The strongest wills can move mountains. The strongest drills will achieve similar results—with drastically higher efficiency. Given enough time, even a shovel will suffice. The point is, moving things is stupid. I’d rather make holes in them.

Alison woke up with a start. Last night had been… tiresome. The scrawny teen that she had decided to involve in her plans—again—had proven to have a spine. He had also proven to be a living pain in the ass.

Her motives still remained righteous in her mind, but the boy had been right about one thing: killing wantonly without even checking how involved people were was a sure recipe for disaster. She couldn’t care less about the lives of the scumbags they had taken care of, but she had to admit that shooting first and asking questions later had become prevalent in her work, and that wasn’t good.

So she had gone to bed angry and had barely slept. And now she had to go to her bullshit cover job to meet the fat man.

God, this was infuriating. Good thing she had a way of dealing with that.

Alison dragged her feet out of bed and sluggishly made for her living room. She made herself a coffee and took out a pack of foul-smelling rolling tobacco. She laid down a pinch on a thin sheet and dropped a piece of cardboard in it. She then popped her grinder from under the coffee table and sprinkled some of the contents onto her work.

After finishing her “breakfast,” Alison took a quick shower and brushed her teeth, making sure to properly get rid of the smell. She produced a heat gun and set it to the lowest setting to dry her hair. Even though a regular blow-drier would have been more suited to the task, there was just something satisfying about using her tools for more… mundane tasks. Maybe to remind herself that they didn’t have to be weapons all the time.

Finishing her morning routine, she put on her sports bra and panties, followed by a pair of black Domyos yoga pants and a white workout tank-top, as well as a pair of socks. Next, she donned a headband that would complete her disguise. She then put on a simple dark leather jacket and a red scarf. Finally, she took the gym bag out of her closet and stuffed the phones and files she had kept from Martel’s hideout in it. She put a couple of towels on top to hide it, just in case.

Alison was pissed at her current situation. The issue was that her motorcycle was out for repairs. So she had to resort to taking either a cab, an Uber, or using public transportation. The first two were also out of the question as Alison wasn’t sure whether they could track her from her payments. She was also too far away from her destination to simply walk there, and taking a bicycle with her gym bag was a sure recipe for disaster.

The only remaining choice would be public transportation. Which entailed two possibilities: tram or bus, and the latter was simply not happening. In Alison’s mind, a bus was just a tram on crack: shakier, smellier, frequently dirtier, and a strong tendency to make people uncomfortable. Not to mention that a tram would be easier to escape if she encountered… unforeseen consequences.

She hadn’t stopped frowning since she had entered the vehicle a few stations ago, and her mood had gotten worse and worse as more people got in. To top it off, her strategy of sitting exactly in-between two seats had stopped paying off when an old lady had unceremoniously sat beside her, nudging her closer to the window. Said lady had then loudly said “excuse me” with the passive-aggressiveness that bordered on verbal abuse in Alison’s mind.

At this point, Alison gave up, for fear of having to deck an old lady square in the jaw, and chose to stand up and got away from the seats.

The rest of the ride was just as grating on her nerves. More people amassed in the small space around her already cramped space, and it felt like it was only a matter of minutes until she snapped.

The moment when a hand grabbed her buttock, a surge of anger rose in her mind. She grit her teeth and patiently waited until the tram reached the next station. As the doors opened, she didn’t even hesitate and produced a utility knife from her arsenal and jammed it deep into the offender’s thigh. The man immediately retracted the offending hand and yelled out in pain. He recoiled, clutching at his wound, but the knife was already gone, and Alison had started moving. The man’s ensuing screams and the train’s subsequent chaos allowed her to exit the scene inconspicuously. She felt it almost a blessing having to walk the rest of the way there. She just regretted not having had the opportunity to stab the old woman as well.

Her mood gradually grew better as she breathed in the polluted air in the streets. The smell of car exhaust and cold asphalt had never felt so liberating.

