Chapter 5: PRT Interlude.

Author's note: I will try to write everything that isnt from Nate's PoV in third person... let me know how it feels. If people don't like it I will return to do everything in First Person.
So yeah... Interlude. Now we know what the PRT knows, and they are into Nate. Not that it will help them much considering where he is lmao. Also... Poor Colin. Bro is not ready for that insanity. The man in the wall won't be that active in this fic, but that doesn't mean he isn't present. He is always lurking. As for the next chapter, it will be Nate's return to earth, so yeah, im excited.

The Abyss Stares Back

Chapter 5: PRT Interlude.

Third Person PoV:

Brockton Bay

"Armsmaster, report!"

The barking voice of Director Emily Piggot crackled over the comms, sharp enough to draw a wince from the armored Tinker.

Colin Wallis, better known as Armsmaster, bit back a sigh. He hated being interrupted mid-scan, especially by Piggot when she was in one of her moods. Not that he even had the option of voicing his displeasure out. Piggot was not someone who appreciated being talked back, and Colin had already learned the hard way that the best way to reply to that woman was with silence.

She’d been irate since the incident at the run-down convenience store near the Boat Graveyard had gone viral on PHO.

Ordinarily, something like that wouldn’t attract the attention of the Protectorate. But according to the first responders (the police), things didn’t make sense there, and there was a high probability that a cape—an unknown one—was involved, which made things worse.

According to Colin, it could either be a new trigger, which always brings problems, or a new cape in town. Considering the amount of collateral damage and missing people… things weren’t looking up for the PRT.

Brockton Bay was too large, the PRT too understaffed, and the gangs too entrenched. Even with the Wards and PRT capes pulling extra shifts, they couldn’t be everywhere. The general policy had become containment over prevention… patrolling the hotspots, keeping the villains in check, and hoping things didn’t spiral.

The Brocktonites weren’t happy with that decision, but the PRT could not do anything to help more, even if they wanted to.

Sure, if they got a direct call, they sent someone. But the perpetrators were long gone when a cape reached the scene, and the civilians were already patching things themselves.

It didn’t help their reputation. Most people outside the glitzy downtown core viewed the PRT as little more than a clean-up crew.

Oh, Colin would love to bring change to the Bay, but he was limited by his power. Many people were jealous of his power, but Armsmaster resented it in the far corners of his mind. It was too limited, he thought. He didn’t have time to waste if he wanted to make friends (not that he did want to, to be honest); he had to focus every waking moment on improving his tech if he wanted to stay relevant.

Armsmaster’s jaw tightened. His carefully trimmed beard twitched at the interjection.

The store was a wreck.

Shelves splintered. Walls scorched. Glass littered the floor as if it imploded. A freezer unit buzzed erratically, and its compressor was damaged beyond repair. The state of the equipment rankled Colin’s mind; even before the event happened, it was clear that everything was poorly taken care of.

Armsmaster stepped over a collapsed candy rack, his visor shifting through spectral filters. No heat signatures and no survivors on-site. Only a fading thermal imprint, humanoid, dragged across the floor and then simply… disappeared.

It was unlike anything Armsmaster had ever seen before.

He knelt beside the blood.

Fresh. Still tacky. Multiple spatter patterns. Some were high-velocity, others smeared like someone had been crawling. But no bodies. There were no traces of tissue, just some blood and scorched tile.

And residue. Unidentifiable, even with his database. That irritated him.

He tapped a command into his halberd. A drone buzzed overhead, scanning the damage from above, while he switched to a replay of the security footage the store’s hard drive had salvaged.

Most of it was corrupted, with digital noise, static overlays, and even some sections that looked like torn film. Armsmaster narrowed his eyes.

Someone had tampered with the local EM field. This wasn’t just power fluctuation. It was deliberate interference. Exotic in nature. He still wasn’t sure if this had been premeditated or simply a power in play.

He ran the footage again, focusing on the brief section that wasn’t glitched.

The timestamp blinked. The camera feed jittered and then showed someone.

