“We’re pretty screwed,” Solaris said, scanning his assembled Anchors and the other influential supers of Franklin. Individually, each of the assembled supers had a chance at taking him down. Together, the chances were good. Oddly enough, Solaris felt most at ease around the people most likely to end his life. Made him feel like Tom again.

“Define ‘pretty screwed’.” Nocturne asked, tapping the table nervously. Underneath his sexy midnight black mask with gold highlights, the super had an unfortunate face with a bit of an underbite. Looks weren’t everything, though. The man could lull Solaris into a lethal sleep if he allowed the sound waves to reach him.

“It’s like we thought, there is no ‘off button’. No fail-safe, nada. There’s only one person who can tell the Replicators what to do, and he was so thoroughly destroyed that even finding DNA Evidence he existed is difficult.”`

Outside the labs, anyway.

Silence reigned for a long minute.

“So what do we do?” Nocturne asked.

“We fight like hell, obviously,” Solaris said with a shrug as he sat down, “According to the kid’s debriefing, before Mass Driver was disintegrated, he identified a piece of hyperweave as belonging to Bio-Master, of Washington city. From the eighties.”

“N’zzakheil,” Granny Z. let out a guttural Manitian curse.

“Explain,” Freddy Steel said. He wasn’t dumb, but he was young for a super of his power, and didn’t have all the context.

“Biomaster has been offering cheap designer-babies in Washington city for almost…forty years now. Since the late eighties. And if Chicago has robots indistinguishable from humans, able to grow up and reproduce by themselves…Then we’re looking at two generations of android sleeper agents firmly embedded in Washington City’s politics and defense.” Hexen supplied.

“Fuck,” Freddy Steel cursed, scowling.

“Washington city is meant to be the last nail in the coffin.” Mechanaut said from across the table.

“Yeah, if we hadn’t found out about it, we’d likely have leaned on them for assistance, only to have it withdrawn at a critical moment,” Solaris said, clasping his hands together as he thought. Some days it felt like the entire world rested on his shoulders. In this case, it might be accurate. Franklin and Washington were two of the biggest cities on the east coast, and if they went down, it was only a matter of time before the western seaboard followed, and then the rest of the world.

Honestly, who knows if there are any cities remaining on the other continents. The communications with them could be faked, if they pulled a soft swap like they did with Washington City.

“Why the hell did those idiots have to kick the hornet’s nest?” Freddy Steel demanded sourly.

“I suppose you’d like the Replicators to have more time to prepare our demise?” Locust asked. She wasn’t an Anchor, per se, but she was a pillar of the community, and had enough super-political sway to grant her entrance to their deliberations.

“You-“

“She’s right,” Solaris interrupted the young man. “It was gonna happen sooner or later, and those kids actually did us a huge favor by kicking things off before they were ready. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna be pleasant. There is one thing I’m wondering: Why the last laser blast to destroy the computer if there was nothing on it?”

“The replicators have very direct thinking,” Mechanaut offered. “There had to have been something on that mech whose value outweighed exposing their satellites to Solaris. Wasn’t necessarily the computer. It was probably my boy. He’s definitely Worthy of being on the Kill First list.”

“Darryl!” Hexen admonished.

“What?” Mechanaut shrugged the massive steel shoulders of his suit. “He is. I’d kill him first, is all I’m sayin’.”

“The replicators knew their satellites were compromised already, according to the kid’s debrief, so why not take a last potshot at them?” Quake asked with a shrug. The woman’s ability to shake anything, regardless of size, was undeniably powerful. Not great for keeping Solaris in check, but capable of singlehandedly causing an extinction event.

“Because if that was their logic, then they could’ve taken their last shot at something more valuable than a boat full of rookies. Solaris, the Nexus Communications Center…or The Egg, are all way more valuable targets than Mechanaut’s kid. No offense.” Guile said.

The glowing red LED eyes of Mechanaut’s suit narrowed.

“How would they even know where The Egg is?” Safros asked.

“Neuron?” Freddy Steel offered.

Solaris took a deep breath and clasped his hands, leaning forward.

“Bill might’ve been turned into a raving lunatic by his proximity to the thing, but even in the deepest depths of his paranoia, he would never sell out Franklin City.” Solaris said.