The sun was barely peaking above the tall buildings in the financial district, but massive window panes covering them reflected a light bright enough to prompt Alison to put on her sunglasses. This town’s weather was all over the place, and the biting cold mixed with the too-bright sunlight was one more small annoyance she had to put up with.

The appointment had been set at 10:00, which meant that Alison would be right on time if she were to go in right now. So instead, she chose to light a cigarette and smoke it as slowly as possible.

The man she would be meeting was not the kind of people regular folks could afford to piss off, but Alison was no regular folk, and she wanted him to know that. Their relationship had always been professional, but with fake undertones and false pretenses that ground her gears a tad too frequently. That little act of pettiness by not being there on time, yet being able to be, was one of the little things she found genuine joy in.

Also, there was the fact that she knew full well that the man got immense joy out of seeing her having to play by his rules. Refusing to abide by his time schedule helped Alison remind the man that she was not his employee.

She dropped her cigarette butt into the cylindrical ashtray in front of the building while absently looking at the yellow sign above the building entrance. Every time she looked at it, she couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that such a company was dealing with her to take down mob bosses.

Alison had always thought that powerful people who worked in the shadows and dealt with the underworld would be the heads of Big Pharma Companies, with secret labs and genetically engineered superpowers or something. But no, her employer worked for—or maybe owned, she wasn’t sure—a massive chain of electronic retail stores.

She casually made her way through the pristine white and gray lobby, stopping at the front desk to collect a badge that would allow her to use the elevator in the process. She pressed the button for the twentieth floor, the last one. The tallest buildings in the city, aside from the public housing ones, were not that tall, all things considered. Skyscrapers tended to be frowned upon in this part of the country as they ‘defaced’ the cities’ historical appearance. Not that Alison cared much about it, though.

With a pathetic ding, the elevator stopped at the top floor. Alison exited it into an empty waiting room in front of a tiny lobby, behind which sat a middle-aged Asian woman with thick-rimmed glasses and a ponytail. The plump woman’s fingers danced on the keyboard with a speed that bordered on the supernatural. The woman quickly shot a side glance at Alison and pressed a button on her desk, unlocking Alison’s glass cage.

Alison took the opportunity to shoot the woman a radiant smile as she passed by.

“Hello Fleur, how are you doing this fine morning?” Alison drawled, her voice dripping with fake politeness.

“You are late. Mr. O does not like it when you are late,” she said with a frown.

“Oh, but he forgets all about it once I’m in there,” Alison replied with a wink.

The woman simply clicked her tongue in annoyance.

The woman frowned but didn’t reply. Alison took great pleasure in tormenting her, not because she was a shitty person—well, not just because of that—but rather because Fleur had demonstrated open and unsolicited aggressiveness towards her ever since Alison had started coming here. Her current theory was that Fleur might think Alison was her boss’ Escort, posing as a private yoga instructor.

To be fair, Alison wasn’t quite sure what the actual difference between the two was. Entertaining the ambiguity had become something of a habit for Alison, who delighted in seeing Fleur seething in anger when she made sultry and suggestive remarks regarding her boss. The woman might have had a crush on good ol’ Mr. O.

Like each time she had been here, Mr. O’s office was impeccably clean and ordered. Every single item in the room was set at a precise angle and distance so that everything looked like some kind of OCD exhibit. The office was rectangular, with the door precisely in the middle of the wall, facing an all too symmetrical rectangular black desk. The furniture was either black or white, and their shapes were limited to rectangular and flat. The room’s only noteworthy decorations were the Apple laptop and an all gray metallic-looking Rubik’s cube sitting on the desk.

If Alison had to hazard a guess as to what architectural style this room belonged to, it would probably be Neo-brutalism.

Behind the charcoal black desk sat a portly bald man in his late thirties to early forties. The tiny silver plaque on his desk had the letters “D. Girard,” but Alison knew him as “Mr. O.”

The man lifted his gaze from his laptop the instant Alison’s trainers had stopped hitting the concrete floor.

“Mrs. B, I take it you have good news?” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I do. But also bad news,” she said in return. “Shall we head to the gym for some ‘exercise’?”

