"Alright, so the idea here is that this thing will let us see if the force field shrinks, bends, or flickers," I say, pointing at the scale I've squeezed tightly between the field and a brick wall using the screw jack, which is currently exerting two hundred pounds according to the scale. "So now I'm going to need one of you guys to take this bat and hit the field, hard, while I watch the needle. Be careful with your grip."

"Alright, I'll take a crack at it," says Burris.

I turn to the camera guy while unwrapping my first taco. "You ready, Pete?" He nods, so I lock my eyes on the needle and gesture to Burris. "Swing, batta batta, swing!"

Crunch goes my taco and crack goes the bat. The needle doesn't move at all, not even a wiggle, but at least this is a good taco. I signal to Burris to keep swinging. Several hits in quick succession might make more of an impact than a lone one. Besides, I need time to finish my taco. I don't want to face them head-on with the lower part of my mask up. I don't know this Pete guy, but I've interacted with Susan and Burris several times as George. In particular, I'm being careful to keep them on my left side as I munch. It's not very obvious, but I do have a faint scar on the right side of my jaw, and cops are trained to notice stuff like that.

Taco done, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and pull my mask back down. "Alright, didn't see the needle move, but let's check the footage."

Pete fiddles with the laptop he's got hooked up to the camera, then turns it toward us and hits play. "Wow," says Burris. "I didn't think a bat could bend like that." He hefts the bat up and runs his hands along the stem looking for damage.

"You see this kind of thing a lot in high-speed imagery," says Pete. "Stuff flexes, but it's so fast that we don't notice. Except we do. What do you think vibrations are? This. This is what vibrations are."

I ignore their chatter and focus on the air where the bat is striking. When the final strike finishes, I reach for the laptop and slide the scrubber back to just before the impact, then click ahead and back a few times. "Do you guys see what I'm seeing?"

Susan nods. "It's like a heat shimmer rippling out from the impact."

"This is good; it does react in a measurable way when we hit it, even with something as weak as a bat. And now we know that the effect is localized. That ripple is centered around the point of impact, and it fades as it spreads. I wasn't sure if it would do that, or if the whole field would be affected equally."

"So what's next?"

"Bullets." I point at a spot just above where the scale is set up. "I want somebody to shoot it right here, at this angle so the ricochet doesn't go anywhere important. Multiple shots, as rapidly as you can. In fact, get two people. I want them to start at the same time, but not to bother trying to stay in sync. They should just fire a few rounds as fast as they can."

She nods and I amble off to finish my tacos while Pete adjusts the camera's aim. "How're things on your end, Spook?"

"We haven't learned anything they haven't," says Joe. "Not about the immediate situation, anyway. The governor's now aware of it, though. He just made a tweet."

"Great. Because becoming state-wide news is something I'm totally interested in. Well, probably for the best. We might need the National Guard to breech this thing. Any ideas?"

"Nothing that isn't just technobabble speculation. If I could poke at it with enough different kinds of sensors and materials, maybe I could find a way to counter it, but that's a long-term thing, and somebody with more know-how could probably do a better job anyway."

"Right. Well, let's see how this next-"

"Who are you talking to?" asks Susan.

I adjust my mask and turn around. "Oh, that's just Spook. He's a ghost who follows me around and offers advice. Kind of a creep, really. Makes trips to the little hero's room awkward, but what are you gonna do?"

"I hate you so much," mutters Joe while Hannah laughs in the background.

"I love you too, buddy," I say, miming the patting of a shoulder next to me.

"Oooookay," says Susan skeptically. "Well, we're ready when you are. Sheriff Drake will direct the firing. He doesn't want you directly ordering the use of firearms. Liability concerns."

"Fair enough." I toss my taco wrappers in a trash bin and follow her to behind a barricade they set up. Burris is talking with a pair of cops I haven't seen in a while: Uncle Jeff's friend Wally Rhodes and his partner Fred Something-Or-Other. Both are armed with carbines, and Burris has acquired a shotgun. "Good thinking," I tell him before crouching down next to Drake and Pete. "Alright, I'm ready."

