They hadn’t rushed. They fellt a strange urgency, a need to do something, but the patient had long since passed the point where anyone could have helped him. It did not matter if Maton waited another half hour. They gave the table and its dusty contents a wide berth, and tried their best to help Tanya with her search of the little lair. It was as exhaustive as they could manage, again without the aid of the Mask. It would have, perhaps, been a smart idea to bring BRAWN along. Wildwing was hesitant to rely too much on the head—his personality was not as easy to direct as the Mask had been, and his bulk meant that someone had to be carrying him at all times.

They could find no trace of the parts that Tanya was looking for, but she did eventually come across piles and piles of notes, in a messy collection on a shelf, and this is what she ultimately took, out of the offerings of the room. Everything else they resolved to leave behind. It would be obvious that the notes were taken, there was a crisp line of undisturbed dust around where they had sat, but there was nothing to be done about that. They left everything else as it was, left the trap door open and the bed pushed aside. Wildwing handed off a tip to Klegghorn that there was a body under the tiny house.

The landlady was going to be upset.

The notes were taken back to Tanya’s lab, to be evaluated and cataloged, a task that she and Winterwing took the evening to complete, before summoning Wildwing in the morning.

“I’m impressed that I manged to get rid of one useless pile of papers, and you’ve found me another one,” Winterwing remarked.

“Nothing, then?” Wildwing prompted.

“Not…. Not nothing. It’s a fascinating collection,” Tanya said, holding up a journal that had been used so often it’s spine was broken and the pages were falling from it. It was open to a technical drawing, that appeared to have been done in maticulous freehand. “Prosthesis, theory, philosophy, a l-little bit of everything,” she gestured to a smaller pile of papers, yellowed, in single sheets on her workbench. “Receipts, tucked in, more notes on them.”

“And nothing useful in there, I assume?”

“Nah, just a fondness for coleslaw, I think.”

Wildwing resisted the urge to look through them himself, knowing both that it was unlikely he would be unable to find anything that they had not, and that disturbing Tanya’s organizational strategy was to invite her ire. Instead he stood over the collection, staring down at them without seeing them, eyes focused somewhere in the far distance, as he thought.

“He was right though,” Tanya said, giving an acknowledging nod to Winterwing. “I think whatever we’ve been dealing with is a copy, maybe. Maybe. I don’t know if I believe it’s a very good copy. Human tech is… too large. I don’t think they could fit a simulation for an entire person inside something the size of a head.”

“Might explain why it’s so erratic,” Wildwing mused.

“No, I think I’m going to say if you make a robot clone that then murders you, you were already erratic,” Winterwing said. “Normal people don’t have these problems.”

Wildwing appraised the piles of note scattered about the workbench again. “It was a good idea.”

“What?” Winterwing said, “A murder robot?”

“No, asking where it came from. We know more than we did before,” Wildwing clarified. “Is it possible we’re over complicating this?”

“Over complicating?” Tanya asked.

“Your friend said that the only person who ever bought some of these missing parts was you.”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe they are yours,” Wildwing said, and when she opened her bill to protest, “We know Droid was able to get a spy down here once before, maybe he got into your inventory. There’s certainly been enough distraction around here that there’s possible opportunity.”

Tanya looked to the side of her pile of journals, to the improvised antenna, pondering it. “We… I don’t know. I don’t…. so much surveillance data of the b-building was corrupted by those… things Asteroth brought.”

“Seems like a very easy time to hide an intrusion, then,” Wildwing said, and then checked the time on his communicator. “We can start looking after practice. You can deal with the data, the rest of us can see if there’s physical evidence of a forced entry somewhere in the building.”

Tanya weighed this, literally swaying her weight from foot to foot as she did, and put the paperwork down. “Okay. Okay, maybe you’re right.”

“You, too,” Wildwing said.

There was silence in the room, until Winterwing looked up from the papers. “What.”

“You’re on the ice with us today, let’s go.”

Winterwing didn’t move. “I don’t play.”

“Fine, we’ll teach you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean, I don’t-”

Tanya coughed to interject, and before either of them had fully turned their attention to her, she hefted her empty coffee mug at Winterwing’s head. “Catch.”

He caught it, bewildered.

“Liar,” Tanya declared, amused.

“What exactly do you think that proves-”

“You wanted to be part of the team,” Wildwing said.

“Sure, because I was hoping it would help my chances of not dying,” Winterwing countered.

“Being part of the team means being a part of it and not hiding down here during the things you don’t want to do,” Wildwing said, and then, realizing that he was on the verge of being pulled into an argument, tried to reframe the situation. “I am trying to be diplomatic here. You have been a help, so you are being invited.”

“Come on,” She said, giving Winterwing’s shoulder a nudge. “You should actually meet them when they’re fun to be around.”

Winterwing, sensing that he was outnumbered, sighed, and stood up with all the enthusiasm of someone being walked to his own execution. Tanya ushered him along, giving him a firm push every time he tried to stop, aiming him towards the door of the lab. Wildwing followed, and turned in the doorway, motioning to turn off the lights, when he noticed a red artificial glint in the corner of his eye. The head of BRAWN, sitting there on a workbench to the side, abandoned as they focused on the notes.

“You left him on?” Wildwing asked.

Tanya and Winterwing paused in their scuffle, both looking into the room.

“No,” she said, but reentered anyway, approaching the head, which acknowledged her with a nod as she did, and then went motionless as she flipped him off.

Winterwing blinked as they waited for her to return. “I didn’t know it could even be that quiet.”

The rest of the team was already in preparation, half dressed, as they entered the locker room, and the noise and jocularity ceased as they realized an extra person had stepped out of the elevator.

“He’s with us today,” Wildwing declared, and was satisfied that would be the end of the discussion, beyond just the slightest hint of side eye from Duke. “Find him something that fits.”

“What do you play?” Mallory called.

“I don’t,” Winterwing reiterated, and looked around the room. “Why am I the only one being subjected to this? Why isn’t Emily being punished, too?”

Which was a stupid question. “Hockey is a contact sport,” Wildwing said, pushing past the others to his own locker. “Do you think she should be touching people?”

Winterwing did not move from his spot, “Either we’re both part of the team or we aren’t.” Mallory and Nosedive had both taken a flank, and were preparing to ambush him with a jersey and pads.

Wildwing waved him away. “She’s not going out there until I’m sure she isn’t going to hurt someone.”

“It’s a contact sport,” Winterwing repeated back to him.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Wildwing said, and turned away, leaving him to be picked over by gleeful companions. “If you think she needs something to do, she can keep Phil out of trouble.”