After a few rounds of communication were exchanged between Brightstar, Senator Murphy’s office and the election-campaign of another politician, a woman by the name Lopez, we managed to schedule the event between the four of us for the last day of the event. While I would have been very much in favour of a small, private discussion, the others had pushed the idea of an open panel that allowed the public to ask questions directly, even adding an open online-stream for that purpose. Everyone would be able to ask their questions, regardless of physical presence. Why they had turned the whole thing into such a huge deal, especially why I was supposed to be part of such an apparently large publicity event, I was not certain. When I asked Technica, she only told me it was due to the Guild’s general covert and concealed nature that any official discussion with Guild-Members was blown out of proportion. Not that I actually had the authority to speak for the Guild, but my presence gave a certain appearance, which the politicians wanted to cash in on.

There was some more excitement during the week, when I ran into Krionyx, the current leader of the Heroes’ League, back in New Brunsburg. While he did not outright accuse me of murdering Clark, he strongly hinted at such, to the point that Technica stepped in, taking him into a conference-room for a quiet word. She did not invite me in, only Brightstar, but provided me with a life-feed from her own view-point, letting me listen and watch in real-time.

What followed amounted to a verbal beat-down, as she ruthlessly drove home the point that Clark’s end was the best he could have hoped for and that his death was not subject to investigation, but a sanctioned Guild-action. It was quite interesting, how she strongly stressed the point that, if necessary, the Guild could have taken the official, legal, path, charging Clark with attempted murder, assault, kidnapping and a couple other crimes, just from his actions against Anath and myself. However, by doing so, the public trust would begin to erode, ultimately bringing an end to the privileged status of “Heroes”.

Or, as she put it, People either died a Hero, or remained alive to be charged a Villain. What I had done, was allow Clark to die a hero.

I could admire her use of verbal leverage, convincing Brightstar that I had done the Heroes’ League a favour, even sacrificed my own reputation to protect the greater good, and I thought I could see doubt form within Krionyx eyes, especially when Technica pointed out that some of minor crimes alleged against me, could not have been done by me, with her acting as an alibi. For once, the attempt to smear me in the media was back-firing against the Greene’s, providing a sprinkle of water to those seeds. It was unlikely that just Technica’s words would be enough to convince one of their supporters, but to make him wonder and question, that might very well work.

Ultimately, things went nowhere and the meeting between the three of them ended soon after. I doubted I would be welcome in New Brunsburg any time soon, certainly not with the Greene’s deepening their power-base, but that mattered little to me.

Other than that particular meeting, the week was both interesting and boring at the same time. The interesting part was to witness just how diverse and oftentimes weird humans could truly be. The City of New York was so filled with life, even my thousand eyes in the sky could only capture a part of it and of that part, I could only actively monitor a smaller part. The rest was watched over by complex algorithms that Galatea and I had created together, pushing information to our attention if it met certain parameters. The algorithms did not quite match Galatea’s intuitive understanding that bordered human levels, but they worked quite well, allowing the two of us to focus on other things.

The boring part of the week were the talks and speeches, filled with procedure and mundane information. While it most likely was interesting and sometimes groundbreaking for the attending law-enforcement officers, the procedures and means discussed were created to work for both, Mundane and Powered Law-enforcement, putting stringent limits on them.

If a procedure was supposed to work for both, the police-officer who had worked the same job for the last twenty years, but also for an Atlas-Powered who had the ability to pick up a squad-car and throw it at a fleeing suspect, things obviously had to follow the lowest common denominator, which I did not operate under.

By the end of the week, the only desire I had was to return to my workshop, close the door and only let Sophia in for the next few months. Without my mask to hide my expression and provide additional stimulus when things got too boring, I might have turned insane with annoyance and boredom, I certainly would not have been able to project the image of an always calm, collected and reasoned Guild-affiliate.

The stage for the podium-debate was an interesting one, with four comfortable seats set out for Brightstar, Senator Murphy, senatorial candidate Lopez and myself. Curiously, despite the majority of politicians still being male, in this discussion, there was only one male, debating three females, though the moderator was a man, too, an old, mostly retired journalist who had written multiple books on the Guild and the differences in treatment for Powered in different parts of the country and the world. While he was not, to the best of my knowledge, Powered himself, he was about as well-respected as one could be, and seen as a scholar of the social studies on Powered and their impact on society.

What made me wonder how the debate would go, was that during the last few days, whispers of scandal had emerged regarding Senator Murphy. Nothing overt, at least so far, but there were some insinuations of him having coerced a woman into a sexual relationship, while others claimed that it had been outright rape. He had, obviously, denied all such allegations, but there was blood in the water and the sharks had started circling.

There was a part of me that just wanted to go along with things, to condemn him and nail him to a suitable wall as a deterrent for anyone who wanted to use their power, in whatever form it came, to coerce others, but was reminded that making snap-judgements regarding males was something Doctor Sunters, my therapist, had warned me about. It was easy to follow my own prejudices and judge according to them, but being blind to my own bias was foolish. As such, I looked into the whole mess.

Tracing back the initial story to a journalist of little renown, and running their face through my image-search algorithms came up with a surprisingly quick result, one of my own recordings. The observation from the camera had not reached the threshold to alert Galatea or myself, but I had a crystal-clear recording of that journalist meeting with none other than the female I had recorded previously, tall in the saddle as she was riding Senator Murphy off, into the sunset.

Just that connection was enough to rouse my interest and I began digging deeply. While I was unable to find any actual evidence of conspiracy, it stretched credulity that multiple parties who had been spreading the rumors just happened to be acquainted with Mr. Lopez, the brother of Ms. Lopez, the senatorial candidate.

What gave me a headache was that Mr. Lopez had a loose affiliation, one party removed, with one of the administrators of the American Superheroes, working in their local chapter. It was not impossible that Brightstar was thus implicated in their conspiracy, to the point that I brought it up to Technica, asking for guidance.

Her guidance was that the Guild remained neutral. It was an internal, American matter and we should stay out of it, even if the American Superheroes were involved in a slightly shady fashion.

Once again, I wondered at what point did neutrality and in-action turn into complicity but decided that, unless things turned into an actual legal matter, I would hold my silence. However, I did prepare a collage of material, demonstrating the links between the various parties in video-form, forming a time-line of them meeting in various public places, ultimately leading up to the female and her physical meeting with Senator Murphy and ending with her car-ride to the women’s health clinic. Unsurprisingly, the one who had driven her was also affiliated with Mr. Lopez.

Arriving on the stage for the debate, I was assigned one of the inner seats, placing me between Brightstar and Senator Murphy, with Ms. Lopez on Brightstar’s other side. Soon after everyone had arrived, the light dimmed, with a spot-light focusing on the moderator, Mr. Anderson, as he gave his opening remarks.

Why did I already want to leave, before things had even started?