Accelerando – 2.2

March 2nd, 2011

I went inside the PRT building with my plucky band of adventurers… and by that I meant my lawyer, Glory Girl, and Panacea. We were greeted by a female PRT officer dressed in a simple pantsuit instead of the PRT body armor I was used to seeing on TV, and someone who I assumed was either a scientist or doctor based on his white lab coat.

"Hello, you must be Nightingale." The PRT officer greeted me. "I'm Karen Jones, and we'll be joined with Dr. Feldman here today. He'll be cataloging your power testing results."

The doctor smiled at me. "We're very excited to have you here with us today. We've managed to round up a fair number of volunteers both from within the PRT and from the local hospitals for you to test your powers on. They've all signed extensive waivers already, so don't worry about anything besides healing today. Panacea here has graciously volunteered to use her power to monitor the patients while you heal."

"And I'm told later on we can expect Miss Militia to swing by to have a chat with you!" Karen chimed in.

I perked up at that. Miss Militia was one of the original Wards, and one of the longest serving members of the Protectorate. She was a personal hero of mine, and I was definitely excited to meet her.

We followed the PRT employees through a series of corridors. Unlike the bright and airy lobby which received tourists, the architecture we were passing through were strictly utilitarian. Fluorescent lights lit up the windowless hallways we passed through, and painted lines of different colors provided a roadmap for people to follow. We were following the lines directing us towards the medical wing of the building.

We eventually made our way to the medical wing and stopped right outside the first patient room. Dr. Feldman tapped away at his tablet for a few seconds before turning to address me.

"Let's see, first up we have a Mr. Bryan O'Connor, who was diagnosed six months ago with acute myelogenous leukemia. This will be a good first test." Dr. Feldman said. "Parahuman healers are rare, and healers that can cure cancer are even rarer. Most parahuman healing powers works by increasing the rate of cellular regeneration. In cancer patients, this can often increase the spread of cancer."

I nodded, and our group entered the room. A middle-aged man with thinning red hair was lying down on the hospital bed. His face was a little gaunt, but he didn't look too unhealthy. A teenage boy, maybe a few years older than me, with the same red hair as the man and freckles was sitting by his side.

"Dennis?" Glory Girl asked, with a surprised look on her face.

"Hey Vicky, Amy." The teenage boy responded with a small smile.

Amy greeted Dennis with a small nod, but her eyes were downcast.

There was an awkward silence before Glory Girl cleared her throat. "Dennis goes to school with us at Arcadia." She explained.

He flashed me a wider smile. "Thanks for being here for this, Nightingale. We really appreciate this."

After exchanging greetings with Dennis and his dad, I stepped forward with Panacea to heal him. Panacea went to the opposite side of the hospital bed and gently touched his wrist. There was an incredible pit of nervousness in my stomach. I knew based on what my power told me that it should heal most diseases, but I would be devastated if this somehow didn't work.

I reached for my power and touched Mr. O'Connor gently on his other wrist with my gloved hand. My abilities in general seemed a bit stronger when I was channeling them through my voice, so I took a breath and hummed out, "spirits of renewal, restore this ailing body." Power poured out of me as a warm white light engulfed him.

"Wh-what was that?" Glory Girl asked. "You ARE a witch!"

I glared at her. "My power just works slightly better when I'm channeling it through my voice. I'm NOT a witch."

"Ahem, the cancerous cells are being directly converted into healthy cells." Panacea chimed in as the lightshow started to fade. "Congratulations Mr. O'Connor, you are cancer free."

I breathed out a sigh of relief. I did it! I had just saved a life, the first of hopefully many to come. Dennis let out a laugh as he hugged his dad.

"Wonderful!" Dr. Feldman exclaimed. "Of course, we'll do a full workup for Mr. O'Connor, and we still need to watch out for relapse, but this is wonderful news."

"Thank you so much, Nightingale," Mr. O'Connor said to me. "I can't tell you how much this means to me."

Glory Girl exchanged a few quiet words that I couldn't really hear with Dennis while Panacea stepped outside the room first. I wonder what that was all about? It was general knowledge that Panacea didn't take requests except from the PRT. I couldn't even imagine how many people she'd have to turn down for healing otherwise. Considering she didn't have a separate civilian identity, it must be a terrible strain on her social relationships. I felt silly for thinking that her life as a famous healer must have been all sunshine and rainbows.

I stepped outside to join Panacea and soon we were on our way to the next patient room.

"Our next patient is a Ms. Judy Wallace, who has just started manifesting symptoms of Huntington's disease." Dr. Feldman said. "It's really quite horrible. It's a genetic disease causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain over time, and there's no cure for it."

Panacea looked absolutely miserable as we headed into the room. It was common knowledge that she couldn't heal brains, so was she feeling guilty? That's rather silly. It's not her fault that her power doesn't work on brains, and she saves so many other lives.

The patient was young for someone with a fatal brain condition. She couldn't have been more than thirty something years old, and she looked healthy enough. I stepped forward with Panacea and pulled on my healing powers again.

"Um, I think it's working." Panacea said. "It looks like its attacking the mutation in the Huntington gene directly and converting it to its unmated state. I'm not seeing any changes to the brain structure, so it'll require further monitoring."

