Chapter Text
If Cecil was being honest with himself—which was an activity he generally avoided whenever possible—Donald had a point.
That was an irritating thing to admit, mostly because Donald had been right often enough over the months that it had become difficult to enjoy arguing with him. The problem wasn’t that Cecil disagreed with the assessment. The problem was that agreeing with it required acknowledging something he had spent the better part of several weeks carefully avoiding.
John had become attached to him.
Not in the casual way children occasionally attached themselves to authority figures or in the way young heroes sometimes latched onto mentors or instructors. This was deeper than that, rooted in something fragile and unhealthy and entirely understandable given everything they knew about the boy’s history. John watched for him, waited for him, and measured the passing of days against his visits with a level of attention that made every missed appointment feel larger than it should have.
Cecil understood exactly why it was happening.
The reports from Dock One and the therapy staff arrived regularly alongside the rest of his mountain of paperwork, and over time certain patterns had become impossible to ignore. John was making progress. He was speaking more. Socializing more. The panic attacks had become less frequent. The nightmares still occurred often enough to concern the psychologists, but at least now he could sometimes be talked through them.
Unfortunately, another pattern had emerged alongside the improvement.
John spent an alarming amount of time talking about Cecil.
Not constantly or obsessively. Just enough that every therapist assigned to his case had independently noted it in their evaluations. The kid saved things for him, drawings mostly at first.
Then other things.
A folded piece of paper covered in careful handwriting after he’d learned how to write more confidently. A lopsided clay figure made during an occupational therapy session. A keychain assembled from parts one of the engineers had given him. Small offerings accumulated over time, each one presented with a mixture of nervous anticipation and quiet hope that made Cecil deeply uncomfortable for reasons he preferred not examining too closely.
What bothered him most wasn’t the gifts themselves, it was what happened afterward. Whenever Cecil accepted one, John would watch him intently.
Those bright blue eyes tracked every movement across his face, studying reactions with a level of concentration that bordered on unsettling. At first Cecil had assumed it was simply a child looking for approval, but over time he realized it went deeper than that. John wasn’t just checking whether he liked the gift.
He was checking whether he was pleased, disappointed, angry.
Whether he was about to leave.
Years of abuse had apparently turned observation into a skill. The therapists had theories about that, none of them which were pleasant.
The information they had managed to extract regarding John’s life before arriving on Earth remained frustratingly incomplete. Sessions frequently circled the same handful of details before hitting invisible walls that John either couldn’t or wouldn’t move past. There had been scientists. Needles. Tests. Medical equipment. A white room. Something referred to only as “the bad room.” And, most consistently, an oven.
Nobody knew what the oven actually was.
Every attempt to get clarification ended with visible distress and the immediate end of the conversation, so the psychologists stopped pushing.
Cecil approved that decision.
Whatever had happened on the other side of the portal, somebody had clearly spent years turning a child into a project. The exact details almost didn’t matter anymore, the damage was obvious enough, which made Cecil’s own behavior harder to justify, because Donald was right about that too.
Without consciously deciding to, Cecil had begun shortening visits.
Ten minutes became eight. Eight became five.
Sometimes he’d stop by only long enough to check on a report, exchange a few words, and leave again before the conversation had properly started. Every explanation sounded reasonable on paper. There was always another crisis, meeting, deployment, another disaster requiring immediate attention.
The excuses weren’t even lies, that was the problem.
There really were kaiju incidents and metahuman conflicts and infrastructure failures and political disasters demanding his attention every single day.
But if Cecil dug beneath the excuses—and he tried very hard not to—he knew work wasn’t the only reason.
Attachment was dangerous.
The universe had a habit of taking things away, people away.
Donald approached the subject periodically, usually with the careful caution of someone attempting to disarm an explosive device without technically acknowledging the explosive device existed.
“You should probably spend more time down there, sir.”
Or:
“John asked if you’d be stopping by today.”
Or:
“He’s been waiting near the entrance again.”
Just observations, the sort that somehow felt worse.
Cecil usually answered by pointing at a stack of reports or mentioning whichever catastrophe currently occupied the top of his priority list. Donald would nod, accept the explanation, and then give him a look that communicated exactly how unconvinced he was.
It was deeply annoying.
The worst part was that John never complained, not once. He never accused Cecil of avoiding him. Never asked why visits were getting shorter, never acted angry.
If anything, he tried harder.
