Brockton Bay was a mess.

  Purity knew that well, living through years of gang warfare, and an attack by both Leviathan and later the Slaughterhouse Nine. It had been enough that she’d taken her family, allies, and escaped to Boston just days after the hero-villain meeting to discuss the Nine. It had been the right choice, at least until the Nine came to town there too…

  And now she was flying over a familiar skyline, missing a key component: the Medhall Tower. With the implosion of the company it was now a hollow shell of a building, occupied by vagrants and junkies; ironic in a way that made her lip curl. A light on the roof flashed twice, and she circled it twice before landing.

  Krieg was there, lenses of his gas mask glittering in the moonlight. The man next to him was much more heavily built, with some kind of animal fur draped around his shoulders, and glowing blue eyes shining from under a full-faced helmet. Krieg took a few steps forward, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Purity, lovely to see you again,” Krieg greeted her warmly. “You’ve been sorely missed around here.”

  “I came as a favour to Max, or his memory,” Purity replied flatly. “What do you want?”

  “So cold to an old comrade?” he said with mock offense.

  “Krieg, I left this city for a reason,” she said with an edge in her voice. “I’m not eager to return.”

  “Very well, business then,” he said, the friendly tone vanishing. “We need you and your team. My people have been under assault from all sides.”

  “Bit off more than you could chew?” Purity asked.

  “Hardly,” Krieg scoffed. “But this isn’t like the old days, my friend. There’s a new breed of...I hesitate to call them ‘heroes’ but they claim the title. Cold-blooded killers.”

  “Oh?” She frowned. She hadn’t heard of any murderous vigilantes.

  “Two boys gunned down in cold blood,” he said venomously. “Eighteen and twenty. Children.” Her frowned deepened as she thought of Aster, of Theo.

  “Hardly children,” she countered, shaking the thought. “But that is concerning.”

  “More than concerning, considering she was released without charges.”

  “What?” A chill ran down her spine. “Who managed to get away with murder?”

  “A young vigilante who goes by Amaranth,” Krieg replied. “The Protectorate is allowing us to be gunned down in the streets. You remember what happened after our masks were ripped off don’t you? Now they’re trying to finish the job” Her stomach twisted.

  “I...I can’t,” Purity said hesitantly. “I have obligations.”

  “Your children,” he said with a nod. “We can provide a stipend for them to stay in Boston until things have calmed down. Or maybe they could stay with your family, further south?” She was glad the light that shone out from her hid her face. “I understand there’s no love lost between us, Purity, but I believe we worked together long enough that you know I would not ask if I didn’t believe we needed you.”

  “I can’t give you an answer tonight,” she said after a moment of tense silence. “I’ll need to consult my teammates.”

  “They’ll go where you lead them,” Krieg said, shaking his head. “We don’t just need you as a fighter Purity, we need you as a symbol. A mother bear defending her den, a beacon of hope for people who are terrified they’ll be killed in the streets. I don’t want to see any more mothers outlive their children, and I know you feel the same.”

  “I…” She looked down to the asphalt roof, shoulders slumping. “I still need to discuss this with them.”

  “Then I only ask you do so quickly,” he said. “I don’t want to see more children die in this city, Purity.”

  Purity gave him a nod and took off, rocketing into the chilly night air above Brockton Bay. The cold did nothing to clear the turmoil in her mind as she turned towards Boston and started flying. Coming back here, rejoining the Empire or its successor for the second time, it was madness. She had managed to escape it, but here she was genuinely considering Krieg’s offer.

  The man was right, they didn’t share any particularly warm feelings for one another. But Krieg and Max had been close, they trusted each other. Purity didn’t remotely feel she could do the same, but who was she to question Max’s judge of character?

  A sigh escaped her lips as she raced towards Boston; this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.

  “See you shortly,” Krieg said as he watched Purity streak off into the night sky.

  “Sir?” Bifrost said, looking over at him.

  “She always had a terrible poker face,” he said with a hint of irony, grinning behind his mask. “Let’s go.”

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  With a nod, Bifrost put his hand on Krieg’s shoulder. There was a flash of multi-coloured light and a thunderous crack, and like that they appeared on the roof of a squat apartment in the South End. Bifrost followed closely as Krieg headed inside, officer’s jacket swirling behind him. Tonight’s meeting would bear fruit, he only needed a little patience.

  The building was one of Werwolf’s, taken over in the aftermath of Leviathan’s attack. Since the relative lull, they had made things less open, but it was still solidly theirs. Half the living spaces had been converted for a variety of other uses, with many others becoming barracks for the many members left homeless by the destruction of the city.

  At the heart of it all was the war room, these days becoming less and less of a metaphor. Krieg might have played up his concerns about the little dog attacking them, but the fact that the PRT had let her go did bother him. It set an ugly precedent, one made worse by the variety of orders targeting his organization.

  “Krieg,” Victor greeted him with a nod. “What’s the word on Purity?”

  “No need to worry,” Krieg reassured him, sitting at the table across from a large television, currently off. “She and the others will return soon, then we can move onto the next phase.”

  “Infiltration and expansion?” Krieg offered him a nod. “I can’t deny I have my doubts, especially with the pressure we’re under.”

