“Carried off by who?  Or whom?”

“The Undersiders.  Who have dropped off the face of the map, in large part.

Oh, so she does know.

What’s this about them dropping off the face of the map? How long has it been since 15.1?

I’ve tried finding them on my patrols, but all reports suggest they’ve spread over the city in an attempt to seize large tracts of territory.  It’s a big city with a lot of stones to overturn and dark corners to investigate.”

Right, fair enough.

Huge tracts of land. That’s why they seized Victoria.

“So Victoria’s missing, now?”

“Or dead,” Carol said.  She blin

ked a few times in rapid succession, fighting the need to cry.  “I don’t know.  I was patrolling, searching, and I felt my composure start to slip.  I feel like shit for doing it, but I came here, I thought maybe if I took fifteen minutes or half an hour to center myself, I could be ready to start searching again.”

It seems like Regent’s power hasn’t occurred to Carol. That’s probably a good thing.

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it.”

Still healthier than some of Taylor’s behavior.

“She’s my daughter, Alan.  Something’s happened to her, and I don’t know what.”

“I’m sorry.  Is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head.

I wonder if Alan’s a parahuman or a mundane. Carol’s public identity makes that a little harder to guess than usual.

So far I’d say mundane.

“This is strictly confidential, yes?” Carol stated.  “Between friends?”

“Always,” he replied automatically.  After a moment’s consideration, he said, “Amy must have been terrified.”

Oh, absolutely.

But is Carol going to acknowledge that?

“Oh, I imagine she was.  Victoria went looking for her after she ran away, returned home empty-handed.  I think she was even more upset than I was, with Amy taking so long to heal Mark.  She was almost inarticulate, she was so angry.”

Yeah, uh, that’s.

There’s a bit more to that.

“Your daughters are close.  The sense of betrayal would be that much stronger.”

Ahaha! Really laying on the dramatic irony thick here, are we?

Carol nodded, then sighed.

“Quite a lot to deal with.  I can understand why you’d need some quiet and routine to distract yourself.”

Carol fidgeted.  “Oh, that wasn’t even the worst of it.  Victoria’s been flirting with the notion of joining the Wards, and she went out to fight the Nine just a few days ago.  Apparently she was critically injured.  She was carried off for medical care and nobody’s seen her since.”

Hopefully no one’s told Carol that Victoria was carried off by the teammate of a supervillain with the power to take over people’s bodies.

From now on, I’m going to assume that Alan is a coincidence and we’re simply breaking the One Steve Limit.

But if that’s really what’s going on, it will reflect negatively on the chapter, because this is a really bad time to break that rule with this particular name. The Nine are fresh in our minds, and especially the name Alan for Mannequin. Using the same name for this character, if he’s a new one and not, like, alternate universe Sphere or something, leads to a ton of unnecessary confusion.

She shook her head.

“Talk to me.”

Carol sighed.

He sat down on the corner of her desk, reached over and turned off the scanner.  “Talk.”

“When I agreed to join New Wave, Sarah and I both agreed that I’d keep my job, and I’d strike a balance between work and life in costume.”

Well, okay, fuck my “before capes” theory then. Sure.

I guess this has to be the present, then, given the condemnation thing. That, or the city has nearly been condemned before, early in Carol’s career, while Sphere was still Sphere.

He nodded.

“I felt like I had to keep coming, even after Leviathan destroyed the city.

Present. Definitely the present.

Took me long enough to be sure of that.

So why is there an Alan?

Keep that promise to myself, keep myself sane.  This filing helps, too.  It’s almost meditative.”

“I can’t imagine what it would have been like to stay in the city, with everything that’s gone on.  I heard things in the news, but it really didn’t hit home until I came back.”

Yeeah, this is something you gotta experience to fully get.

I say while simply reading about it.

“That’s it.  What are you doing?  Are those the files from downstairs?”

Carol nodded, glancing at the crate of paperwork marked ‘1972’.  “We’ve been saying we would copy them over to digital format the next time business got slow.

Old files… very old for anything relevant to this story, given that it took another decade before Scion showed up.

It won’t get much slower than it is now.”

“The idea was that everyone in the office would pitch in,” Alan answered.

“Everyone in the office is pitching in.”

So… Carol?

“Except you’re the only one here,” Alan said.  His brow creased in worry, “What’s going on?  Are you okay?”

I too would like to know what’s going on. We’ve got two people here with names that possibly break the One Steve Limit, only two chapters after the name one of them is bearing was last mentioned. Neither of them are acting like the people they should be by their names…

…

Maybe we are in the past, even more than I thought. Maybe this is in the 70′s or very early 80′s, before capes were a thing, and that’s why they’re both businesspeople of some description? Hell, maybe we’re even about to see these two learn about Scion’s, uh, arrival?

There’s also the question about whether the dark room scene happens before or after whenever this is. Is what I’m reading right now a flashback from the perspective of the lady in the darkness, who may or may not be Carol? (We haven’t had any descriptions looking into Carol’s head in the scene with Alan yet. Though Alan did just say Carol was the only one here.)

Or has Brockton Bay been close to condemnation in the past?

■

“I knew you were here when I was a block away,” Alan spoke.

Woah.

Either we just broke the One Steve Limit at an inopportune time, or we’re in the past.

With that in mind, who is the POV character? Burnscar?

And why are we reading about this in this particular Arc?

“The number of lights on in these offices is asking for troublemakers to notice and come by.  And the doors were unlocked.”

Carol looked up in surprise.  Composing herself, she answered, “I’m not concerned.”

Carol, as in Brandish? She knew Alan before he became Mannequin?

So is Carol our POV lady in the dark?

The man laughed, “No, I imagine you aren’t.”

“You’re back?”

“For a little while, at least.  The partners asked if I could come by in case we had to close up shop in a hurry.”

Partners? Close up shop in a hurry? None of this sounds like something I’d expect Sphere to be talking about.

“In case the city is condemned?”

…

What.

We’re in the present.

And there’s an Alan.

Did we just break the One Steve Limit? Or is everyone mistaken about who exactly Mannequin was? I think that would take away from Mannequin’s character, though.

I’m confused.