Three days.

Even in a city the size of Washington, there were an infinite number of places to hide - and a great many of those places belonged to the Federal Government.

Protected by the most sophisticated electronic and chemical sensors known to man, not to mention a branch of what still was the world's pre-eminent military force, the base had taken Hornet three full days to infiltrate.

Most of that time was spent observing, waiting for the proper moment to move past a guard or redirect a camera. It was slow, tedious work, but Hornet was nothing if not patient.

She had to be. Against the massed forces of CHESS, she would lose.

Quickly.

Hornet watched as two men entered an elevator. From long hours of observation she knew precisely how long she could expect the doors to be shut. Waiting for the moment when neither of the sweeping cameras could see, she flit across the hallway, then settled into the shadows once again.

She was clad in close-fitting matte black, from her neck to her toes, and her hair was the color of night. The stripes of fushia and green had been covered, as had the bright green gloves she often used to distract her enemies. Only her face remained uncovered; for some reason masks or goggles interfered with her potent "seventh sense", and she needed all the help she could get.

CHESS, she knew, stood for "Central Heirarchy for the Elimination of Special Subversives".

Not, she thought, "Incarceration" or "Stopping".

"Elimination".

And if ever there was a "Special Subversive", it was she.

Hornet watched carefully from her position, aware that she'd have a good half hour before a majority of these people would head for home.

How many, she wondered, truly knew who they worked for?

CHESS had long been funded, indirectly, by the Federal Government, through a morass of false agencies and hidden programs. Over the years it had accumulated billions of dollars worth of the very best in powered armor and exotic weapons.

When Senator Tracy Reid had noticed a line item in the Federal budget, she had investigated, eventually bringing her costumed identity of Hornet into CHESS' sights.

A very dangerous place to be.

Hornet shut her eyes tightly.

Brian.

God, it would be eighteen years this September...

They had met at her father's newspaper - it would always be her father's newspaper - and soon discovered that they had much in common, especially an intense sense of noblesse oblige. Both felt an obligation - she as a young newspaper publisher, he as a lawyer some ten years her senior - that they owed society somehow for their lives of power and privilege, lives that they had been given, not earned.

They had worked together often, enough so that Tracy trusted him with her concerns and suspicions about CHESS. As he had before when investigating the government, he had promised to be careful. As he had not before, he had kissed her before he left.

Tracy had believed that finally she had found the man of her dreams.

It was the last time she saw him alive,

It was Hornet who found him, three long months later, half-buried in a construction site.

She was young, then.

She panicked.

Frightened out of her wits by the thought of an enemy that would kill without mercy to keep its secrets, Hornet had feared telling anyone, even her fellow heroes, about CHESS, for fear that they, too, would disappear some night, never to be heard from again.

So she had made what was, in retrospect, the biggest mistake of her life.

She became a lone avenger, flitting from shadow to shadow, the ultimate nemesis to CHESS.

Her unwillingness to tell other heroes what she was doing, who she was fighting, grew into a reputation for secretiveness - and eventually, for arrogance and just plain asshole-ness.

She couldn't tell anyone now, even if she wanted. No one would give her the time of day.

She could count her true friends on one hand and still have a few fingers left over.

There was Eric, of course, a colonel in the Air Force who loved her despite her propensity for disappearing for hours at a time.

There was Consuella, her cook and live-in housekeeper, a kind soul who Tracy came to know would stick around even if she hadn't been paid extraordinarily well.

And there was John Quest, the incredibly wealthy owner and founder of Questar International, who had since moved to Seattle and had probably forgotten all about her... though she knew that wasn't true.

That was it. Three people.

Ohh, there were others, she supposed, that might fit into a fast and loose interpretation of "friend", but those three were the only ones who truly knew her.

It was at times like this that she regretted her lack of friendships - but it was probably for the best.

After all, she could hardly have brought someone along on this case.

Elevators with a special code to descend past the posted floors. Handoff stations before travelling back up in a secure shaft. Troops and gun emplacements and gasses and analyzers of every description.

And she had beaten them all.

Oh. The man in blue was leaving - her cue to move.

Watching the cameras carefully, she flashed over to the elevator and hammered in the code she had carefully watched guards punch in. It did change for each use, but it used an easily-discernable formula to change from moment to moment - easily discernable to Hornet, at least.

She flew upward and hovered near the top right of the elevator doors, letting the camera sweep past. Then, she ducked inside.

She held her breath - then, the elevator started moving upward.

She had done it. In another minute she would be inside perhaps the most secure room outside of the White House's Superhuman Survival Center.