Every interaction carried the same cautious determination, as though he believed the solution was simply becoming easier to keep around. Better behaved, more useful. The therapists had opinions about that too. Cecil disliked those opinions almost as much as he disliked being the subject of them.
So he worked, longer hours, more meetings. Reasons not to think about the increasingly obvious fact that a traumatized child was treating every five-minute conversation with him like the highlight of his week.
And for a while, that strategy worked.
Then came the day it stopped working.
The conversation had already gone on too long.
That was Cecil’s first thought as he stood outside Dock One listening to yet another therapist explain something he already understood perfectly well and had absolutely no intention of discussing for the next twenty minutes.
The therapist, Dr. Morgan, stood across from him holding a tablet against her chest, frustration becoming increasingly visible despite her professional attempts to keep it hidden.
“Director, I’m not questioning your intentions,” she said, trying very hard to remain calm. “I just need you to understand that—“
Cecil rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve got three active situations developing across two continents right now. If you have a recommendation, make it quickly.”
The therapist visibly stiffened.
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Cecil lowered his hand.
“What is?”
“Every time this comes up, you redirect back to work.”
“Because I have work.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Because it’s easier.”
That immediately irritated him. The hallway around them remained quiet, security personnel posted further down the corridor while technicians moved in and out of nearby rooms.
“Careful,” Cecil warned.
“I’m being careful.”
“No, you’re being insubordinate.”
“And you’re being dismissive.”
For a moment neither spoke and just stared at each other.
Then the therapist continued.
“John needs consistency.”
“He has Brit. Caregivers. You know the amount of resources we’re spending on that kid? He’s fine.”
“And none of them are the person he’s attached himself to.”
Cecil’s jaw tightened and looked away.
“He asks about you. He notices every missed visit.”
“That’s not my responsibility.”
The therapist’s expression hardened.
“He’s a traumatized child.”
“And I’m running a global defense organization.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive!”
The volume of her voice echoed slightly down the corridor. Several nearby staff members glanced over.
The therapist immediately lowered her tone again.
“Director, I’m asking you to consider the effect this is having on him.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Once a week. You think I don’t see what you’re doing? You’re avoiding him.”
Cecil laughed once without humor.
“I see you’ve been talking to Donald.”
“I have eyes, Stedman.”
That stung more than he wanted to admit. The therapist stepped forward slightly.
“What happened to him before he got here clearly taught him that attachment is conditional. People leave. People stop caring. People disappear. Every time you pull away, you’re reinforcing that belief.”
Cecil’s patience finally began to wear thin.
“With all due respect, you have no idea what my schedule looks like.”
“And with all due respect, I don’t think that’s the real issue.”
The air seemed to go still.
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I think you’re afraid of how attached he’s become.”
The statement landed like a punch.
Before Cecil could respond—
A sudden rush of movement cut through the hallway. There was a blur… and suddenly John was standing between them.
For a split second Cecil genuinely didn’t process how he’d gotten there.
One moment the hallway had been empty, the next the boy was present. The limiter still sat around his wrist, his breathing was rapid.
And his eyes were locked entirely on the therapist.
“John—”
The boy didn’t seem to hear Cecil.
“Don’t yell at him.”
The therapist froze immediately. To her credit, she recognized the danger at once.
“John,” she said gently, “nobody’s in trouble.”
The boy’s hands were clenched.
“Stop being mean.”
“I’m not being mean.”
“You’re mad.”
The therapist slowly raised her hands where he could see them.
“No one’s mad.”
“You’re lying. Stop lying to me.”
The words came out fast, panicked. Childlike. The therapist glanced briefly toward Cecil.
Wrong move.
John saw it. Something changed.
The sudden overwhelming fear of someone he cared about being threatened.
“John,” Cecil said sharply. “Look at me.”
For a moment it seemed like he might. Then the therapist took one cautious step forward.
“John, it’s okay—”
The boy reacted instantly.
There was a crack.
A sharp, sickening sound that echoed through the corridor.
The therapist’s scream tore out raw and immediate as the bone shattered under John’s fingers; Cecil watched in frozen horror as the radius and ulna splintered violently, jagged white shards of bone punching through the skin of her forearm in a spray of bright arterial blood that splattered across the sterile floor.
