Chương 168: Coping Mechanisms

"I'm not going to hurt you," Alexander said.

"Or your grandmother." The girl stared at him, tears still streaming down her face. Her breathing was ragged, panicked. She didn't believe him. Alexander turned his attention back to the servers.

"I am going to destroy your files though."

"Wait!" Her voice cracked.

"No. Please! I need those! I can't lose this job." He paused.

"If they fire me..." She looked toward the sheet covering the hole in the wall.

"They'll do worse than fire me. Please. I'll do anything. Just don't—" Alexander hesitated. Considered her words. Her plea. And realized he couldn't discard them as inane begging. He knew enough about STEPS, now merged into AEGIS, and the black ops departments they had. Even Talia was wary of the lengths they'd go to.

"Jasmine Sharp," he said.

"You recognize the name?" The girl blinked. Nodded frantically.

"I'm deleting everything you have on her," Alexander said.

"All of it. From now on, you fake the reports. Boring surveillance. Nothing useful. Technical difficulties. Whatever you need to say to keep them satisfied." She opened her mouth.

"Do you understand?" Alexander demanded. The girl nodded again, slower this time.

"Good." He reached into the servers with his power. Jasmine Sharp's folder appeared in his awareness. Years of data. Conversations. Transactions. Movements. Every detail of her life collected and catalogued for AEGIS. Alexander deleted it. The files vanished in cascading waves as his commands tore through the storage arrays. He swept deeper, searching for backups. Found them scattered across multiple devices. He deleted those too. The girl watched him in silence.

The sobbing had stopped, replaced by something quieter. Resignation, maybe. Alexander continued working. His awareness spread through the network, methodical and thorough. Every backup. Every trace of Jasmine Sharp's surveillance disappeared. Other folders passed through his awareness as he searched. Hundreds of them. Names he didn't recognize. Lives reduced to data points and vulnerability assessments. He left them intact. The hypocrisy weighed heavily on him. All those other people were targets.

Whose lives were being cataloged and weaponized against them in the same way Jasmine's had been. They were probably as innocent and deserving as she was. But destroying those files meant destroying this girl's livelihood. Meant condemning her grandmother. Meant AEGIS would send someone to find out why their asset had stopped producing. That AEGIS would just get someone else to do the work. And AEGIS was the real problem here. Not some teenager they'd recruited and trapped years ago. Alexander finished his sweep.

Nothing remained of Jasmine Sharp's surveillance. He considered scouring the servers for evidence of AEGIS's crimes. Communications. Instructions. It was the main reason for his being here. For tracking down the nefarious hacker who had destroyed the lawyer's life. Alexander couldn't bring himself to care. Talia had access. She would gather whatever she thought was important. He looked at the girl. She was staring at him. Shaking. Still terrified. Still waiting for whatever came next.

"Jasmine Sharp is off-limits," Alexander said.

"Permanently. If I ever have to come back..." He let the threat hang. Hated himself for making it. The girl's voice came out barely above a whisper.

"I swear you won't. I promise." Alexander turned toward the door. The drones with him followed. He stopped in the doorway.

"One more thing." He didn't turn around.

"I'm the Machine God. So don't bother reporting this to AEGIS. I'm in their systems too. I'll know." Silence followed the lie. Alexander stepped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. The sobbing started again, muffled through the wall. He kept walking. The drones fell into formation around him as he moved down the corridor toward the fire escape. If his estimates were right, AEGIS had recruited a young teenager.

Given her just enough resources to keep working. Made use of her skills for years. Trapped her in a cycle where stopping meant losing everything. They needed to burn. But not tonight. Alexander pushed open the fire escape door and stepped out into the night air. The incoming call notification didn't surprise him. He answered it. Didn't say anything.

"You alright?" Talia asked after a few moments. Alexander lifted into the air and took off flying, angled toward The Scar.

"I'll be fine."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm okay." He sighed.

"Really. Just tried to pick up one too many problems. It's been building ever since I learned about that bloody prophecy. Then I come out here, and it's just one surprise after another." Talia listened quietly.

"Something like The Scar should be one of those dates, you know?" Alexander continued.

"A day of mourning or something. But it's just another thing. There are kids awakening powers." He shook his head.

"I went to that apartment ready for a fight. Didn't know what I'd find, but I knew it might end up with somebody dead, and I didn't even think twice about it. And it's another fucking kid. Another problem that needs to be dealt with." Alexander fell silent, racing between buildings. Droney paced alongside him, coordinating the others even as they fell behind, unable to keep up with Alexander's speed.

"How do you want me to deal with Alice?" Alexander closed his eyes for a moment. Now he knew the girl's name.

"I don't know. There were hundreds of directories. Just like Jasmine's. That woman is strong, but even she's almost hit rock bottom. Who knows what the stories are for the others." Talia was silent for a while.

"When Flare-o—and, yes, before you ask, that was his chosen superhero name—when he blew up the hospital I worked at, I hunted him for weeks. I didn't have access to any guns, and my powers weren't the most suitable for confronting a guy who could conjure fire from his ass." He snorted.

"Saw him do it once," she added seriously.

"He was never alone. Always had at least two other superheroes with him. Anyway, one night I'm tracking them through the city, going rooftop to rooftop, and I see Flare-o recognize a guy on the street. They grab him, then drag him into the alleyway. It's after midnight by this point." Alexander listened intently. He didn't yet know where she was going with the story, but she rarely shared her history. Even after almost a year together, he knew very little about her. Other than that she had a real tiger mom.

A general outline of her vigilante story. How she ended up at AEGIS.

"The man they grabbed was a small-time villain who had committed a few liquor store holdups and gotten away. All three of them beat the guy until he was twitching on the ground. I don't think he even had a dangerous power, because he never used it to defend himself. And that's when Flare-o started burning him." Her tone dropped to almost a whisper.

"Fingers and toes first. Then his calves. Forearms. Thighs…" Talia took a deep breath.

"All I did was watch." He could hear the self-recrimination in her voice. He didn't offer any wisdom, no words of comfort. Knew they would be empty. And that she didn't really need them, not anymore.

"I've thought about it a lot over the years," she continued.

"It took a while before I understood what really stopped me. At the time, I thought the other heroes wouldn't do anything. That I'd get revenge for the villain, too, in time. But the truth was I felt powerless to do anything, and so I convinced myself that what I was doing was the smart course of action." Alexander considered that as he banked around a building, then put on more speed.

"You think she was powerless?"

"I think you do," she said.

"And that's why you left her a way to survive, even though you had to compromise your own morals to do it. Because you know what it feels like to have all your power taken away."

"What do you think, though?" he insisted.

"I don't know. I've been through some of her files. Her notes. Her online presence, masked as it is. She's smart. Capable. Which means there's no way she doesn't see the patterns in her work, in the people they make her target. She knows what she's involved in, deep down." She sighed.

"But sometimes people deserve a second chance to prove who they are. Who they want to be."

"I don't have the time. Or the inclination, if I'm being honest." Alexander dipped lower as tall buildings gave way to residential streets and homes. The Scar lay only a few minutes ahead at this pace.

"But if you want to try, I won't object. You'll need a team eventually, might as well start now."

"I'll need some equipment. Funds. A budget." Talia paused.

"Maybe a dedicated space on Astra Omnia."

"Done. But if it turns out we're overcomplicating things, and that she just doesn't care… or that she's loyal to AEGIS…" Alexander trailed off. Knew that ending the statement was unnecessary.

"I'll handle it," Talia stated, emotionless.

"One way or another." The Scar grew rapidly in his vision as Alexander zipped over rooftops.

"I have a few less complicated kids and a mix of social outcasts to deal with. Please tell Carmen to add an accountant to the list of recruitment priorities. Mark it urgent." Alexander tilted his head.

"And a therapist. Or psychologist. Psychiatrist? Maybe even a bargain combo or something?"

"Also urgent?" Talia asked, a hint of humor breaking through the dark of their previous topics.

"Probably," Alexander muttered.

"Feel like I could use someone to complain to myself." Talia giggled.

"I can ask Carmen to recruit a manager for you to—""Oh, fuck off," Alexander said with a laugh, then changed the subject.

"Send me a message if you need to draw on the guild funds immediately. In the meantime, I'm going to go make an offer to this gang of hardened criminals. See if I can't hire them for cheap labor or something equally exploitative."

"Will do. Good luck recruiting for your sweatshop." The call cut before he could retort. Alexander smiled. He knew what she'd done, and appreciated it. He'd never been very good at handling the heavier emotions, with his greatest coping mechanism being shrugging them off or burying them. And these days, with his powers, that could easily involve a hatchet and a coffin. Which meant he probably should speak to a specialist when they had one they could trust.

Talia had clearly recognized that and allowed him a chance to vent, then gently led the conversation to things less dark. Less charged with responsibility. Alexander allowed himself a few more moments of introspection, then pushed it aside and focused. The Scar raced beneath as he flew over the first of the abandoned buildings. His senses swept out, washing over the area aggressively, identifying anything of interest. Anything different. Looking for any distraction. And found something that pulled at his attention.

Where last there had been nine signatures, two of them with the subtle weight marking them as possessing superpowers, not just ascended attributes, there were now twelve. The three new signatures were all superhuman. Two Tier 1s. One Tier 2. And based on how the original nine signatures were arrayed against them, they might not be friendly. Deep down, a small part of him hoped they weren't. Alexander flew faster.