ALPHA TRAIL

"There has to be a reason," Will muttered as he scrolled through the MOS file. "No one goes through this much effort for nothing."

Becca tapped the psionograph. "Why don't we start here?"

Will obliged by expanding the graph reading. The screen showed frequency modulations plotted over time—the shifting field conditions represented by three distinct bands. Wasn't the data just representing environmental conditions? The readings were more comprehensive than his initial assumption. His fingers flew over the keyboard, opening multiple files; every psionograph exhibited a similar number of bands.

"What do you reckon?" asked Will.

"We know the Bishop is always in his armor," said Becca. "So one of them will have to be the mech."

Will examined the bands. Sure enough, one of them exhibited a high concentration of ethrazene. Cross-referencing with the mech's fuel composition, he observed that its signature exhibited a matching band profile.

"That's the one," said Will, tapping the middle band. "What about the rest?"

"The environment?" Becca ventured a guess. She traced a finger across the screen, lingering over the humidity, temperature, and radiation readings. Judging from the graph, the bottom band matched perfectly.

"Bingo! So then... what are you?" Will muttered, checking the last band.

"The Bishop? Her signature?" Becca ventured, but Will shook his head.

"It's too simple," said Will, recalling his own signature readings taken by the Doctor.

He studied the graph, his eyes narrowing. The jagged lines looked oddly familiar. On a hunch, he brought up his own reading and overlaid the yellow signature on the graph—revealing an unmistakable alignment.

"It's the shard," Will said, stifling a curse. "My other half."

The printed control etherite crystal had been in the Bishop's hands all this while, and it was through that crystal that his own shard was manipulated. Will flexed his fingers as he stared at the screen. The constant probing and relentless attacks—was it all orchestrated through this?

There was one way to confirm it. He scrolled through the mountain of data files until he reached the earliest one. While there were a few sporadic entries, most of the data dated back to the day after the airship attack. From that point, monitoring became more frequent, continuing until Crowley made his move and escaped.

"The Bishop has been trying to access the shard from the very beginning," said Becca in a hushed whisper. "If we were just speculating before, this is proof."

Will shook his head, his eyes boring holes into the slate. "We still don't know the exact mechanism through which the Hive maintains their control. And this..." he trailed off.

"What?" asked Becca.

Frowning in concentration, Will said, "Don't you think it's odd that every single Hive member is a cyborg?"

Becca paused in thought. "Now that you mention it..."

"Fifty years ago, none of the Hive were cyberized," Will observed.

"So what is this?" Becca asked in a hushed whisper.

"Something new," Will said gravely.

They both fell silent, the low rumble of the goods train filling the air as rattling boxes and the clang of metal punctuated the stillness. For a minute, they remained lost in their thoughts.

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"There has to be a way we can use this," Becca finally said, gesturing toward the data.

"There is," said Will. "I just have to keep my field turbulent throughout the day. The Doctor was right—it was when my field was least active that the Bishop tried accessing my signature."

"That is not enough, Will," Becca said sharply. "You're just staving off what's to come. Being passive is no longer an option."

Will's heart skipped a beat as he was reminded once again of his time limit. Only two more weeks before the reckoning came knocking—and they were nowhere close to getting the Bishop.

"We need some kind of advantage," Will mused as he scrolled through the data. "Something they didn't think of. If we could just figure out her next move..."

He glanced at the bottom band of the signature—the environmental data. Spikes in the graph indicated radiation, while a low, rumbling perturbation suggested an incomplete ethrazene burn. The lines also hinted at the presence of soot, plascrete, metals, and aerosols, and the vapor compounds seemed to weave a vague story of fire, blood, and violence. As Will's eyes rapidly scanned the data, a plan slowly began to take shape.

"Can we use the environmental data to track the Bishop?" he asked.

Becca looked bewildered. "I don't think so... We'd only get vague hints of chemicals from the data."

"But considering the sheer amount of it—" Will said quickly as he typed on the keyboard. "We could get a broad sense of where she's going. It won't be an exact location—"

"But it's something," Becca finished, her eyes brightening as she finally sensed a direction. "Let's check it."

Together, they pored over the data. Each fragment of the graph was broken down and analyzed. Judging from the perturbations in the signatures, they listed out possible chemicals responsible for them. From there, it was a slog. Will put together a simple program to match similar signature spikes and label them.

Listing and categorizing, Will kept a close eye on the radiation levels in the dataset. Any rapid dip in the readings would indicate a settlement of some kind, while a steady position on the graph would imply the Bishop had been staying put for an extended period. From these assumptions, they gained a vague impression of the types of places the Spider frequented.

"That looks like a forge," Becca muttered as she examined the signature composition. "I'm seeing a lot of oxidation and incomplete combustion."

"Mark it," said Will through bleary eyes. He clicked his tongue as another error popped up in the code he'd written. "Another dud."

"It's the ethrazene levels throwing off the code," said Becca.

"Improper burn from the mech?" Will suggested.

"Or she's got other machines around her."

Will weighed the pros of removing the ethrazene levels from the dataset and reluctantly opted for expediency. There was a lot of data to cover, after all. With a few taps on the keyboard, he removed the fuel spikes and ran the program.

A beep sounded from the slate as more hits started flooding in.

"Now we're talking," Will said, rapidly scanning through the data. The program had labeled different signature clusters and presented them to him. His eyes darted across the screen as he muttered combinations: "Trace amounts of iron, copper, lead..."

"Metal residue?" Becca asked.

"Maybe," Will muttered. "Look how the signature wobbles between each instance."

"Potassium, charcoal, sulfur..." Becca continued where he left off.

"Sounds like gunpowder," Will said, thumbing his chin. "Did we just get a hit on their supplier?"

"Let's keep going," Becca said.

Both of them dove back into work. More data flooded in, and each new hit told a story. The Bishop made frequent stops at forges, stocking up on weapons. The timestamps made it easier to connect the dots.

But one thing stood out. There was one location the Bishop frequented most, where her presence dominated the data.

"Looks like this is her base of operations," Will said.

"Any idea where it is?" Becca asked.

Will shook his head. "Crowley would have known. If only we had gotten him out alive."

"We barely got out alive," Becca replied.

"Yeah," Will sighed. There was no use dwelling on what-ifs. The professor had been barely coherent, teetering on the edge of madness. It was sheer luck that, despite how far gone he was, he had remained lucid enough to entrust them with the data chips.

"These readings are strange, though," Becca said, looking at the list of signatures. "Look at the radiation."

Will frowned as he scanned the readings. "It's outside the Tower. Everything is radiated."

"This is different," Becca said, pointing out the blips in the readings. "Look—most of the radiation is in alpha particles, not gamma."

"That's strange," Will muttered, scrolling through the data until it displayed the most recent events. "And then there's this."

He pointed out the recurring patterns switching between files. "Every week, the Bishop makes a trip between her base and this mystery location."

Becca traced the two data points, and sure enough, like clockwork, the trip was made every week.

"The radiation trail follows her to the new location," Becca said, frowning. "Oh hey, look—the new location has relatively low radiation."

Will glanced between the two locations, a sense of dread creeping up. "Becca..."

"What?" she asked, alarmed by his expression.

"The radiation outside is mostly gamma from the fallout," Will explained. "If it's alpha particles, that means the material is new. It's fissile material."

Becca looked on in horror. "Then that would mean—"

"She's building a dirty bomb," Will said, his hand shaking over the slate.

"And the only place she could bring it to would be..."

"The Tower," Will finished. "The Bishop is bringing a nuclear warhead to Tower Atlas."

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