The file was organized by case number.
Danton read through it in the van, one of his duplicates driving while the original sat in the back with his phone and read.
Aymon Zachary. Former owner of a small construction firm. Filed suit three years ago alleging that the design of the Stagg Tower was directly copied from his architectural work. Stagg Industries' legal team has successfully postponed the case three times; Zachary's firm has since gone bankrupt under the weight of legal fees and cannot fund continued litigation. Outcome: likely loss.
Rand Gilbert. Former engineer, Stagg Industries. Filed suit five years ago over three engineering patents Stagg registered without his knowledge. His own attorney was bribed by Stagg's legal team. A countersuit for extortion followed. Outcome: likely loss.
Darlene Regan. Former sales manager, Stagg Pharmaceuticals. Filed a sexual harassment complaint against Stagg on behalf of herself and several colleagues fourteen months ago. Terminated within the week. The colleagues she cited then testified in Stagg's favor, recanting. Countersuit for defamation followed. Outcome: case lost.
He read through all of them.
Every name was a stranger. The company had maintained strict information controls around anything legally sensitive — media payments, internal memos flagged for deletion, the gentle institutional pressure that kept employees focused on their work and unaware of the ecosystem of suppressed grievances that surrounded them. He'd been so deep in his research for so long that the world outside the lab had essentially stopped existing.
Over a hundred victims. Over two hundred cases.
He'd known Stagg was ruthless. He hadn't known the scale of it.
His phone rang. Same unknown number.
This time, no voice changer imitation. A flat electronic filter, clean and direct.
"Your call was very polite," he said before the other party could speak. "But that doesn't change the fact that you've been tracking me. You were near the venue. You knew when I was going to move."
"There are cameras at the entrance. I didn't need to be there in person." A pause. "And I'm not targeting you specifically. I've compiled information on over a hundred individuals. You're one of them."
"What do you want."
"Same thing you want. Stagg stopped. But if you go in with a gun, your life ends alongside his — and your wife needs you alive." The electronic voice was precise and unhurried. "Your cloning ability isn't invincibility. You'd be outgunned before you reached him."
Danton said nothing. That was true.
"The alternative is a different kind of damage. Slower, but total." The voice continued: "Stagg fights individuals one at a time because individuals can be exhausted. He can't exhaust a hundred of them simultaneously. Not with a public event to manage, a new award on his shelf, and journalists looking for a follow-up angle."
"You want me to file suit."
"I want you to coordinate. Use your copies to read through every case in that file — the deleted audio recordings, the suppressed surveillance footage, the near-miss cases where plaintiffs came close and the filings that explain why. Contact the people. Organize them. And find the journalists in that list, specifically the ones who are still working."
Danton scanned back through the names. There were three journalists. Two still employed.
"The faster you move, the better. Stagg just accepted the Central City Annual Contribution Award. That's a very large target. Your case fires first, hits that directly, and the media attention creates the opening for the others to follow. A hundred-plus cases landing in sequence isn't a nuisance — it's an extinction-level event for a public reputation." Another pause. "And if Stagg decides to try to bury the story financially, don't worry. I'll be involved."
Danton thought about Elizabeth. About the research he'd built over a decade. About the specific feeling of watching Stagg hold his trophy and describe his own legacy.
"What do I get out of this?"
"Your patent. Which is the original goal, which leads to Elizabeth's surgery." The electronic voice, flat as it was, managed something close to sincerity. "The lawsuit strategy is the only path where you win and keep your freedom. Everything else ends with you in a cell and her alone."
A silence.
"Good luck, Danton Black."
The call ended.
He sat in the back of the van for a moment, the phone still in his hand, looking at nothing in particular.
Elizabeth. Wait for me.
He opened the file again and started at the top.
On the other end of the disconnected call, Jude was riding the food cart down a sunlit block, the afternoon shift starting late but starting.
"Was that really necessary?" Satsuki's voice came through the earpiece.
"The performance needed to be convincing. The takeout angle is a good cover if Danton tries to trace the number."
"I mean the line at the end." Her tone was flat. "The 'don't worry, I'll be involved' line. With that particular delivery. Jude, my toes are attempting to burrow into the pavement."
"It's called flair."
"It's called second-hand embarrassment. The line was already doing the work. The dramatic emphasis was surplus."
"I finally have a disguise and a phone filter and the moral high ground," Jude said. "Let me have this one."
"No."
He rolled his eyes and let it go.
"Speaking of which," Satsuki said, shifting tone, "your group has been sending messages about an urban legend. They filmed something last night. I think you should see it."
"Since the accelerator explosion, every urban legend in this city has turned out to be a metahuman incident." He coasted to a stop and opened the video file. "What is it?"
The footage was shaky, shot at night, in the alley behind the building adjacent to Central City Prison. Phone camera, probably handheld, trying to stay hidden.
"I know that alley," Jude said. "I used it as a quiet spot for a while before they found me. Of course they turned it into a surveillance point."
"They've been using it as a regular observation location since last month. This was filmed around midnight."
The video was dark. And then it wasn't — a flash of light at the far end of the alley, bright enough to blow out the camera's exposure for half a second.
When the image recovered, a man was standing in the alley. Bald. Prison clothes. Completely still.
"Where did he come from?" Jude said.
"He appeared. Out of the ground, or from nowhere — the angle doesn't show the exact origin point."
Before anything else could happen, the man's body began to lose definition at the edges. Not dramatically, not all at once — just a slow dissolution, his outline going soft, then translucent, then the whole figure pulling apart into a thin greenish vapor that drifted sideways in the alley's air current and faded into the dark beyond the treeline.
The video ended.
Jude stared at his screen for a moment.
"He turned into gas," he said.
"He turned into gas," Satsuki confirmed.
"Green gas."
"Greenish, yes."
Jude put the phone in his pocket and resumed riding.
"Well," he said, after a moment. "The particle accelerator's effects on the prison population are going to be a whole separate problem, aren't they."
"It appears so."
"Fine." He adjusted his grip on the handlebars. "One thing at a time."