"Wh-what? I altered her DNA?" That seemed like a big deal.

"Fascinating!" Dr. Feldman exclaimed. "It appears then that your power treats genetic disorders with gene therapy instead of addressing the symptoms. I'd definitely like to study this further."

Neither Panacea nor Dr. Feldman seemed concerned at all. I wished I had spent more time studying up on traditional medicine when I was in the library instead of goofing off on PHO. My healing powers seemed to work by just "pointing and shooting," so I didn't think I needed to bother learning actual biology. That seems pretty foolish now.

Panacea didn't seem particularly happy or unhappy that I could heal brains. I guess it was kind of cool that I could do something she couldn't, but I didn't want her to resent me. I was tempted to use my thought detection power again just to see what she was thinking, but I needed to save my energy for healing.

This process repeated a couple of times until I was too exhausted to continue. A PRT agent with a broken leg and a few cracked ribs was easily healed. Next was a patient suffering from paraplegia, which I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could cure. I also tested my healing power on patients suffering from bipolar disorder and Alzheimer's disease, but it was too soon to tell if it worked. They wanted me to try re-growing an amputee's lost arm, and I made it very clear that I couldn't do that yet. They still made me try though, which just left me and the patient I tried with very disappointed. I was hopeful that eventually I would unlock a more powerful healing ability that would let me regrow limbs. Luckily Panacea was there to grow that patient's arm back, which was incredibly gross to watch happen. The poor patient also looked emaciated by the time she was done. I healed until I needed to take a break to rest my powers, which we used to test my Healing Song on a roomful of PRT agents and employees suffering from various minor injuries and maladies. I wasn't sure how effective it was, but Dr Feldman assured me he'd let me know the results of the full workups they would go through afterwards.

Eventually we stopped outside the final patient room for the day.

"Ah, before you leave, there's one more thing we want you to try." Dr. Feldman said, with a somewhat sheepish look. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like what was coming next. "As you know, a lot of conventional medical practice was turned upside down with the advent of parahuman healing. Many of the things parahumans like you can heal were long thought to be impossible."

I nodded and waited for him to continue.

"In the next room, we have Mrs. Joan Bradshaw and her husband, Terrence Bradshaw. Mrs. Bradshaw was in a serious automotive accident three years ago where she suffered a traumatic head injury that has left her brain dead. Before parahuman healing was possible, most jurisdictions recognized brain death as legal death, and we would not try to prolong life artificially through ventilators and other machines. When parahuman healers started showing up, more and more people have elected to keep their loved ones in this condition alive in private care facilities in hope that a parahuman healer will one day be able to revive them."

"You want me to try to heal her? I… I definitely don't think that's something my power can fix." I said. There's no way that this was going to end well.

"We all know this is a long shot. Don't worry, we made it abundantly clear to Mr. Bradshaw that he shouldn't get his hopes up. We just want you to try." Dr. Feldman replied.

I felt Calle's hand on my shoulder as he squeezed it reassuringly.

"Hey, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but we're with you if you're willing to try." He said gently.

I sighed and nodded. There was no good reason not to try.

We entered the room. The patient… Joan... laid on the table with a ventilator tube down her throat and numerous other wires and monitoring machines attached to her. Without all the medical equipment attached to her, she'd look like any other healthy woman just sleeping. Her husband, Terrence, stood up from beside her as soon as we entered the room. His face was haggard, and there were deep pockets beneath his eyes, which were full of hope as they bored into me. He walked towards us as we entered the room.

"Thank you for being here." He said quietly.

"I… I don't want yo-" I started to say.

"I know… please, I've heard it all already. I just want you to try." The air of desperation surrounding Terrence was heartbreaking. Three years of holding on to the hope that his wife wasn't gone, that the body he stood vigil over wasn't an empty vessel.

I stepped forward with Panacea towards his wife. She looked peaceful as she lay there unmoving. The muffled whir of the ventilator was the only sound in the room. I reached out and touched her hand gently, and willed my power to flow into her. A warm bright light engulfed her briefly before quickly fading away. Panacea looked up towards me and simply shook her head.

I sighed and turned to look at Terrence. His eyes brimmed with tears as his face fell.

"I-I'm sorry." I choked out, right before I rushed out of the room. It was all getting too much for me.

I felt something glomp onto me from behind as I stepped out, which turned out to be Glory Girl.

"Hey, you were awesome today." She said with a gentle smile. "Don't get too down over that last one, OK? You can't save everybody."

"I know, it's just…" I sighed. "Thanks."

The rest of our party trickled out of the room.

"Sorry to have to put you through that," Dr. Feldman said. "But it's something we needed to know. Your healing ability is one of the most versatile ones we've seen. We still don't have all our test results back, but I don't see any problem with clearing you to start working with the local hospitals."

Karen smiled at me. "You really did do great today. I think Miss Militia should be here by now, if you want to start heading back towards the entrance."

I smiled at that. I was looking forward to meeting Miss Militia, even if she was only here to try to get me to join the Wards. Calle had told me it was standard operating procedure for a member of the Protectorate to make the Wards pitch, and that task usually fell to Miss Militia since she was so well-liked by the public.