Drake nods and puts on his hearing protection. "Take aim, gentlemen." Fred, Wally, and Burris space themselves out slightly and peer down their sights, while I put in my own earplugs. "We're going to do this on the count of three. One... two... three!"

I really hate how loud guns are, even with protection. I'm going to have to see if we can find or build some kind of active noise cancellation for situations where I don't have time to prepare. Maybe BoomPlate has something. That's the company we got the bone-conduction transducers in the Skullbuzzers from, as well as the microphone for the ParaMic. They make good audio tech at BoomPlate.

The other three lower their guns and flip the safeties, then we all huddle around Pete's laptop. "There was a lot more distortion that time," Burris notes. "I even saw some with my naked eye."

"More importantly," I say, "check out the needle." It jerks around a bit during the gunfire, and when it settles it's pointed at only a hundred and twenty-two pounds. "You softened it up enough for the scale to slide just a little ways into it."

"So," muses Burris, "if we got a machine gun or a firing squad to pound it, somebody might be able to push their way through?"

I shake my head. "Bad idea. First: ricochets. You can see the bullets bouncing off in the video. You gonna volunteer to stand next to that? Second: anything caught in the field is locked in place." I demonstrate by removing the screw jack from the scale, which now appears to be floating unsupported.

"But if we soften it up..."

"It still has grip, otherwise the scale would have catapulted itself all the way through. There were two hundred pounds of force on it. And here's the scary thing: I'm pretty sure that grip permeates everything, so it wouldn't just be pushing against your skin. It would be pushing against your blood, organs, heart, brain... And speaking of brains, we know that photons can go through this thing mostly without interference, but what about electrons? We have no idea what this thing would do to the electrical signals in a brain. I wouldn't risk trying to send anything living through until we try testing with a phone or laptop or something else with complex circuitry and an active OS so that we can see whether it keeps running, and even then we'll want to do an animal trial before attempting with a human."

"So what good is all this?" demands Susan.

"Well, we're getting an idea about what this field can withstand, and what its weaknesses are. For example, we now know that we could soften it up and push a robot through and use that to try taking out whoever's making the force field. Probably Heels, judging by that video."

"Assuming electronics can survive."

"Not an issue, as long as it's physically sturdy enough to handle the force. Worst case, we send it in powered-down with a clockwork mechanism to turn it back on. No active electronics to disrupt that way. Then we just have to worry about hitting the field strongly enough that we don't need to push the drone so hard it breaks."

"A clockwork mechanism?"

"Yeah. Maybe something like a kitchen timer with one wire on the dial and one on the side. It might stop ticking while we shove it through, but it's just powered by a wound spring, so it'll resume ticking on the other side, eventually connecting the wires and triggering the power-up circuitry on the bot. Easy."

"And what makes you think the control signal for the drone would get through?"

"Where did that video come from? Maybe they didn't have a complete field up yet, but if they did, then it means a phone's radio can penetrate the shield. And we already know it's transparent to visible light, so it's not surprising if it's transparent to other parts of the spectrum."

"And if it isn't?"

"Then we get more creative. Visible light does get through, so we could encode the signal in a laser. We don't want to be restricted to line-of-sight, though, so instead of aiming the laser at a sensor on the bot, we push a relay through that receives the optical signal and relays it as radio. Maybe we could even get away with fiber optics rather than a laser. Probably a lot easier to set up that way."

Drake nods at me, then turns to Wally. "Alright. Rhodes, go call the bomb squad. Get their techs to start rigging their bot up to fire a weapon, and tell them to start thinking about this relay thing in case we need it." As Wally jogs off, Drake turns back to me. "Any other ideas in that addled noggin o' yours you think we should be trying, meanwhile?"

"Well, we're going to want a better way to pound on the field than guns. Besides being dangerous, it's a waste of ammo and police manpower. I'm thinking jackhammers. Probably hard to run them sideways, though. Maybe if we mount a few on the front of a truck or a forklift or something?"

"Hmm." He turns to Fred. "LeBon, go find me a rig mounted breaker and somebody trained to use it who doesn't mind getting some good hazard pay in service to his city."

"A what, Sheriff?"

"An excavator or backhoe with a big hydraulic jackhammer on it. They use 'em for roadwork, demo work, and mining. I know for a fact Antoine Construction has at least one, unless it's in the shop."

