentioned in nearly every report that came across her desk. That kind of PR was a potent weapon in her arsenal, and her young Protectorate ENE leader being the head of the operation could not be underestimated.

  The second thing was that, as much as she didn’t like it, she didn’t doubt the effectiveness of doing what it was that Apex had done to the two villains, especially Othala. Horrific, sweat-soaked, screaming nightmares in the middle of the night were things Piggot had to deal with for years. Ever since the incident that caused her disability and ended her career. Putting the secular equivalent of the Fear of God into someone’s head had a profound way of changing them.

  Arguments could be made that it qualified for cruel and unusual punishment in a court of law. Or that it consisted of torture, although that would be a bit of a stretch to prove legally. There was a risk to the organization. But they were in desperate times, and the argument that Apex made for taking threats off the board in ways that didn’t further cost PRT resources, didn’t risk the lives of PRT assets, and whose harm was in a gray area was a strong one.

  So Piggot approved without condition or comment and signed off on it.

  She took another drag off her pen and stuck it back in her drawer along with her stamps and closed it. She was reaching for the folder to close it and place it in the processing pile for her assistant when there was a knock on the door of her office, followed by her assistant opening it and stepping in.

  Piggot furiously waved a hand in the air in front of her to try and dissipate the cloud of lingering smoke. Her assistant had his back turned still, and she quickly dropped her hand to her lap as he turned to face her. He looked like hell. Lines on his face, bags under his eyes, and his tie was crooked.

  “Ma’am,” he started.

  “I thought I told you to go home hours ago,” she snapped at him.

  He dipped his head and agreed: “Yes, ma’am. But there was more work to be done, and it was important. I went past the final ferry departure window, so figured I’d just spend a bit more time getting ahead of tomorrow, er, today’s work.”

  Piggot clenched her jaw. “You’re off duty as of right now. If I see you touching another template or logging in to your account, I’ll be reprimanding you and making you regret it. Understood?”

  He nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am. I was just coming in to see if you needed anything before I left.”

  “No. Leave. Go to sleep, and I don’t want to see you back in the office before ten. That’s an order.”

  “But-”

  “No buts. You make mistakes that others have to fix later, it slows all of us down, we become less efficient, and it could cost people things they can’t afford to go without.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Goodnight.”

  With that, he left, and Piggot leaned forward, pressing her palms into the top of her desk, and hauled herself to her feet. It still smelled a bit like menthol as she walked to her office door and flicked the lights fully off. She cursed under her breath, and the door clicked shut and locked securely behind her.