The boy behind the counter matched the victim profile in the police database, which was tagged as Nathaniel Vasquez, seventeen, a student at Winslow. He has no prior records besides being the one who found his mother overdosed with his now ex-girlfriend. Employed part-time. Lived with his mother, who had recently dropped off the radar.

Assault was in charge of looking for the woman. She was a ghost after she was laid off from the hospital, so Colin could only wish his subordinate luck. Not that he really needed it; Ethan was surprisingly good at sniffing out secrets with his easygoing act.

Armsmaster shook his head and focused on the video, his eyebrow lifted as a known merchant entered the convenience store with two accomplices.

The footage was degraded—grainy and flickering—but it was clear to him that the group was up to no good. There was no sound in the video, but they were clearly mocking the kid with something before the boy acted.

Armsmaster nodded in approval as he watched the kid defend himself. It was amateurish at best, but the merchants weren’t ready. The boy fought with valor until the leader stepped up the conflict with his small knife.

Colin frowned in distaste, but his eyes widened when someone appeared out of nowhere behind the counter the boy was previously at.

It was clearly a cape, but the image blurred in a way it didn’t happen before. There was no way to see the details of his face, but something attracted the attention of the veteran cape.

The unknown person had the same body build as the victim, with the same clothes to boot.

Stranger, Colin scowled in distaste.

Colin focused on the way the cape watched from the sidelines until the merchants finished injecting the boy with some kind of drug. The look of despair on his face made Colin uncomfortable; the kid was defeated.

So he focused again on the mystery cape. When he finally noticed that he was wrong.

Not just in how he moved but in how the footage itself reacted to him. Pixilation clustered around his form like the camera couldn’t agree on his shape. It distorted the image just by existing.

He looked like the boy. Same height. Same clothes. But blurred. Warped.

Not a cape Armsmaster recognized.

The next part of the video was chaos: three gang members screaming, jerking unnaturally, one of them opening his mouth to scream, and then the camera cut.

When it resumed, the merchants weren’t there anymore. The store was left in the state he could see, destroyed. It was clear that the mystery cape either was a grab-bag or there was another person in his group.

The only ones in the store were Nathaniel and the cape. The kid had a lost look in his eyes. They were foggy, and it was clear that the drugs were already in effect.

The doppelganger, on the other hand, stood next to the boy, then crouched next to him and whispered something in his ears. He put his hand on the broken boy, and both disappeared without a trace.

Piggot’s voice snapped into his comm again. “Armsmaster. Sitrep. Is this just Merchant infighting, or do we have another rogue cape on our hands?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Something about this didn’t fit the usual cape categories. The EM distortion, the psychic bleed in the shadows, and the way the store felt wrong even now were almost enough to trigger his helmet’s cognito hazard warnings.

Armsmaster scowled at that. He would need to enter the master-stranger confinement after finishing here. More wasted time than he could have spent improving his halberd.

But standing in the remains of a store that had seemingly been part of something strange, he knew what to do.

He keyed the comm.

"Unconfirmed hostile entity. No bodies recovered. The Vasquez boy was injured, possibly abducted by the mystery cape. Footage suggests someone interfered with the scene."

Piggot swore under her breath. “Are we looking at a villain?”

He shook his head. “Possible. Not enough information, I’m afraid. Besides some remnants of the merchant’s blood, the scene is too clean. Something strange happened here, Director. I’ll need to enter confinement until we are sure I am clean.”

Silence stretched.

Then Piggot muttered, “Goddamn it.”

Armsmaster’s fingers tightened on his halberd.

He’d seen his share of unpredictable threats. Shakers with too much range. Blasters who didn’t know their limits. But strangers were some of the worst. You didn’t know if you could trust your allies at any point. It was a good thing that there weren’t any strangers in the Bay.

But something about this felt worse.

He stared at the place where the boy’s blood painted should be present.

Who the hell was Nathaniel Vasquez?

And who had just taken him?

The Rig.

“We have a new cape in town,” Director Emily Piggot’s nasally voice grated the ears of everyone present. It was too early in the morning for this much tension, but it was Brockton Bay, and this was the PRT. Calm was a luxury. Something they rarely get to enjoy.