The protruding fragments glistened obscenely, pinkish muscle fibers torn and twitching around the exit wounds, her hand dangling at a grotesque angle while blood poured in rhythmic pulses down her sleeve. She staggered back, collapsing to one knee with a guttural wail of agony, clutching the ruined limb as it twitched and spasmed uncontrollably, the exposed bone edges scraping sickeningly against each other with every involuntary movement.
The scream echoed through the corridor long after the actual injury occurred.
For a fraction of a second, nobody moved.
Human beings did that sometimes. Faced with something sudden and catastrophic, there was often a brief pause where the brain attempted to argue with reality before accepting it. Cecil had seen it a thousand times in disasters, combat zones, containment breaches, and evacuation sites.
The difference between professionals and amateurs was how quickly they recovered from it.
The therapist collapsed against the wall, clutching her ruined arm while blood streamed between her fingers and pooled onto the polished floor. Nearby personnel froze in place, horrified by the sight of exposed bone and torn tissue.
John stood completely still.
Cecil was moving before the shock fully hit.
“Medical team. Now.”
His voice cracked through the hallway like a gunshot.
The paralysis broke instantly. People started moving.
Two security personnel rushed toward the therapist while a nearby medic activated an emergency beacon. Several staff members began shouting over one another simultaneously, panic spreading through the corridor with alarming speed.
Cecil hated panic.
“Enough.”
The command cut through the noise immediately.
Everyone stopped talking.
“Medical takes the therapist. Security establishes a perimeter but nobody points a weapon at the kid unless I explicitly tell you to. Engineering, I want Dock One lockdown protocols standing by but not activated. Everybody else get your heads on straight before I start firing your asses.”
The hallway settled almost immediately.
Good.
The therapist was lifted onto a stretcher, pale and trembling from pain while medics worked rapidly to stabilize the arm. Blood still dripped across the floor, though less now. One of the doctors was already discussing reconstructive options into a comm unit.
She’d live, that mattered.
The injury was horrific but survivable. Heroes went through worse on a daily basis. Cecil cataloged that information automatically while his finger pressed against his earpiece.
“Status.”
“Trauma team has her.”
“Good.”
“Containment recommendations are being prepared for the subject—”
“Ignore them.”
A brief pause followed.
“…Sir?”
“For fuck’s sake, I said ignore them, don’t make me repeat myself.”
His eyes never left John. The boy hadn’t moved and simply stood in the middle of the hallway watching everything unfold with an expression that somehow managed to be both intensely focused and completely unreadable at the same time. That worried Cecil more than the injury.
The hallway gradually emptied as personnel followed orders and the therapist disappeared around the corner toward emergency medical facilities. Blood remained on the floor for another minute before cleaning crews arrived. Only then did the adrenaline begin settling enough for Cecil to properly evaluate the situation.
John was still standing there, still staring.
The kid wasn’t posturing aggressively. His hands were hanging loosely at his sides. His breathing had returned to normal. No glowing eyes. No defensive stance. Nothing suggesting immediate danger which left Cecil with a different problem. What the hell had just happened?
The answer came quickly enough, John thought he was protecting him. The realization settled heavily in Cecil’s stomach. Of course he did. The therapist had challenged Cecil, and somewhere inside that damaged little head, John had apparently reached the conclusion that protecting people meant hurting anyone who threatened them.
Jesus Christ.
The kid had probably learned morality from scientists. That thought alone was enough to make Cecil want to find whoever built him and throw them directly into the sun.
Slowly, carefully, he approached. Every instinct in his body remained alert. When you spent enough time around people capable of accidentally crushing concrete, sudden movements tended to acquire new significance.
John watched him approach.
Didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Cecil stopped several feet away before lowering himself into a crouch.
“Well,” he said after a moment, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Jesus, kid.”
John blinked.
“You’re really something, aren’t you?”
The boy’s expression shifted slightly.
Confusion. Then uncertainty. Then suddenly movement.
Cecil’s heart nearly launched itself directly into his throat. For one horrible second every alarm bell in his head activated simultaneously.
John slammed into him.
Hugging.
The realization arrived half a second after the impact, his arms wrapped tightly around Cecil’s shoulders. But not crushing, not even close. The difference was immediately noticeable.
John was being careful, painfully careful, like someone handling fragile glass.
Cecil remained frozen for a second before very slowly forcing himself to relax. The kid’s face buried itself against his shoulder.
“Don’t leave.”
The words came out small and muffled.
Cecil felt something unpleasant twist in his chest.
“John—”
“I know you’re scared of me.”