"Gotcha. I'll-" He cuts off as a soft but pervasive whumph hits our ears, followed immediately by a clatter from where I'd set up the scale. I spin around to see it lying on the ground inside where the force field is. Or was. I fish out my paper airplane and send it out on a recon mission. Yep, there's clear flying all the way to the walls of City Hall.

The doors open slightly and a trembling woman slips out, her hands in the air. "Don't shoot!" she yells frantically. "They're letting me out to deliver a message!" She steps slowly away from the building, and the air shimmers slightly behind her as a new, tighter force field goes up.

"Let her through, but stay on guard," says Drake into his radio before raising a megaphone. "Understood, ma'am. Please approach to the half-way point. An escort will meet you there." Even before he finishes, a heavily armored cop in a vest that says BOMB SQUAD is moving toward the woman. Huh. I hadn't even considered that they might send a hostage out to us as a trojan. This woman turns out to be bomb-free, though, and the bomb squad guy leads her up to us. "What do they want?" Drake asks her.

"The m- m- media, sir. They said t- to have the reporters set up f- for a b- brief press conference outside the b- building. Or they'll start k- k- killing hostages."

Drake scowls. "I hate attention whores." He gives me a dirty look as he says that, then turns back to the woman. "What's your name?"

"L- Linda Worshire, sir."

He forces out a smile. It looks painful. "Okay, Linda. It's going to be okay. You're safe now. Did they say anything else?"

"Y- Yes. They said that if th- they don't recognize some reporters from the news, they'll know you're f- faking it."

"Well, there goes that plan," he mutters.

"Th- they also said they're going to make their own b- broadcast, so refusing won't help."

Drake throws his hands in the air. "Fine! They want a media circus, and the media wants to give them a circus, so who am I to stop it!" He storms off, shouting orders.

"Um, W- W- Wheels?" says Linda. "They had a m- message for you as well?"

"Oh?"

Her expression shifts slightly toward sympathy. "Th- they said to t- tell you that they know who you are, and th- that if you care about your p- parents, you should s- surrender now. They said... th- they said they have sn- snipers ready to k- k- kill them b- both."

"Oh gosh," I say with mock horror. "Both of them, even? They really said that they'd kill both of them?"

Linda nods. "I- I'm so sorry, Wheels. They... Are you... laughing?"

"These guys are noobs, Linda. They're bluffing. They don't know Jack or Jill."

"Are... are you sure? B- Because I th- think they were serious..."

"Nah. They're definitely bluffing. I'm kickin' it Batman style. Both my folks are dead, therefor I fight crime! But these noobs don't know that, so they figure they can make vague threats to scare me. Did you notice how they didn't bother mentioning any names or details? They don't even mistakenly think they know who I am. They have nothing at all. Heck, they probably still think I'm male!"

"Um. You aren't?"

I shift into a more feminine stance and pitch my voice a bit higher. "Misinformation is the name of the game!"

"Oh," says Linda. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

I giggle. "You don't have to feel sorry. People not knowing is the whole point!" I make a show of glancing around and hunching down slightly as I "realize" that a bunch of random cops just overheard me. Suckers. I clear my throat and revert to my Wheels voice. "If we could, uh, just keep that between us..."

"Of course, dear. I mean, Wheels."

I suppress the urge to give a good villain laugh and instead turn to an approaching officer. He ignores me and walks up to Linda. "Ma'am. I'm James Lincoln, secondary negotiator. Please come with me. We have a great many questions to ask you." He spares me a brief glance. "As for you, go find Preskill and get back to work." He leads Linda away toward a huddle of cops without another word.

I scratch my head and look around, unsure where Susan and Burris have gotten to. "That was unnerving," mutters Joe as I start skating carefully through the pulsing press of police. "Have you been practicing that voice?"

"Yeah," I mutter under my breath. "It was P's idea. I told you about her Halloween costume, right? Well, remember how sometimes in the comics, a hero gets a friend to impersonate them so their hero and secret identities can be seen in the same place at the same time? P figures if I sow some more confusion as to my gender, it'll be easier for her to help with that kind of thing."

"Um, Wheels?" says Hannah. "You know you have a perfectly good friend who is actually male, right?"

"Yeah, but this way is more funny. Besides, redundancy is good. The more Wheels the merrier, I say. There's what, five of us now? Six if we can get Tooth Fairy in on it."

"Please don't," says Joe.

"That would be enough Wheels for a set of tri-rockers. Imagine the look on Drake's face!"

"I'd rather not," says Hannah. "It sounds like he's stressed out enough as it is. Besides, what do you think is going to happen if you let people see more than one Wheels? They're going to start impersonating you while committing crimes and make it harder for people to know whether the Wheels they see approaching is a good guy or a bad guy."

"Yuck." Aha, there they are. I skate up to the table Susan and Burris are hunched over. "Yo! Now what?"

"More of the same," says Susan.

So, we do more of the same for a while. I won't bore you with all the super obvious precautions I recommend for dealing with the rest of the Suits. We'll just skip right on into the circus. Cameras, mic booms, sandbags, the whole nine yards. Susan, Burris, and I are at a table way off to the side, with a pair of cordons to keep the hungry reporters from nibbling on us while they wait for the Suits to come out.

"What's the word on that excavator?" I ask Fred as he passes.

"Waiting three blocks out while they clear the abandoned vehicles out of the way for the last leg of the trip."

"Thanks." I turn to Susan. "Do you think-" I hear a soft wumph noise and snap my head back toward City Hall as the door opens. "Never mind."

The hostages begin filing out, some carrying loudspeakers and other AV equipment, then the twelve Suits exit behind them. A new force field shimmers briefly over the yard in front of the building. The Suits stay in the center and assemble a folding table, setting some audio equipment on it while the hostages nervously place speakers at the edges of the field and Burnscar positions a video camera in front of the table. Several cables trail back into the building behind them, zip-ties holding them in a tidy bundle.

"What are they up to?" asks Burris.

I squint at the scene from behind my mask. "Does it seem quiet to you?"

"Hmm?"

I point at one of the Suits, an athletic black guy with a crew cut. "Look at Coach, there. He looks like he's shouting at that guy, and a few of the hostages are crying, but I don't hear anything. Their force field locks anything it intersects in place, including air molecules. It's sound proof. But they're going to want us to be able to hear their demands or whatever. So..."

Susan nods. "So they're going to shrink their field, then use that stuff to communicate through it. Makes sense... but wait. I don't see any microphones besides the one on their table. How are we supposed to communicate back?"

"That is concerning. I mean, we can always just write messages and hold them up to the field, so it's not really a problem. The statement they're making, though... they don't care what we have to say. Not good."

She sighs. "At least now we know electricity does travel through the field." When I don't answer, she turns and raises an eyebrow. "Right?"

"See how they're routing the cables? They're moving like they're in a hurry, but they're still taking the time to group all the cables together in the back and then run them to the center. Maybe you're right, but I'm thinking not. My guess is that they're going to leave a hole back there for the cables."

"They can do that?"

I shrug, watching as Stubbly, a white college-age guy with a patchy beard, whispers to Zappy.

Blockface, a tall and sturdy looking black woman, says something into the mic at the center before beckoning to the rest. Stubbly, Butch, and Coach divide up the hostages into two uneven groups, the larger being stationed at the very front of the field. Mayor Larson is in the second group, along with the council members, judges, and a few other important looking people. They direct the second group to stand next to the table, then there's another set of shimmers, this time a nested pair. The outer hostages walk hesitantly forward toward the police. Drake tells them to wait, and several guys from the bomb squad intercept and clear them. They're being ushered toward the area the paramedics have roped off when the speakers finally emit a loud click.

"Hello, Forchester. You're hearing this? Yes, I can see that you are. Excellent. A hearty welcome to you, as well as those of you tuning into our live stream. I'm sure you're all busy with your lives, so I'll try not to take much of your time. My name is Anne Miller, and I represent an organization called Pharmedica. You may have heard of us. Our objective is and has always been to advance humanity by defeating illness and weakness. And now, just as we crest the hill into developing true superhumans, you have turned against us, killed our people, and disrupted our project! That is not acceptable, Forchester! You may think that what you see here is a hostage situation. You are mistaken." She raises an arm, palm out, and holds it pointed to the side. A beam of red light suddenly blasts out of her palm, through Mayor Larson, through the force field, and into the side of a building, which begins to smoke. "This is a coup!" she shouts over the screaming crowd, sweeping the beam through the rest of her hostages. "A revolution! And you are all a part of it!"