“Please lead the way,” the man answered with a wave of the hand.

They slipped into an adjacent room that looked like a private gym for all intents and purposes. But instead of starting their supposed workout session, Alison sat down on a massive Pilates exercise ball and took out the files from her gym bag, and handed them to the man without a word. He took them wordlessly and sat down on one of the metal benches next to Alison.

“What is this?” the man asked, waving the slightly crumpled papers at her.

“Martel had this at his house. We knew what type of shit they were up to, but I didn’t think that place was a transit point,” she said.

“And his family lives there?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No,” she simply said.

“Were there people in there?” Mr. O asked.

“No. But there had been fairly recently. Frequently.”

The man scanned the contents of the paper for a few seconds before raising both his eyebrows.

“They got an impacted in the lot?” he asked with a quirked brow.

“I don’t know. I tend not to take that into account when lives are being peddled.” Alison shot back in a glacial tone.

“Mrs. B, you have to understand that, even though the plight of my fellow humans concerns me deeply, I’m more concerned in the consequences of not taking the threat of having dangerous Rampants fall into the wrong hands seriously,” he answered.

“These people didn’t ‘fall into other people’s hands.’ They are enslaved, bought and sold like cattle. If you’re not going to show some fucking human decency, then don’t fucking talk about it.” Alison’s temper flared as she spat the last words.

The man wasn’t exactly a sociopath, but the way he spoke about these topics as if they were merely a matter of business twisted her gut and made the low amount of empathy in her heart flare in outrage.

“Do not mistake my absence of reaction for total apathy, Mrs. B. Please consider that my concern is usually broader. In essence, we fight people like our opponents by taking in the whole picture into account and limiting the interference of our personal feelings.” He paused. “That said. How did it go?”

“Ran into Martel and his goons, not the badge-wearing kind,” Alison answered.

“What happened to them?”

“Taken care of. Had to bolt because of… Reasons. Might have tripped the Scanner again at some point,” she said.

The memory was fresh on her mind, and she still soured when thinking about the things Alex had said to her. She was not like the man currently facing her.

“Oh?” the large man said, his face showing no trace of emotion. “Flashy work is not your… usual style, Mrs. B.”

“The way I deal with my jobs is my own,” she replied coolly.

“Alright. What about the hideout?” He asked, changing the topic.

“You might learn from a local news station during the day that officer Martel’s house burned down to a crisp last night. There was a risk of leaving DNA, so I couldn’t afford to leave it as was.”

Mr. O frowned ever so slightly at her explanation. Alison knew that he disliked her way of ‘disposing of evidence’, as it tended to draw the media’s attention. And that kind of attention was sadly not the kind the Scanner would interact with in a way that would benefit her, and that was a risk.

The burning of evidence usually irked Mr. O, as he had a specialized cleanup crew that dealt with body disposal to avoid that exact scenario.

Usually, she would have agreed with him, but this time with Alex’s bodily fluids splattered everywhere in the house, she just couldn’t risk it.

“As I said, the way I deal with my jobs is my own,” she reaffirmed firmly.

“I guess you are right. As long as Martel is dealt with, I will consider this job a success,” Mr. O conceded. “Now, all we need to do is to take out De Sevin, and we can go into the next phase of the plan.”

“He’ll be harder to corner. He’s almost always in town, has less obvious connections with the mob, and almost never goes out without another cop. Plus, now he might know we’re targeting him since Martel’s dead,” Alison said.

“He’s got leverage on the both of us, which makes less expeditive measures likely useless. Also, we have to act quickly. I’d prefer if he didn’t connect the dots between Martel and us.”

“You mean I have to act quickly while you stay here in your ivory tower,” Alison casually pointed out.

“Although I can’t accompany you on the field, I can assure you have all my support at your disposal, Mrs. B,” the man replied without missing a beat.

“Alright then, I want an Impacted checkup,” Alison said bluntly.