The statement landed harder than expected, because the worst part was that it wasn’t entirely wrong. Not scared in the traditional sense, but instead of what John represented. Of how easily this could all go wrong.
John tightened his grip slightly, still careful.
“I didn’t kill her this time.”
Cecil froze. His thoughts stopped. Then restarted immediately. The words echoed unpleasantly in his head.
This time.
A hundred possibilities flashed through his mind, none of them good. He kept his voice level anyway.
“John—“
“I didn’t kill her!”
The certainty in his voice was almost hopeful, like he’d passed a test.
“I was good.”
Jesus Christ.
Cecil closed his eyes briefly and let out a slow sigh. Whoever had raised this child deserved prison cells humanity hadn’t invented yet.
Carefully, he placed a hand against John’s shoulder.
“Hey.”
John immediately looked up, scanning every tiny shift in expression exactly the way he always did.
“I need you to tell me something.”
The boy nodded.
“What do you mean by ‘this time’?”
For a second John looked confused. Then embarrassed, actually embarrassed, like he’d accidentally said something he shouldn’t have.
“I try to be good,” John said quietly.
That wasn’t an answer. Cecil waited while John shifted awkwardly.
“I just don’t know what good means.”
The kid looked down at the floor.
“I know everybody wants different things but I don’t know what you want.”
Cecil felt his jaw tighten.
“What do you think I want?”
John hesitated.
Then:
“I think you want me to be a weapon.”
The hallway suddenly felt very quiet.
Cecil’s eyes narrowed immediately.
“…Who told you that?”
John’s eyes widened. The embarrassment returned instantly.
“Oh. I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
“What do you mean?”
John shifted again.
“I… hear things.”
Cecil’s expression remained carefully neutral.
John continued.
“Through the walls.”
The realization hit almost immediately.
Enhanced hearing.
Shit. Of course. The limiter reduced output, it didn’t eliminate abilities entirely.
Nobody had considered—
No.
Someone probably had and probably just hadn’t thought it mattered. John rubbed one arm awkwardly.
“Everything is loud all the time. The people here talk a lot. The previous scientists talked a lot too.”
John looked distant suddenly, not dissociating but remembering.
“They talked all the time. I got used to it. They weren’t as nice as the people here.”
The statement hung in the air.
Cecil stared at him.
This small frightened kid standing in the middle of a hallway after breaking someone’s arm because he thought he was helping. This child who apparently judged institutions based on comparative levels of cruelty. This kid who thought not killing someone qualified as good behavior.
No wonder he’d panicked. No wonder every therapist in the building had been trying to get Cecil’s attention for weeks. Because somewhere along the line, John had decided Cecil’s opinion mattered, and somehow that had become the closest thing he had to a moral compass.
The realization was terrifying, not because of what it said about John, but of what it said about the responsibility Cecil had been trying very hard to avoid.
Cecil remained crouched in the hallway for several long seconds, one hand still resting carefully against John’s shoulder while his mind worked through a dozen separate problems simultaneously, each one somehow more complicated than the last. The blood was mostly gone now, cleaned away by maintenance personnel moving quietly in the background, though the faint metallic smell still lingered in the air, stubbornly refusing to disappear entirely.
John continued watching him with that same intense focus that always made Cecil feel like he was being studied under a microscope.
Cecil let out a slow breath through his nose before pinching the bridge of it briefly.
“All right,” he muttered tiredly. “We’re gonna have a conversation, kid, and I need you to actually listen this time.”
John nodded immediately. The response carried all the enthusiasm of someone desperate to do well on a test whose rules he didn’t fully understand.
“I need you to promise me something.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to promise me that you’re not gonna hurt anybody.”
The response came so quickly that it almost overlapped with the request.
“But you want me to.”
Cecil blinked.
There was no accusation in the statement. No resentment, like he was repeating a fact.
Cecil closed his eyes for a brief moment. His jaw tightened slightly before he opened his eyes again.
“No.”
John frowned.
“But—”
“Whatever you heard,” Cecil interrupted, keeping his voice calm despite the headache rapidly forming behind his eyes, “you weren’t supposed to hear it, and half the people saying it don’t know what they’re talking about anyway.”
That wasn’t entirely true.
John tilted his head slightly.
“But—”
“John. No.”
This time the word came out sharper. John immediately fell silent.
Cecil softened his voice slightly.
“Right now, I don’t need you worrying about any of that.”