The meeting room wasn’t packed; Piggot had specifically requested capes only. The Wards had been dismissed despite their complaints. What remained were the operatives with experience, clearance, and authority.

Miss Militia sat upright, her expression hard and focused. Battery and Assault stood near the back. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, while she watched the screen intently. Triumph, the newest addition to the adult Protectorate roster, had taken a seat off to the side, his posture ramrod straight. He looked composed, but Piggot noted the clench in his jaw.

The recently graduated ward wanted to prove his worth, so he took his actions much more seriously than before to show his maturity. It did not help much, but everyone appreciated his efforts.

This wasn’t the sort of debrief you wanted to be late to.

The screen at the front of the room flickered to life with a soft hum, displaying a still image of the ruined convenience store. The camera feed panned through the scene, and then the stoic helmeted face of Armsmaster appeared in the corner of the screen.

“Thank you for joining us from confinement, Armsmaster,” Piggot nodded. “Begin.”

Armsmaster’s voice came through with his usual calculated tone. “The local EM field was compromised, and the store itself exhibits signs of high-end collateral. What I suspect is spatial warping, targeted destruction, and energy discharges inconsistent with known merchant tactics. Minimal residual heat signatures suggest the incident ended within two minutes of the initial altercation.”

A second image, grainy, degraded footage from the store’s camera, appeared on the screen. The feed shook slightly as Armsmaster overlaid tracking lines, highlighting the moment the first merchant walked in.

“As seen here, three Merchant gang members entered the store and attempted to assault the civilian, Nathaniel Vasquez. Subject fought back but was overwhelmed and stabbed.”

He paused.

“An injection occurred here,” he said, highlighting a frame. “Substance currently unknown. There was no residual in the store, and the needle was not where it should have been.”

Then the screen glitched. The camera warped as the video pixelated around a figure standing behind the counter.

“Subject appears,” Armsmaster’s voice slowed a fraction “—or rather, a secondary figure. Possibly parahuman. Same height, same build, same clothing as Vasquez. The footage itself is inconsistent. Stranger-class designation is highly likely. A high one at that. His face is hidden without an obvious expression of power.”

The screen showed stills of the blurry figure putting a hand on a limp Vasquez before both of them disappeared. Then silence.

“I don’t recognize the power signature. I am requesting a cross-analysis from Dragon to compare against Rogue and independent databases.”

Assault stepped forward, arms no longer crossed.

“I found the mother,” he said grimly. The room shifted slightly at that; it was not the usual tone of the laidback cape. Piggot raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“She was left for dead in a condemned tenement near Lord Street,” he continued. “Whoever did it wanted her gone. I talked to a few locals—word is the Merchants were pissed she didn’t sell what they gave her. Tried to make an example out of her. She’s in Saint Mary’s ICU, barely stabilized. It is still not sure she will recover without parahuman healing, but Panacea can’t do much; she has a nasty injury in her head.”

Miss Militia exhaled slowly, her face a rictus of anger. Triumph looked at Assault, then back at the screen.

“Was it them?” Battery asked. “Do you know who did it?”

Assault shook his head. “Not this time. It appears that after her first overdose, she began mingling with them for a hit, but no one is pointing fingers. Can we be sure it wasn’t the ones in the store? Usually, things like this happen between each cell.”

Piggot frowned. “Not likely. We are working under the idea that those three merchants are dead. A partial image can help us narrow down the search, but it’s slow going with Armsmaster under confinement.”

“Well…” Assault continued, “That was a Good end for them, but I don’t know if we can continue with that; it’s the police's duty after all.”

There was a beat of silence before Armsmaster’s voice returned. “The doppelganger appeared only after Vasquez was stabbed and drugged. I have two theories right now. The first one is that Nathaniel triggered with a Master power capable of summoning a doppelganger that could destroy the store… the second one is less likely, some out-of-town cape heard the commotion and abducted him for some nefarious reason, maybe to start a new gang.”

“You don’t sound sure,” Piggot noted.

“I’m not,” Armsmaster replied flatly. “Which is why I’m requesting clearance to investigate further outside regular patrol. Once I get out of Master-Stranger confinement.”

