With that, the meeting was over, or at least my part.

Vaughn left to call Dayton, and everyone else left to discuss how and where to probe Jody’s loyalties best. I could have gone along, and I wanted to, but no one else could improve the buzzers.

Chris might have, but he was out in a version of the Rocket suit helping with the fungus cleanup downtown. He’d served as my double enough that some people might think something was off when they met me in the suit.

Today though, it made it harder to figure out where the Rocket was while simultaneously making people feel like the Heroes’ League was actively involved in the cleanup. He wasn’t the only one of us out there, but it was good to keep the suit visible. Along with Daniel, it kept the original League in people’s minds even when we were elsewhere in the solar system.

Diving into the code associated with the current version of buzzers, I understood how to solve the problem—sort of. Without changing the hardware, I wouldn’t be able to solve it for people outside our group, but everyone on (or associated with) our team wore my suit technology, configurable armor with nanotech components.

If my suits were available, I’d be able to add components with software. Without a suit, they’d need to add additional sound-deadening elements to their armor—not a trivial task. Hopefully, the Nine didn’t know or have enough Dominators to blow past my buzzers.

I didn’t think Arete had time to notify the Nine of that particular weakness, but I couldn’t know for sure. He’d controlled the entire city before the end. He’d have had the ability to assign someone to send an email at least.

How long I spent working on it, I couldn’t say exactly, but my implant could. It informed me that it had been an hour and 23 minutes since everyone else left the lab. I ignored the number of seconds.

In any case, I was ready to test. Using my implant, I connected to my comm and called Julie.

She answered the comm with, “Are you calling me from the lab? I’m here with everyone else.”

I looked out of my doorway and she was. Sitting at the big table in the main room, she gave me a wave.

I waved back, “Sorry. I was focused on my work. I’ve got something to test if you can leave the conversation.”

“The new buzzer? Sure,” she said and got up from the table, dropping the call and walking across the room to the lab.

It still felt weird to have her here. In high school, she’d been part of a clique of girls that I never spoke to and she’d made fun of the fact that Haley and I were dating on social media. Add to that being part of Justice Fist,  forcing Haley and me to leave a coffeeshop with her voice, and her high school crush on Travis gave me reasons to stay away from her.

She was literally part of why I’d invented the buzzer.

After starting Stapledon, she’d drifted into the Heroes’ League. I couldn’t put a finger on when she’d fully become part of the group, but she wasn’t that bad.

It might be faint praise, but at least we were at a point where I didn’t see any reason she’d do what an alternate history version of her had done—enslave people with her voice and sell them to the True.

Like everyone else when we were in HQ, she’d absorbed her mask into the (pink and white) costume, showing her light skin and blond hair. Her smile reminded me of the mean girl that she’d been, but not because she was sneering at me. It was just my memories and she probably deserved a pass. The Cabal killed her mother and she’d grown up wondering when they’d come for her.

As she stepped into the lab, she paused, eyeing the partially assembled Rocket suits, boxes of nanotech cubes, and the machines manufacturing bots. Then she walked toward me, asking, “Have you heard anything from Kals?”

“Yes,” I said, “the Alliance and the rebel groups have taken a subsector capital and she’s kind of the governor now. At least that’s the impression I got.”

Eyes wide, she said, “She’s our age, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but her mom was a high profile Ascendancy motivator who became a high profile resistance leader until her death. Kals seems to want to see it to the end.”

Blinking, she said, “I didn’t know her mom died. Did the Ascendancy kill her?”

I nodded, “Her mom sacrificed herself to give everyone else a chance to survive.”

Looking away from me, Julie stared off to my right at nothing, before saying, “I knew she was a resistance leader, but I didn’t know why. I’m glad she’s alive. She seemed nervous about going back when she was teaching me.”

Thinking back to fighting Ascendancy soldiers and starships, I said, “I get it. The Ascendancy is merciless and their soldiers are mind-controlled. Plus, people see her as a leader and they’re willing to die for her. That’s a weight.”

“I can’t imagine it.” She paused, but then said, “I know that’s not why you called for me. You wanted me to test out a buzzer.”

“Right,” I said, “but it’s a little more complicated. I upgraded the buzzer system to withstand a bunch of motivators at once, but to test it we only have one motivator—you. So, I modified one of my sonic weapons to amplify your voice. Normally, motivators’ vocal tones are too complicated to reproduce effectively, but I think I can get you to a comparable volume and measure the effect.”

Opening her mouth, she said, “Oh. Can I keep it afterward?”