  “All the more reason to expand and diffuse it,” Krieg replied. “While we keep a concentrated force available to defend our main holdings, we disperse to contest other areas in the city, sap the resources other gangs are using while bolstering our own. Cells, not gangs, you understand?”

  “An insurgency,” Victor muttered. “Sap them how?”

  “Contest their protection plans, burn their supplies, kill their dealers,” he replied. “Details would of course be left up to individual cells, but the key is aggression and dispersion.”

  “Doesn’t sound so honourable,” Victor said.

  “Don’t echo Hookwolf around here,” Krieg said sharply. “That fool wasted a tremendous opportunity for his ‘honour’, then threw it in our faces when he left with the Slaughterhouse Nine. Honour is a luxury for those with the upper hand, and ours has been squandered.”

  “Yes sir,” he said, shoulders slumping slightly.

  “It’s a sound strategy,” Bifrost said. “Our European fellows have been using it successfully for decades under significantly worse circumstances.”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate the comparison,” Victor said dryly. “Considering our ‘European fellows’ have been forced underground for just as long.”

  “The authorities there have different rules,” he replied. “Here, as you’ve experienced, they don’t push nearly as hard. The issue comes from people outside their structure, which will allow for easier defense. It will also prevent these organizations, which lack proper intelligence services, from gathering information as easily.”

  “You think it will prevent villains like Tattletale from gathering information?” Victor asked incredulously.

  “It will certainly slow her down,” Bifrost said with a sharp nod.

  “Tattletale is hardly the only dangerous Thinker in the world,” Krieg added. “And she’s not the only concern in the city. Even with their relative lack of direct confrontation, the Protectorate is still a problem. We don’t have the resources to defeat them and the other scum in this city conventionally, like we did before. We adapt or die out, there are no other options.” Victor sighed and nodded.

  “I suppose we don’t have much choice, considering our enemies,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, you’ve dealt with Amaranth personally, I suppose,” Krieg replied, getting a nod. “Do you have any particular insight into how she’ll respond to this?”

  “Aggressively, if I had to guess,” he said. “That’s how she responded to me in both our encounters. A little rat terrier.” Krieg smiled behind his mask.

  “An apt description,” Krieg said. “Perhaps we can use that to break whatever public trust she has.”

  “I’ll leave that to you,” Victor said, shrugging and turning to the door. “I hope this works, Krieg.”

  “Oh don’t worry about that,” he replied as Victor left the room. “We won’t be allowed to fail.”

  He turned in his chair to the television and turned it on, nodding to Bifrost. The man went to a computer sitting next to it and worked with it for a moment. Minutes later, the screen lit up with a number of names and still images as people joined the conference call.

  “Krieg,” a rattling old man’s voice came from the speaker. “You have news?”

  “Purity’s organization will be returning along with their assets soon, Fuhrer,” Krief replied, straightening up in his seat. “We are moving ahead with phase three, though we’re currently lacking personnel to fulfill it entirely.”

  “Lacking personnel with no less than five assets in hand?” a gruff woman’s voice spoke up. “I once again move to retire the Amerikafestung Project. It’s becoming abundantly clear the continent is not ripe for infiltration, that or the ones left in charge are incompetent.”

  “Are you calling me incompetent, frau Edelweiss?” he challenged her.

  “Your performance speaks for itself,” she replied. “Committing Bifrost was a grave mistake.”

  “You think so, Edelweiss?” the old man asked.

  “An understandable one,” she said quickly, a nervous note entering her voice. “But it has become clear since then that this is a sunk cost. We ought to recover our assets and scrap the project.”

  “Your advice has been noted, now be silent,” the Fuhrer said. “She is correct Krieg, our organization has devoted a great deal of resources with this promised portal. But you haven’t even sent a team through it, have you?”

  “The authorities and local villains are working together to prevent it,” Krieg explained. “Perhaps with a Stranger we might—”

  “The SD has no assets to spare,” a robotic voice cut him off. “Make do.”

  “Fuhrer this—”

  “As much as I believe in your work, I must agree that we have committed many resources to your project,” the old man said flatly. “Achieve some modicum of success, and we will reassess this.”

  “Perhaps just increased materiel support,” Krieg said plaintively. “Many of our soldiers only have pistols or basic rifles. Were we better equipped, we could achieve more. Our enemies have far fewer parahumans than we do, if we can achieve an additional qualitative edge with our unpowered members then we will see increased successes.” He held his breath, sweat pricking at his spine. Arguing with the Fuhrer was an excellent way to be tortured and disappeared, but Krieg couldn’t let all this work go to waste.

  “Mmm, Eisenfaust?”

  “Fuhrer, we could easily equip cells for the Amerikafestung,” the organization’s armourer replied. “If it is authorized, I need only an estimate for my kamerad.”

  “Prepare it,” the Fuhrer ordered. “Do not fail me, Krieg.”

  The television shut down and he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. If only the organization had seen fit to reinforce them earlier, or authorize his coup over Hookwolf, they may still have the resources that fool squandered. The waste made him want to vomit. But that wasn’t the world he lived in, no his work was cut out for him here.

  And it was time to truly begin.