From there, the feared Grandmaster ordered his elite troops to capture or kill any and all superhumans, villain or otherwise, who threatened the security of the United States.

Threatened, according to CHESS.

Hornet briefly wondered at what point CHESS had ceased to serve and had become its own entity - then she put all thoughts save one aside.

She would take out the Grandmaster. Put an end to twenty years of secretive terror. She would expose CHESS so completely they could never form again - and at last they would pay for their crimes.

The elevator was taking a long time, she noted. Too long.

She concentrated just a bit, and to her sight the elevator was filled with a kind of three-dimensional grid. She was at once inside the grid, and outside of it. The strange patterns and muted hues let her "see", or more accurately sense, behind her, below her, in every direction at once. Difficult, if not impossible, for the normal mind to comprehend.

But then, Hornet's was no ordinary mind.

Taught by mysterious Brahmins to unlock the powers of the mind, Hornet's powers depended entirely on her willpower. Her ability to fly, to throw bolts of energy, were in reality psionic manifestations - one more reason CHESS hated and feared her.

The organization had long ago decided that it was far more practical to eliminate those relative few whose ability to read minds or force their will on others, than it was to try and build defenses in every corporate headquarters, every hall of government, every home of those who ran the country.

Within a few years, virtually every mentallist - villain, hero or civilian - had quietly disappeared. Hornet was fairly certain that she was the last psionic operating out in the open - and, she had to admit, she didn't operate "publically" much.

Hornet let her mind wander for a moment, searching for gas jets or machine guns or signs that the floor had been wired -

The doors slid open.

Cautiously, she flew out into... a penthouse?!

From the views out the window she could tell she was atop the Carlyle Building. But... the base she had entered was nowhere near downtown Washington!

H-holy - ! The elevator was some kind of... teleportation device?

Her head jerked to the right as a tall, well-built man entered the room, wearing a tuxedo and carrying a tray with an empty Martini glass.

It took him a moment to register that he was not alone - but as he dropped his tray and reached into his jacket Hornet's foot connected with his jaw, sending him sprawling!

The man groggily tried to rise, but Hornet spun in mid-air, bringing her lead foot down on the back of his skull, harder this time. He pitched forward into the floor and lay still.

Tough nut, Hornet thought. Low-level super, maybe?

She rose, slowly, with one leg bent at a severe angle and one arm raised and bent sharply. Even CHESS sometimes overlooked that her hummingbird style of fighting - flying, combined with ultra-quick punches, kicks and dodges - made her more than a match for human-level fighters.

For super-humans, not so much. But then, that's why she had her sting.

Careful, Hornet, she cautioned herself as she waited to see if anyone would respond to the noise of her walloping the butler. You're in a very confined area.

Without a large area in which to fly and dodge, she lost her main advantage - maneuverability. Not so much trouble if she was fighting normal crooks, but a big concern when facing other supers.

There was a reason she dodged and darted so much.

No one was responding. They either hadn't heard...

Or were waiting for her.

Either way, Hornet huffed, her hands ablaze with green energy.

She quickly flew through the doorway the butler had used, into a narrow hallway. Hornet didn't see any gas jets or guns, but that just meant none were obvious. There were limits to her power, after all.

She opened the door - and stopped.

In a rather utilitarian office, with a nice view of the White House, were perhaps a dozen computers attached to digitally-encrypted transmitters, automated file scanners, and ominous black boxes.

The heart of CHESS.

And it's pumping was the clatter of a keyboard's keys.

The chair that he sat in was made of soft leather, high-backed and wide, so that all she could see was the top of his blond head and a bit of his white shirt; his jacket was thrown casually over a second, lesser chair.

In her younger days she would have said something witty, like, "Checkmate, Grandmaster."

Now, she settled for growling, "Hands away from the keyboard! Now!"

And emphasizing her point with a blast of green energy that shattered his desktop.

"What the hell - "

Then the man's calm returned. "Hornet."

He said the name without malice, but also without fear.

That bothered her.

Hornet took a second to process what showed on her "grid", looking for incoming Rooks or Knights... but she could see none. None that were close, at least.

"Turn around, slowly."

"If that's what you want," he said.

Huh. Voice modulator. Cute.

"Don't try me. I am so-o-o tempted to cut loose."

"To kill me?"

"Nothing says I can't hurt you," Hornet said. "Turn. Around."

The man sighed, and slowly turned his chair around.

Hornet's jaw dropped.

"Oh, my God - "

"Eric?!"