“So who’s babysitting that thing now?” Quake asked.

“All you need to know,” Solaris said. “Is that we have someone reliable monitoring the egg in a custodial capacity.”

***Brendan***

“Don’t get me wrong,” Brendan said as the Nexus agent took the hood off. “I’m all for getting fifty thousand dollars a night to mop floors, but…” Something about this was off. It was nagging at Brendon, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“Aren’t you supposed to use a blindfold instead of a bag on your head for secret stuff?” Brendan asked. Yeah, that was it, he thought as he surveyed his tools. He’d seen plenty of movies with blindfolds, not so many with hoods.

“Hood works better than a blindfold,” The agent said.

That made sense. Movies often didn’t get it right.

Mop: check.

bucket: check.

Cart loaded to the brim with cleaning supplies and military-grade surveillance equipment: Check.

“So, mop the floors, and if anything changes or gets weird I just set these cone thingies around it?” He asked, pointing at the cone-thingies on the cart. They’d told him what they were, some kind of..sensy-majigger, but Brendan hadn’t really absorbed it. He figured it was something like the ‘wet floor’ cones he was familiar with, just modeled for secret government facilities.

Brendan didn’t see why they couldn’t just make cones labeled ‘weird stuff’ and leave it at that, but hey, it was their dime.

Brendan had tried to negotiate his pay down to something more normal, like a hundred bucks a night, but the guy behind the desk had insisted on giving Brendan the full fifty grand, as ‘hazard pay’, with a twenty thousand a night bump after the first month as a ‘promotion’.

Brendan didn’t get it, but he supposed if they were that serious it, they probably knew what they were paying for. Brendan didn’t.

The stonefaced man who’d transported Brendan here nodded to confirm his question. Brendan didn’t see a name tag and he’d never heard the man’s name, so he assumed the guy’s name was Steve until proven otherwise.

“Alright, same deal as always, I guess. I’ll see you in the morning, Steve.”

Steve nodded before pressing the button that made the super-big steel doors slam shut behind Brendan.

Brendan shrugged, put his headphones on and began jamming out as he pushed his mop through the dim halls lit by small blue lights. As usual, nothing happened.

They must REALLY want these floors clean.

***Paradox***

Solaris sat behind his desk, scanning the Chicago team with a critical eye.

“Where’s Plagius?” Solaris asked.

Perry winced. “After getting cut in half, Plagius is taking a…little break from superheroing.” That was putting it mildly. The Drainer was having trouble sleeping, and kept waking up thinking he was still cut in half, slowly dying on the floor of a museum storage unit. The sight of Replicators and large light fixtures turned him into a shaking mess.

“Smarter than I thought,” Solaris muttered, opening up the drawer of his desk and handing it to Perry. “Give him this person’s card. They specialize in…minimalizing the impact of trauma.”

Perry recognized the Minder on the card. He specialized in erasing the unwanted memories of willing subjects. “You mean erasing it so you can get your Drainer back in the fight?”

“Need all hands on deck,” Solaris said with a shrug. “He can retire when the city’s not riding the edge of total annihilation.”

“The city’s always riding the edge of total annihilation,” Perry said, his headache returning as dimensional energy eddied around Solaris.

Solaris smiled in response to Perry’s statement. Tacit acknowledgement.

Perry pocketed the card. “So, what did you need from us?”

They’d already been thoroughly debriefed earlier, so Perry didn’t think they needed anything more from them than some supers on the wall.

Anyone whose heart was beating was performing some kind of service on The Wall right now, from nine-year olds sweeping up spent cartridges, women working in factories, all the way to elderly, wheelchair-bound veterans cleaning and maintaining soldier’s gear.

That wasn’t even including the supers. Anyone who could do ANYTHING remotely valuable was living on the wall 24/7, fending off the unending ocean of robots, and that included Manitian mages like his cousins.

“What do I need from you?” Solaris asked, steepling his fingers. “A solution to our current problem would be ideal, but if you don’t have that, I’ll settle for an answer to a question.”

“Sir?”

“Why did the Replicators waste their satellite advantage on your team?” he asked.

“I…don’t know. The computer?” Perry asked.