Triumph leaned forward. “Do we know where the Nathaniel is?”

“No,” Armsmaster answered. "There was no trace, no escape route. The energy residual is unknown to my database, and there is no way to track it without building a new scanner.”

Piggot leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled.

“We’re categorizing this as a potential rogue cape incident. Stranger class with unknown intentions. Vasquez is flagged as a potential parahuman or parahuman-adjacent individual. Armsmaster, you are cleared for further investigation.”

She looked to the others. “This does not go public. Wards are to be kept out unless absolutely necessary. If this is a trigger event, we may have an unstable parahuman on our hands. If it’s something else… we escalate accordingly.”

The silence returned.

Then Armsmaster added, “Director. One last detail.”

Piggot gave a short nod.

“What are our orders if we see the boy? Get him on the wards?”

Piggot frowned momentarily before sighing, “Bring him to the Rig. We will find out here if he was the one responsible for the killings. If he is and shows remorse, we can force him to join under probation.”

Assault scowled, “The kid was defending himself.”

“Three merchants are dead,” Piggot replied coldly.

“What do we know about his personality?” Miss Militia asked, trying to diffuse the rising tension.

Armsmaster cleared his throat. “Since I am unable to work on anything else right now, I managed to make a file on what we could find out. Shadow Stalker was of some help.”

Piggot motioned him to continue.

“His father was a special operations officer in Mexico; he fled the country after he killed the son of a high-ranking cartel member,” Armsmaster continued, “Gabriel Vazquez, he worked on the DWU ever since he arrived here; he met his wife during a visit in the hospital. His father must have been how Nathaniel learned to fight. According to Shadow Stalker, he is the silent type and is not prone to violence.”

“How does she know that?” Triumph asked quizzically, “She is not the kind of girl to pay much attention to a schoolmate.”

Armsmaster nodded, “I had the same question; she explained that she saw him having a lot of trouble because of his ex-girlfriend. He suffered quite a bit of bullying before he broke the relationship after the girl introduced his mother to drugs.”

“If he has a master power, do you think he meant to kill them?” Miss Militia frowned.

“Inconclusive,” Armsmaster shook his head, “Things are different in Mexico; if his father had taught him about how he fixed problems, he might have done it to imitate him. But we cannot be sure without meeting him.”

“Enough,” Piggot barked.

“The order is unchanged; bring him here.”

Armsmaster POV

Colin sat alone in the sterile observation room, which had white walls and a smooth, reinforced floor. He was not allowed to use any tech beyond the essentials, and his halberd, armor, and utility gear were all locked away outside the blast door.

Just him. And his thoughts.

Which was the worst part.

He hated this place.

Every hour he spent here was an hour he could’ve used refining sensor arrays, tuning his power core, or adjusting targeting parameters. Instead, he was being treated like a liability—just “Protocol,” they said.

He leaned back in the bolted-down chair and stared at the corner of the room, running the incident frame-by-frame in his head. There had to be something he’d missed. A reflection. A shadow. A timestamp error. Anything that could clear the fog of the case.

Silence stretched.

Then—

Rap. Tap. Tap.

He froze.

The whisper came from behind the two-way mirror. But he felt it inside his head.

Colin stood slowly. The mirror revealed nothing, just his own reflection. He knew for a fact the observation area was empty. He’d checked it himself before walking in. And anyone else observing him would have said something with the comms.

He stared for a long moment.

Then…

Rap. Tap. Tap.

Louder this time. More insistent.

His fingers twitched toward a halberd that wasn’t there.

He activated the comm on the door. “Control, this is Armsmaster. Is anyone monitoring my unit?”

A pause. Then static.

“Velocity’s here,” Velocity’s voice sounded, “There is no one there, Armsmaster. What happened? Is there a problem?”

Armsmaster scowled deeply behind the white mask covering his face before he shook his head and sighed, “No. I must be hearing things. I’m probably more tired than I thought.”

“Got it,” Velocity piped in, “I’ll make a note. See you in two days.”

 He shut off the comm and sat in silence. This time, the sound didn’t come.

But the silence felt heavier than before.