“Oh?” The man cocked a brow. “I thought you didn’t like these.”

“It’s not for me. I’ve picked up a… stray. I don’t want to get into details, but he’s useful, even though he’s a total rookie.”

A subtle narrowing of his eyes was the only sign that hinted at Mr. O’s reaction. He did not usually approve of bringing in unknown players in his game. But Alison had never brought back anybody with her before, and if the man had to give her one thing, it was that she had always had a nose for hidden gems. After a few seconds of silent internal debate, the man finally spoke.

“Did you pay him?” he asked.

“Yes, 4k,” Alison replied.

The man chuckled. “Alright, that shouldn’t dent your budget too much. What is it that made you keep him, though, I wonder.”

Alison waited a few seconds before replying, unsure of how to proceed.

“He’s like me. Impacted, I mean. But his power is not the offensive kind,” she said after some hesitation.

“Any usefulness in fights?” Mr. O asked with a hint of interest.

“No… Not really. Not more than any regular guy at the moment, at any rate. Although he definitely proved that he can be resourceful and sometimes even crafty. The main thing his power does is making him durable. Some kind of healing thing, I think.”

The man stroked his smooth round chin in contemplation.

“Healing, you say? How good?” He asked.

“Can take a few bullets, and is only limited by potential blood loss, that I know of,” Alison replied.

The man’s brow quirked again.

“Pretty durable then. He could make a decent enforcer with proper training. Have you thought about getting him lessons?” He asked.

“Yes, and I don’t know him well enough for that just yet,” Alison said. “Maybe if the next mission goes alright. But back to the previous topic, can I get Zhuk for a checkup?”

“No,” the man answered without hesitation. “I can’t involve Dr. Zhuk right now. She’s dealing with a rather pressing issue.”

Alison scowled. Although she didn’t care much about the actual checkup part, she was insanely curious about Alex’s power capabilities. That and the fact that it was a vital necessity that they thoroughly checked Alex’s limits.

A not-so-well-known fact about impacted was that a lot of them had died or gotten caught by the IHI because of dangerous and unexpected quirks about their superpowers. The most recent example that came to mind to Alison was the case file that Dr. Zhuk had worked on a few weeks ago: a pyro-controller that could light his bodily fluids on fire, which ended up burning his insides when he tried to ignite one of his burps.

Alison didn’t want her new newfound asset to kill himself because his power turned out to actually heal himself at the cost of a piece of his liver or something.

Another reason why Alison wanted to have him checked was that there was no way in hell a superpower in this world would be as simple as Wolverine’s healing factor. Nothing, since people had started exhibiting supernatural abilities, had occurred in an expected fashion.

Alison herself, for instance, had discovered her own powers by accident a few years ago. And she had kept learning new things about it throughout the following years. It wouldn’t shock her one bit if Alex’s ability turned out to steal random people’s body parts to replace his own or something along these lines.

Finally, there was also the more practical matter of gauging whether Alex’s healing ability would be of any interest to the IHI. As a rule of thumb, they tended to only get involved if an Impacted’s power was deemed ‘dangerous for society’. But Alison knew full well that generalizations tended to have nasty little things called “exceptions” to them.

For instance, in the case of IHI interventions, they sometimes arbitrarily kidnapped people under the pretense of Impacted Destabilization Syndrome or some other made-up condition. It wasn’t necessarily a norm, but she knew for a fact that it did occur often enough to be noticeable. Somehow, there was no available information to confirm it, though. This had been the first thing hinting at the existence of the Scanner she picked up a few years back.

“Alright, what about another doc?” She asked with a sigh.

Although Alison didn’t really want to go to somebody she didn’t know for such a delicate subject, she had to quickly nip that in the bud if she wanted to make something out of Alex.

Finding a random fellow super-powered individual in the wild was, after all, a somewhat rare event. Even more so when that individual wasn’t working for her enemies.

“I can get you… Dr. LeGuennec,” the man said. “But you will have to adapt to his schedule.”

“No, I don’t know him. I want the mean girl.”