John stared at him.
“Then what should I be doing?”
The question hit harder than it should have. Cecil rubbed at the side of his face slowly.
“What do you like doing right now? You know, kids your age like playing outside. Playing video games. Making friends.”
John stared blankly, for a moment he didn’t answer at all. Then something seemed to click.
“Baseball.”
The answer was so immediate and enthusiastic that it caught Cecil completely off guard.
“…Baseball.”
John nodded rapidly.
“Brit showed me.”
Of course he did. The thought was oddly comforting.
“Right,” Cecil said. “Baseball. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”
The kid looked confused again.
“Learning. Growing up. Being a kid.”
John stared blankly. Cecil continued.
“We’re getting tutors for you next week.”
“I know. You approved it yesterday.”
Enhanced hearing. Right. Cecil made another mental note to have several enthusiastic conversations with several engineers very soon.
The kid continued smiling slightly.
“I’m excited, I’ve never had tutors before.”
Cecil felt something uncomfortable twist in his chest again. He ignored it.
“Good.”
John nodded. Then his expression shifted, curious now.
“But how am I supposed to defeat Omni-Man without training?”
The words landed like a brick, his world stuttered. Cecil froze. His expression hardened immediately.
“Forget that.”
John blinked.
“What?”
“I need you to forget that. Forget what you heard.”
John stared at him. Confusion slowly replaced enthusiasm.
“But—”
“No.”
Cecil held the kid’s gaze.
“I mean it.”
The hallway suddenly felt very quiet.
“You don’t need to worry about Omni-Man.”
John looked down.
“But everybody else does. It’s all everyone here talks about.”
That one nearly made Cecil laugh, not because it was funny, because it was true. Painfully true. Instead he sighed.
“John.”
He looked up.
“I need you to… trust me.”
The words felt strange coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t used to saying things like that, not often or sincerely.
“I need you to let the adults handle adult problems.”
John considered this for several long seconds. Eventually he nodded.
“…Okay.”
The answer sounded disappointed. Cecil noticed immediately.
“You think you did something wrong.”
It wasn’t a question. John hesitated, then nodded.
Cecil followed John’s gaze toward the last faint traces of blood still being scrubbed from the floor. The sight made his stomach tighten.
He exhaled heavily.
“You messed up, we know that. But that’s not the same thing.”
John remained silent.
“You weren’t trying to hurt her. You thought you were helping.”
John swallowed.
“Yeah.”
Cecil continued.
“That doesn’t make what happened okay.”
John’s shoulders lowered slightly.
“But it does mean we can fix it.”
The kid stared at him, a fragile sort of expression.
Then Cecil made a decision, one Donald was absolutely going to feel smug about later, which was unfortunate.
“All right. Here’s the deal. If you listen to the therapists.”
Nod.
“If you listen to the tutors.”
Another nod.
“If you stop breaking people’s arms.”
A slightly embarrassed nod.
“And if you don’t hurt anybody.”
A very enthusiastic nod.
“Then I’ll start coming down here more often.”
John froze. The reaction was so immediate it almost hurt to watch.
“What?”
“Three times a week.”
John’s eyes widened.
“Really?”
“Really.”
The kid looked like Christmas had arrived six months early.
“Three times?”
“Three times.”
The smile that spread across John’s face hit Cecil harder than any supervillain ever had. It was relief. Pure relief. Like someone had just informed him the ground wasn’t disappearing beneath his feet after all.
“You’ll stay?”
Cecil looked at him for a long moment.
“Yeah, kid.”
John brightened instantly.
“I’ll stay.”
Cecil left Dock One with the distinct feeling that his day had somehow managed to become worse.
That was impressive, honestly.
A superpowered child had just revealed that he had been eavesdropping on classified conversations for weeks. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Cecil had accidentally negotiated visitation rights with an eight-year-old who could punch through reinforced steel if he got emotional enough. And now he had another emergency waiting.
Naturally.
The automatic doors slid shut behind him as he stepped into the main corridor, his expression settling back into the familiar impassive mask that most of the GDA had come to recognize as a warning sign.
People tended to assume that when Cecil looked calm, things were under control. Usually the opposite was true.
His earpiece crackled.
“Director, we’re getting reports of seismic activity near—”
“Put it in the queue.”
“Sir, preliminary estimates suggest—”
“The queue.”
The voice immediately went silent which was good. Because at the moment, Cecil had a more immediate problem.
