Time’s up.  Sarah had to know what he meant, now.

They’d spent so long in the darkness, in their own filth.  They’d eaten so little, grown so weak, and now they’d die.  And the thing that upset Carol most was that they would never understand why.

Yeah, sorry, I can’t help you there.

So Sarah gets shields, for defense (along with lasers because pew pew). Carol gets light weapons and the morph ball, to fight back.

“No!”  Sarah shrieked, her voice raw.

The light was so bright it momentarily blinded Carol.  She covered her face with her arms.

Ooh, here we go! Laser time!

So I guess Sarah’s taking the initiative to fight back. Although this is very likely an involuntary, out of control use of her power, as seems to tend to happen with new triggerers.

Also, looks like we’re not getting any Dandelions this time, since Sarah triggered before Carol. Unless we get to see their involvement in Carol’s trigger like with Hana.

When she looked up again, the man was on his hands and knees.  And her sister… Sarah was standing.

Except standing was the wrong word.  Sarah was upright, and her legs were moving, but her toes were barely touching the ground.  She wasn’t supporting her own weight.

Oh right, she got flight too.

She advanced on the man, raising one hand.

Again, that blinding light.  It didn’t burn the man, nor did it cut him.  He reacted like he’d been punched instead, stumbling backward through the doorway.  She hit him again, over and over, wordless cries accompanying each attack.

Punchy lasers!

Carol saw only glimpses of the man’s bloodied body in the split-seconds the light hung in the air.  He was being beaten, pulverized. 

Kidnappers in this ‘verse really need to learn to treat their captives better, to keep them from triggering.

■

“Carol, wake up.”

Are we back to the dark room?

(Which, to be fair, isn’t always dark, that’s just the best name I have for it so far.)

So is that in the past?

Carol stirred.  She was sleeping so much of the time now.

There was a man in the doorway.  Her heart leapt in her chest.

Not the same guy as earlier?

Then he moved the lantern.  A stranger.

“Time’s up,” he spoke, his voice heavily accented.

“Don’t understand,” Sarah spoke, her voice thin.

So Sarah, judging by what Carol said in the other scene and probably previous mentions I’m forgetting right now, is Photon Mom, though this is apparently long before she became a mom.

“Where’s… where’s the other man?” Carol asked.  She felt almost ashamed she didn’t have a better name for him.

“Quiet,” the man snapped.  He moved the hand that wasn’t burdened with the lantern, and Carol could see a knife.

Is this a rescue? But “time’s up” sounds way too ominous for that.

She gasped, or maybe moaned.  It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be, because it was involuntary and her voice caught, making the sound come out more like a yelp or a reedy shriek.  She shrank back.

I suppose he’s holding that knife in a more threatening fashion than I was imagining.

“No, no, no,” Sarah squeaked, shaking her head.

So is this their trigger event? I suppose it would make a ton of sense for a pair of sisters who have been kept in the dark to get light-themed powers.

If we get to see them trigger, we might be in for some Dandelion action, too, which is always interesting.

“I could call some people, if we organized a search party-”

“Too dangerous when you’re talking supervillains and the numbers of armed thugs on the streets.  Even civilians are likely to attack first and ask questions later, if confronted.  Besides…” she picked up her cell phone from the corner of her desk.  She showed him the screen, “Cell towers are down.  No service.”

Right. Good points. You need satellite phones if you want to do that.

He frowned.  “I- I don’t know what to say.”

“Welcome back to Brockton Bay, Mr. Barnes.”

…OH.

That Alan! I forgot he was named Alan. So it’s not a new break of the One Steve Limit, though it’s still poorly timed.

So if he’s here, that means Emma’s back too, very likely. I’m sure Taylor will be overjoyed by those news.

(Though I don’t think Taylor ever found out Emma had left in the first place.)

“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.)