“You’ll have to wait for a few days, then. And it’ll probably cost extra.”

They spent the next hour going over what had happened last night, and at the end of their ‘session’, Alison simply exited the building the way she came in. This time, though, she walked home instead of taking the tram. No more public transportations today.

As per usual, Alison’s living room served the purpose of a 34m² closet. She barely used it, after all, for when she wasn’t out on a task, she was in her office. The formerly office room had been repurposed long ago when Alison had started writing stuff down physically in order not to have it hacked. She had to admit that, while being somewhat tech-savvy, she didn’t know how secure most storage servers were and would rather have a workroom already ready. It could be argued that physical evidence was just as insecure, but Alison rationalized that if her home’s integrity were to be breached, her notes would be the least of her worries. Plus, she made sure the room would go up in flames before anybody could get to its contents.

Alison had worked on her plan for the better part of two years now. The psychedelic web of intertwined threads pinned down on a multitude of pieces of paper had started looking like the work of a madwoman after it broke out of its original pegboard canvas and had begun covering the surrounding walls.

She took in the sprawling mass of information in front of her with intense focus. The little exercise she had started practicing a few months ago was beginning to bear its fruits. She could now loosely picture the position of about half of the pieces of paper in her mind. In the eventuality of a break-in, or if she was forced to move out, she needed to remember it all. The long-term goal, after all, was to have all of that information tucked in deep in the back of her mind, as safe as could be from the Scanner’s prying eyes.

She expertly rolled and then lit up a cigarette. Nothing but tobacco this time. She had to stay sharp for this step.

Alison took out the bundle of papers from her gym bag and started pinning the relevant pieces on the walls. No need to have full pages, so she cut off most of the irrelevant stuff. Alison then proceeded to link the info from Martel and De Sevin. She also took a post-it note for the newcomer in her two-person team. She dragged a long puff of smoke as she tried to come up with a fitting name for the freshly Impacted boy. It had to relate to his power in a way that wasn’t obvious yet reminded her of it.

It had to have something to do with meat—obviously—she mused.

With a giggle, she came up with the perfect name. She scribbled down the name of her new mook: ‘Steak.’

She placed it in an empty part of the wall opposite the initial pegboard. Then connected it to her own with a thread. This one blue, for an ally.

She sighed as she absent-mindedly tugged at the only other two blue threads that had been connected to her, now severed forever. Here’s to hoping this one won’t end up the same. She thought bitterly.

After a good hour of going through her notes, a buzz took Alison out of her trance, and she hastily took out her phone to look at who was calling. Unknown caller.

She instantly picked up.

“Better give me good news,” she said in a casual tone.

“Hey Toolbox, this is Ulysses,” a voice she knew very well answered. “I do have news.”

“Do tell.”

“Goat has gotten wind of what happened to Sheep. He’s on high alert.” The voice said in a professional tone.

“We knew this would come. Anything else?” She asked.

“Yes, although he’s on high alert publicly, he has also started freaking out because he doesn’t know who went through his business. The ‘accident’ at Sheep’s is making him worry that you might go after his stuff.”

The ‘accident’ was referring to the fire at Martel’s house in this context. ‘Sheep’ was Martel, and ‘Goat’ was the other officer, De Sevin. Her informant, Hassan, had been a brilliant informant for the last year, albeit an expensive one. Also, the man had been the one who had theorized and semi-proved how the Scanner operated.

“How worried, exactly?” she asked with interest.

“Enough that he’ll be risking a night away from his cop buddies tomorrow,” Hassan replied. “But that also means he’ll be heavily escorted with mob guys.”

Alison smiled toothly. This was golden. Although it could get hard to get to him directly if he knew she was coming, the opportunity of finding out the next part of the puzzle in the human trafficking ring of the two rotten cops was an opportunity Alison could simply not miss.

“Good. The gangs and the mob, I can deal with. Anything else?” she asked.

“Yes…” Hassan seemed to hesitate. “There might be a Contracted with him. Possibly from the Club.”

Shit. Alison thought. Contracted were, simply put, Impacted henchmen. The possibility of them being from the Club—an alias for the IHI—was a concerning prospect. IHICI, or IHI Contracted Impacted, were usually thoroughly trained to deal with other Impacted and were often quite dangerous. Also, there was a risk of them reporting Alison’s location back to IHI, although that would imply they had to have eyes on her and presumably fight her first.

The IHI claimed they didn’t condone the use of Impacted as enforcers, as it went against their public policy, but many people knew it was common enough to see famous people or politicians with super-powered bodyguards. Only actual conspiracy theorists and few members of the underground societies knew of their dealings with mobs and gangs, and only the craziest of them even knew of the Scanner.

The IHI was, after all, a semi-private entity, funded by private and public actors alike throughout the world, and they very frequently sold Impacted muscle to the highest bidder. They usually turned a blind eye on what use was made of them, provided they made a decent profit, Alison knew. The worst part was that if things went sideways, the IHI just intervened and captured the Impacted, in almost total impunity, as the Scanner covered up their tracks. The interesting part, and what made the Scanner so frustrating to deal with, was that they left enough information slip to allow for no incoherence in public narratives. People would take notice of the missing people, so the Scanner usually let some loose ends surrounding the matter get out to the press.

The web of lies and deceit weaved by the Scanner was one nearing perfection. What little information they allowed to spread out usually led the cops, the public, and the families of the missing Impacted to chase ghosts until the leads turned cold. Dancing around this web was a dangerous game Alison had been playing for years with the tenseness of a demolition expert defusing a nuclear bomb.

This waltz had to meet its end.

She turned her head towards Mr. O.

“Any idea on the abilities?” She asked.

“Most likely an all-rounder or a flexible type. Rank is definitely Red or higher, and ability will be either IM or NF, seeing the rooster they have in town atm.”

A red rank meant the danger of the Impacted’s ability would be comparable to that of a gun. So relatively high, but nothing she couldn’t take on. IM and NF respectively meant Inert Material Manipulator or Natural Forces Manipulator, with a third possibility being a mix of the two. Alison herself would be considered a red-ranked Natural Forces Manipulator of Inanimate objects and an Inert Material Manipulator of Inanimate objects. Red NF-I/IM-I for short.

Although the knowledge wasn’t exactly public, it wasn’t explicitly classified either. Multiple websites touted their own ‘true’ version of the IHI classification, with varying degrees of accuracy.

Figuring the ‘danger’ ranking system had been a tad harder. It helped that she had spied on a conversation talking about her own classification when she had been considered a suspect in a shootout in an abandoned warehouse. In the end, they had just pulled her file from their servers and discussed the possibility of her involvement. They had concluded that it wasn’t probable, which was rather fortunate since she had definitely been the person they had been looking for.

The color assigned to her had been red. As dangerous as a person wielding a light firearm. Not necessarily lethal, but potentially extremely dangerous in the wrong situation.

“We can take it. My new ‘intern’ is probably Grey-ranked, or maybe Yellow,” Alison said confidently.

“You’re taking a knife to a gunfight?” Hassan asked with some skepticism.

“You’re overstepping, honey,” Alison said with a deceivingly sweet voice.

She knew full well that Hassan’s information network went both ways, so she kept the amount of information given to him to a minimum. Still, she had casually dropped the fact that she was working with another Impacted, so the man should be satisfied with their exchange.

“Ah, fine, I won’t push you,” Hassan answered with a chuckle. “Although I could trade more information for some juicy bits.”

“I said no,” Alison said, all traces of mirth gone from her voice.

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll bid you a good evening, then,” the man said, a dull beep punctuating his farewell.

Alison dropped her phone on the table with a sigh. This situation just kept getting harder. But she wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. Now the next step was going to be interesting. She dialed the latest number added to her contact list.

After barely a ring, a voice answered the call.

“Hello?” a timid voice asked.

“Hey Steak, you’re doing anything tomorrow night?” she said with a smile.