Notes: Anyone who follows this at all, sorry for the infrequent updates, between work and homelife I've had very little chance to write. I'm hoping to be able to change this and chapters to become longer or at least more frequent.

Chapter 7

Danny Answers His Door

-S-

There was a knock at the door.

Danny put the phone back in its cradle and stood up. Not completely steady on his feet but steady enough, he walked over to the door and looked through the glass. He couldn't understand why, but on the other side of the glass was a woman in armored and close fitting fatigues with an American flag wrapped around the bottom of her face. Miss Militia.

Opening the door a crack, Danny looked out, "Can I help you?"

"Maybe. You're Danny Hebert? Taylor Hebert is your daughter, correct?"

"Yes! But why are you… Oh god did you find her? Did something happen to her?!" Danny said, throwing open the door.

Miss Militia let out a short sigh, "Mr. Hebert, we should talk inside…"

Standing aside, Danny let her walk in. He cleared off a seat on the couch and stood by the chair. She sat down; back straight, her eyes on his.

"Your daughter was… encountered by a member of New Wave. Glory Girl… Mr. Hebert. Danny? Did you know you daughter is a parahuman?"

Danny's eyes widened, jaw slack, "a parahuman? Wha –no! How… are you sure?"

"Yes, we're very sure about this. She was seen using a number of powers. Some of which she had used to assault a former classmate… From the reports she was strong, fast and dangerous."

Miss Militia stood, obviously trying to choose her words carefully, "She hurt the girl, and when Glory Girl intervened, hurt her as well. Quite badly actually. She also did something to a number of people in the area. Feelings of intense fear, so bad some people hurt themselves… self-mutilation."

"Jesus… Taylor did this!? It's a mistake, it's gotta be. She's a good girl, never been violent!"

"It's not a mistake, Mr. Hebert, I'm sorry. The things she did... She's definitely a parahuman. Danny? Has she been in contact with you?"

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I haven't seen my daughter since she disappeared… The only thing that happened… A few days ago, an envelope of money was pushed through my mail slot. I… I think it was Taylor. She's the only one who would do something like that. Though, where she would have gotten the money, I have no idea…"

Standing up, Danny walked around the living room. Taking his glasses off, he ran a hand over his eyes and through his thinning hair.

"What's going to happen to her?" He sighed.

"I really can't say. Maybe she'll turn herself in. She could be placed on probation, serve with the Wards. It's happened before. God forbid, maybe things go bad and she's killed or sent to the Birdcage. That's happened too."

Miss Militia stood.

"Look, Danny. I know this is hard to take in, but… We… I'll do everything I can to try to take her in without hurting her. If she tries to contact you, please let us know," she asked, fishing a card out of her pocket and handing it to him.

He looked down at the card in his hand, a plain white thing with a phone number.

"Yeah, yeah okay."

Danny walked her to the door, watched her walk down the path, get in her van and drive off. He stood there a while, the cold air blowing. The grey clouds rolling across the sky were covering the sun, blocking out any glimpse of blue that the day had started with.

"Come home safe sweetheart…" he muttered to himself.

Danny closed the door.

Local News

Three Weeks Later

-S-

He placed his morning paper on the table, next to his plate of toast and coffee cup. A lot had been going on in the area, since the event downtown. None of it good.

Harper Sullivan was 63 years old. He had seen a lot. Seen his wife pass. His children leave this dying city. Lived through the birth of the capes, even seen Scion once. He thought. Maybe not.

That day downtown. A cape fight. That's what the news said. Wasn't some great thing. There had been worse before.

But what had happened after. What people did to themselves after they saw her. That girl. It didn't feel like powers, or anything like that. It felt wrong. Like a hole in the world. Like a toothache in reality.

And now, other odd things. Wrong things.

Greendale, a town two hours north of the Bay. It was in the paper today. Every single person, every animal bigger than a cat. Gone. The town was cleaned out completely. One might have likened it to one of those movies where everyone just up and vanishes in the middle of their day. But that wasn't what had happened. Doors had been broken in. Windows shattered. Blood was everywhere. It looked like a warzone they had said. But there were no bodies. Not a single person left. Not a body to be found.

Some people had said it was the Slaughterhouse 9. Others had said they were had been seen on the west coast not long ago and it couldn't be them. Harper didn't know. Honestly he didn't care who did it. They were monsters either way. One the same as the other really.

He walked out of the kitchen, carrying his coffee cup. A click of a button and the television was on, more news. He sat in his chair, like he did every day. Catching up on events. A report on Greendale was a few minutes in. Something new had been found, something they had seen when doing a flyover in a helicopter. An image was painted in blood down the middle of Main St. A pair of wings, one straight and pointing up and one broken and pointing down as it was shown on the screen.

One wing broken and one wing skyward.

Harper looked out the window at a sky that hadn't shown sun for quite a while now and a chill moved through him.

TIME

-S-

It hadn't taken very long for her to recover, her sister being who she was. Doing what she did. But it wasn't the pain, the wounds she had suffered. It was the fact that Victoria Dallon hadn't been hurt really by anything in so long. It was almost shocking, a violation to her body.

It took a couple days for Amy to fix what had been done. Whatever that Hebert girl had done to her, it was like it killed her flesh. And she didn't even need to touch her. Her forcefield had done nothing. She locked eyes with her and… Her body, it was agony. Her flesh started dying. Tissue necrosis Amy called it. All she knew was the skin and muscle on her right arm had blackened and started rotting off. Some of her organs hard started dying.

Amy had saved her. She had crash landed at home, more or less passed out in flight and landed in the front yard. That was the last thing she clearly remembered. Didn't wake up for two days after that…

Her mom had pulled her out of the crater she had made and carried her into the house screaming for Amy, apparently. Mark had almost lost it at the sight of her, Amy had said. Wanted to go out and hunt down whoever had done that to his little girl.

Sighing, Vicky got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. She still didn't feel right. Amy said she was better. All damage repaired, but she felt wrong inside. Looking in the mirror, she had dark circles under her eyes, which were bloodshot. