Reads Carpenter

“Yeah,” Ruth said. She looked up. “I thought you knew?”

Agent Carpenter shrugged, but there was something weird about her tone.

“The exact same powers?”

“Yes.”

She knew about the second type of parahumans, or at least the theorized type that Ruth said had been there since before Scion. I'd never told anyone in the PRT and neither had Ruth. It wasn't the kind of thing she wanted known, and I had the impression that the people who had powers and did want to be a cape simply kept their status quiet. The last thing anybody wanted was to be a guinea pig in a lab somewhere for PRT bio-tinkers who wanted to give super powers to normal people.

That would be the holy grail after all. If you gave entire armies powers, then the reign of the gangs would be over. You could simply throw masses of parahumans at them until they either died or surrendered. The likelihood was that the smarter ones would just give up.

Had she been introduced to the second type in her own life, or was she working for another organization as a deep cover mole? Maybe she was one herself.

She glanced at me, and although she tried to keep her expression blank, I could see the realization that I knew that she knew.

***

Fun