There's a whumph sound and my guts lurch as I tackle Susan and Burris. We hit the ground just as a blinding storm of lightning bolts fills the air overhead. The sound isn't as deep or big as thunder, but it's still exceedingly loud with that many arcs zapping about at once. I can barely hear the screams over it. Then, as suddenly as it began, it's over. I peer up past the barricade and through the after-images to see that most of the press are fine, but the police have been decimated, and there's smoke billowing out of the windows of several surrounding buildings where I suppose snipers had been hiding. That's bad, and not just because it means we won't have sniper support. It's bad because it means they somehow knew where the snipers were. They have spies, an ability to sense life, an attack that automatically seeks life, or something along those lines. All possibilities are bad.

While Susan and Burris try to assess who among the police escaped the attack, I start fishing out my mylar emergency blanket. It should help against Anne's beam, at least a little bit, but I can't count on it. Even if it reflects the majority of the beam, at least a little bit will be absorbed, and it won't take much absorption to burn through it or melt a hole. Still, every edge I can get...

"Forchester belongs to us," shouts Anne. "Forchester has always belonged to us. We have guarded you from influenza, broken your fevers, mended your bones, soothed your pain! We have supplemented your terrible diets, balanced your hormones, reversed your thinning hair! We've replaced your limbs, saved your babies, and augmented your failing senses! And now, now we will shepherd you into the next stage of human existence! No longer will your anachronistic biology limit your potential! We are here to usher in a new era, an era of superhumanity!

"Do not fear us, citizens of Forchester! We are not here to subjugate and exploit you, the way your previous leaders have." She waves at the smouldering remains of her hostages. "We are here to help! To lead, guide, and cultivate you! The politicians who have dragged your lives through the mud to support their machinations, they will be hunted and removed. They have much cause to fear! But you, the citizens, you are our flock. You will be protected, healed, upgraded!" She pauses for a moment, then smiles. "But as with any flock, there must be fences to keep the wolves out and the strays in." She gestures at Heels, who focuses and raises her arms above her head. The air pressure changes and the evening sunlight seems mottled for a moment. No way. "Forchester is now under our protection. Interference from the outside world will not be permitted." They couldn't have. "We understand that this will be a large inconvenience to some of you, but never fear! We are all in this together, and accommodations will be made for those of you who live or work elsewhere." They've enclosed the city in a force field. "Please bear with us while we solidify control and finally eliminate those who have preyed upon you for the last several decades!"

"Spook, you guys still there?" I mutter as she continues ranting.

"Yeah, man, why?"

"I think they just put Forchester under glass."

"But... but none of the superpowers we've seen have operated on a scale like that!"

"Yeah. I don't know how much they actually domed, though. Can you see if you can find out?"

"Sure, as soon as the network comes back up. Our borrowed Wi-Fi just jammed, and my mobile connection isn't working."

"...Spook, call your mom. Have her check her own internet."

"What does that have to do with-"

"Just do it."

I pull my head through the hole I cut in the center of the emergency blanket and poke my arms through the shoulder holes, then reach experimentally through the long slits in the sides to make sure I can still access my gear. It's a little clumsy, but usable. Then I scarf my last granola bar while listening to Anne continue her rant. She's not saying anything new, just rephrasing the thing's she's already said and trying to sell everybody on how cool superpowers are.

"Her connection's down, Wheels, and the one we were mooching off here hasn't come back up yet. Are you thinking it's the force field?"

"They have made a fatal error, Spook." I crumple up the granola wrapper and toss it in the nearest bin, take a swig from my water bottle, and stand up.

"Wheels!" says Officer Susan with a start. "What do you think you're doing! Stay behind cover!"

"They broke the internet," I growl while doing some quick stretches.

"They what? What does-"

I ignore her and sprint out from behind the barricade, skating directly for Heels. "I will destroy you!"