Donald fell into step beside him without being asked, a tablet already tucked under one arm. The man had apparently developed an instinct for locating Cecil during moments of maximum irritation, which was either admirable or deeply concerning.
For several seconds neither of them spoke. Cecil walked quickly through the corridor, security personnel and technicians stepping out of the way almost automatically as he passed. Finally:
“Donald.”
“Sir.”
“I need a list.”
“A list of what, sir?”
“A list of everybody who knew. Every engineer involved in the limiter project. Every supervisor. Every scientist who signed off on testing. Everybody.” He enunciated every syllable.
Donald nodded once and began making notes.
“Of course.”
The irritation simmering beneath Cecil’s calm exterior sharpened.
“Because apparently somebody forgot to mention that the kid could still hear through six inches of reinforced concrete.”
Donald adjusted his glasses.
“The engineers may have assumed—”
“I don’t care what they assumed. I care what they told me.”
Donald wisely remained silent. Cecil continued walking.
His thoughts were already several steps ahead. The issue wasn’t that John had overheard something, instead the issue was how much. That was the problem currently making his stomach tighten.
Because if John had heard conversations about Omni-Man—
What else had he heard? Christ, thinking about it now, the kid might accidentally know more classified information than some department heads. The realization was deeply unpleasant.
Donald glanced down at his tablet.
“To be fair, sir, the limiter was designed primarily to reduce energy output and physical capability.”
Cecil gave him a look. Donald continued anyway.
“The hearing issue may have been considered secondary.”
“No shit.”
Donald sighed quietly.
“The original goal was preventing accidental injuries.”
“And they succeeded brilliantly.”
The sarcasm landed exactly as intended.
Donald winced.
The two men rounded a corner and entered another corridor, their pace never slowing.
Around them, GDA personnel moved with the usual controlled urgency of people working inside an organization dedicated to preventing civilization-ending disasters.
Cecil pressed a finger against his earpiece.
“Status on Hong Kong.”
A voice responded immediately.
“Situation appears contained, Director. Local heroes established a perimeter approximately eleven minutes ago.”
“Casualties?”
“Three injuries. No fatalities.”
Good, at least somebody was having a productive afternoon.
He disconnected the channel. Donald cleared his throat.
“There is one possibility that the engineers may genuinely not have realized the implications.”
Cecil huffed.
“The fact that we’re even having this conversation means somebody failed.”
The elevator doors opened. They stepped out into another operations corridor. Voices immediately flooded Cecil’s earpiece again, the endless background noise of a world constantly trying to destroy itself.
Normally he filtered most of it automatically.
Today he found himself thinking about John instead.
About the kid casually mentioning that everything was loud. About the way he’d said it, like he’d been living with it for years.
The thought sat badly with him. Eventually Cecil spoke again.
“I want a full review of Dock One. Every discussion. Every hallway conversation. Every briefing room within hearing range.”
Donald began typing.
“I’ll get a team on it.”
“Good.”
His earpiece crackled again.
“Director, we’ve confirmed the seismic disturbance. Looks like Doc Seismic.”
Cecil closed his eyes briefly.
Of course it was. Why wouldn’t it be? The universe clearly hated him. He opened them again.
“Get me a transport.”
“Already standing by.”
Donald looked over.
“You should probably take a break, sir, eventually.”
Cecil stared at him.
Donald immediately regretted speaking.
“Right,” Donald said.
“Good talk.”
Cecil rolled his eyes and continued walking toward the transport bay.
By the time Cecil returned to GDA headquarters, he was already halfway through three separate conversations, reviewing casualty projections from the Doc Seismic incident, listening to an operations coordinator explain why two city blocks now technically qualified as geological hazards, and signing off on a repair budget that was almost certainly going to make somebody in accounting cry.
It had been, in other words, a fairly average afternoon.
The teleportation deposit left him standing in one of the lower transport hubs beneath headquarters, the familiar sensation of having his internal organs briefly rearranged fading as he adjusted his suit jacket and began walking toward the nearest secured elevator. Around him, personnel moved with the controlled urgency typical of GDA facilities, technicians carrying tablets, analysts discussing threat reports, and agents moving between departments with a sort of exhausted efficiency.
His earpiece crackled.
“The Guardians completed cleanup operations approximately twelve minutes ago, sir.”
“Property damage?”
“Lower than expected.”
Cecil raised an eyebrow.
“That’s concerning.”