“The computer was a dud.” Solaris said, waving it aside. the matter-of fact way he said it sent cold down Perry’s spine.

I almost died for a dud?

“Don’t get me wrong, it gave us valuable information, but it was mostly confirmation of things that we’d already worked out for ourselves over the last decades fighting the Replicators. There is no kill switch, no magical control panel, no remote, no keyword or passcode. Professor Replica, and only Professor Replica can give them orders.”

“Then…make a Professor Replica?” Perry said, garnering incredulous stares from the rest of his team.

“Solid outside the box thinking,” Solaris said. “But it’s been tried. Many times. Never works. We’ve even got a room filled with clones of the man for that exact reason.”

Perry shook his head. “If it wasn’t the computer, I don’t know what would be valuable enough in Boomer to justify wasting their last shot. Maybe me?”

His cousin snorted.

Perry didn’t want to come across conceited, but in another ten levels, the Replicators probably wouldn’t have anything on him. And it wouldn’t take that long to get there. If they’d calculated his rate of growth, it made sense they’d want to kill him before he could present a problem.

“Don’t overestimate yourself,” Solaris said.

“Can I ask a question?” Heather asked, raising her hand.

“Of course.” Solaris rumbled.

“Why the hell are you hiding behind a desk while everyone else is out there fighting robots twenty-four seven to defend the city?” She asked.

“Wraith,” Natalie said quietly, shifting nervously under Solaris’s intense gaze.

“Because I’m the nuclear deterrent.” Solaris said, turning his computer monitor to face them. the display showed replicators all the way to the horizon. The farms and wilderness surrounding the megacity had been trampled down to nothing.

“Hidden somewhere in there are robots with superpowers that can tie me up, maybe for a couple seconds, maybe for a few hours. If I go out there and start blasting everything that moves, one of them will snag me. During the time I am delayed, they will proceed to launch an offensive, Think hypersonic missiles. In the fifteen seconds I spend playing patty-cake, half the city could be reduced to smoldering rubble. If they have something that can delay me for hours, then there might not even be a city once I break out of it.”

“On the topic of property destruction,” Solaris said, shifting his attention back to Perry. “Nice job with the upgrades to the city. Everything you touched is holding up way better than it has any right to, and that velcro-concrete you made that lets Bruisers stick things back together after they break stuff? Muah.” Solaris made a ‘chef’s kiss’ gesture.

“Sir.” Perry nodded.

“Only a few things are actually made of it right now, but I’ve been getting reports from everyone about how much they like it. If the human race isn’t extinct next month, I’d like to talk about upgrading your production capacity.”

“Sounds good.” Perry said.

“Was there anything else?” Chemestro asked, seemingly losing patience with what he must’ve considered idle chatter.

“Just that one question and your assignments,” Solaris said, retrieving their orders and handing them out. “Keep that question in mind over the next few days. Really mull it over, because I’m not satisfied with maybes.”

“Will do, sir.” Perry said, taking the orders and opening them up, seeing where he was stationed on the wall.

A moment later, Natalie tugged on his shirt and showed him her orders, which placed her on a completely different section of The Wall. Wraith, Chemestro and Sin-Eater were all assigned to different areas as well.

“You’re separating us to see who the Replicators were going after.” Perry said, glancing back up at Solaris. “At least do us the courtesy of telling us we’re bait.”

“Officially, it’s because your abilities are put to the best use in those locations,” Solaris said.

“I am aware by now that ‘official’ statements are often…deliberately misleading.” Chemestro said.

“Bullshit,” Perry supplied, “the word you’re looking for is ‘bullshit’.”

“You don’t approve?” Solaris asked, rising to his feet and scanning his gaze over the assembled supers. “Well, too bad. We’re in this for the species, boys and girls. It’s simple numbers…They have more. If I see something that may give us an advantage, I’m going to take it. One of you may have something instrumental to ending this war, and if that means I have to put all of you in danger to suss out who or what it is, I’m going to do it.”

“Understood?”

“Yessir,” Chemestro said, followed quietly by Sin-Eater, Natalie, Heather (reluctantly), and Perry’s cousins.

When Solaris’s gaze settled on Perry, he shrugged, stifling a yawn.

“I’m Paradox.”

Understanding is relative.