We started walking back towards the garage, and entered a meeting room near where we came in from. A rather large man wearing a gleaming silver and red costume was there to greet us.

"Assault? What are you doing here?" Karen asked, with a look of trepidation on her face.

"I'm here to greet the newbie of course!" Assault exclaimed with a wide smile.

Huh? Why wasn't Miss Militia here to talk to me? I wasn't so tactless as to voice that thought, but fortunately Karen did it for me.

"I was told Miss Militia was supposed to be here for this." She said.

"Ehhh, couldn't get away from the office. Apparently Armsmaster just dumped a mountain of paperwork on her from that Merchant bust last night."

"What about Battery? Velocity?" Karen pressed on.

"What about them? I'm here!" Assault simply said with a bright smile on his face. He looked at me expectantly.

"Hey… c'mon kids, I'm cool too, right?" Assault asked with a childish pout that looked out of place on his large frame.

Oops, I must have been frowning at him. "Um, of course… it's nice to meet you, Assault." I don't think anyone was particularly convinced by that, as I heard a few snorts from the peanut gallery.

Assault stared at me for a second before yelling out, "Oh, you have GOT to join the Wards! The boys would love to have you on the team."

Karen groaned loudly as she face-palmed. Was Assault being serious? This was his pitch? I could see why Miss Militia usually did this kind of stuff. Did I want to join the Wards? I did think about it a bit, and had talked with Dad and Calle a fair amount on the topic.

Calle was definitely not a fan of how the PRT runs the Wards program, and a fair amount of it had probably rubbed off on me. The amount of money you actually take home as a Ward was well below minimum wage if you didn't include the college trust fund. Even including the annual trust fund of $50,000, your earnings as a Ward was still lower than your average police officer. Parahumans legally working as bodyguards or security officers were easily paid two to five times that amount. Not that I thought making money was what being a Ward was about; obviously being a hero and inspiring others is a worthy cause. But when you became a Ward, the PRT owned you. You become a cog in a relentless bureaucratic machine that at times seemed like it was more concerned with PR than fighting crime. I've seen the local Wards doing silly talk show segments on TV or at publicity appearances around town more often than I've seen news stories of them actually fighting crime. I wasn't sure I was comfortable with giving up my freedom to join the Wards. The PRT could choose your costume for you, limit how you use your powers, and profit off your image and likeness with merchandising sales. Under some circumstances, they could even relocate you to a different city. It seemed exploitative, and I didn't think I needed the benefits that being a Ward would provide. I was already on my way to Arcadia, and my power was useful enough that I could just pay Calle to handle any issues I could think of.

After a few seconds, I quietly responded, "Umm… no thank you."

Assault merely shrugged. "Ehh, I tried."

That was it? I didn't want to join the Wards, but I was still disappointed that he didn't try a bit harder. What about all the vaunted benefits of being a Ward? The danger independent heroes faced? The publicity and merchandising opportunities?

He chuckled a bit. "Look, I figured if you were willing to join the Wards, you wouldn't have brought your lawyer along. You should still swing by sometime and meet them sometime though. They're good kids. They're not here right now, because, well you know, school. Say, why aren't you kids in school?"

"It's a holiday today!" Glory Girl piped up.

"Umm, what she said." I added in agreement. He snorted and shook his head, while mumbling something about kids these days.

"Ahem, well I'm sure the offer to join the Wards will remain open if you change your mind." Karen said. "In the meantime, we were told you were willing to work with us as a PRT affiliate?"

I nodded. That simply meant I was willing to be on call to heal PRT and Protectorate members if they get injured while serving in the line of duty. Considering all the good they did for the city, it was the least I could do.

"Great. I'm pleased to offer a PRT-issued smart phone then. Please read the manual for setup instructions. Your phone comes equipped with an emergency beacon functionality, as well as one gigabyte per month of free high speed mobile internet. It also has tinkertech built in to let you connect to our network through Faraday cages and conventional cell phone jammers." She said, while handing me a small box. "Here's my card also. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need any assistance I can provide."

"Ooh, Amy has one of those. I totally use it to text while I'm at Arcadia. Super useful." Glory Girl chimed in, causing Panacea to groan.

"Yes, I suppose you could use it to bypass the cell phone jammers at Arcadia, but I hope you choose to use it more responsibly, Nightingale." Karen said to me. "If there's nothing else, it has been a pleasure to meet you."

I shook her hand and said goodbye to her before she left the room.

"Well now that we're done with work for the day, are you free for a bit? We should totally hang out, get to know each other a little!" Glory Girl said cheerfully.

"Umm, well I came here with Mr. Calle…" I looked at him questioningly.

"I certainly don't mind if you take her. Just make sure you feed her and that she's back home before 10 PM." Calle said.

Glory Girl giggled as I rolled my eyes. "I'll try my best Mr. Calle, but she seems like a troublemaker." She said, while winking at me.

Did I want to hang out with her? It wouldn't hurt to make some friends I guess. So far the only people I considered to be friends were Insight and Calle, and I pay them to talk to me. I smiled at Glory Girl and accepted her invitation.