The analyst on the other end laughed nervously.
The elevator doors opened and Cecil stepped inside.
By the time the doors closed again, he had already moved on to the next problem.
John.
More specifically, the increasingly concerning list of issues surrounding John. The hearing problem alone was enough to warrant a headache. The blood compound samples were another and the limiter project needed revision. The psychologists wanted additional resources. The engineers wanted more testing.
Half the staff wanted stricter containment measures while the other half wanted fewer.
And somewhere in the middle of all that sat an eight-year-old superhuman who had accidentally become one of the most strategically interesting individuals on the planet.
The elevator climbed silently.
Cecil folded his arms.
There was one name that kept resurfacing whenever advanced technical problems became sufficiently irritating.
Robot.
The hero had only recently begun attracting serious attention from GDA analysts, though not because of combat capability. Plenty of heroes could punch things. Plenty could fly. Plenty could survive artillery fire.
Very few could produce the level of technological sophistication Robot consistently demonstrated. Every piece of equipment recovered from his operations suggested a level of engineering expertise that bordered on absurd.
Everything about him suggested somebody operating several steps beyond where modern technology should have been. That made Cecil interested.
Interest in his line of work tended to be dangerous.
The elevator doors opened again, and Donald was already waiting. The man somehow possessed an almost supernatural ability to appear whenever paperwork threatened to become interesting.
“Sir.”
“Donald.”
The two immediately fell into step beside one another.
“I want Robot brought in.”
Donald glanced up from his tablet.
“Officially?”
“No.”
Donald nodded slowly.
That usually meant something classified. Possibly classified enough that Donald would later develop a migraine simply from knowing about it.
“We’ve had preliminary contact before,” Donald said carefully. “He’s been cooperative.”
“That’s not the same thing as trustworthy.”
Donald made a note. Cecil continued walking.
“I want a secure meeting arranged.”
“Subject?”
“Technology consultation.”
Not technically a lie, just not the entire truth.
Donald seemed to recognize that immediately.
“What specifically?”
“The limiter.”
That much was obvious. Then Cecil added:
“And something else.”
Donald looked over. Cecil lowered his voice slightly despite the secure hallway.
“The blood samples.”
Donald went silent.
The compound found on John’s blood. That certainly complicated things. Neither man spoke for several moments.
Eventually Donald adjusted his glasses.
“You think he’d be useful?”
“I think anybody capable of building half the things he’s already built deserves consideration.”
Donald tapped something on the tablet.
“If we’re discussing the blood samples, we’ll need additional security protocols.”
“No kidding.”
The hallway curved toward a secured operations wing. Personnel moved aside automatically as Cecil approached.
“I want contingency plans.”
“For Robot?”
“Several.”
That got a slight pause and Donald looked over again.
“You think he’s a threat?”
“I think everybody’s a threat, Donald. We don’t know what he is or where he came from. I’d be out of a job if I didn’t consider him a threat.”
Robot appeared to be exactly what the name suggested, a machine. A remarkably intelligent machine. Potentially autonomous, self-improving, and capable of things nobody had fully mapped out yet.
The uncertainty alone demanded preparation. Cecil had learned long ago that assumptions got people killed. Particularly assumptions involving superhumans.
Donald finished typing.
“I’ll have strategic planning draft response options—“
“I want more than that.”
Cecil stopped briefly outside a secured conference room.
“I want everything.”
Donald frowned.
“Everything?”
“If Robot turns out to be hostile, compromised, controlled, manipulated, replaced, infiltrated, possessed, brainwashed, blackmailed, or secretly planning to conquer Earth, I want contingencies.”
Donald stared at him. Then nodded.
Because unfortunately that list wasn’t even unreasonable by GDA standards. The world became far too strange for reasonable assumptions.
Cecil pushed the conference room doors open.
Inside, several scientists were already waiting with research files regarding John’s blood samples floated above the center table in holographic displays.
Rows of molecular models rotated slowly in the air.
The compound. Human enhancement.
The future.
Cecil stared at the projections for several seconds before speaking.
“Contact Robot.”
The room immediately became quiet. Several scientists exchanged glances.
Donald looked down at his tablet.
“I’ll arrange it.”
“Good.”
Cecil folded his arms.
“Because if we’re going to start poking around in technology we barely understand while simultaneously trying to reverse engineer a substance capable of creating superhumans, I’d prefer the smartest person available be in the room.”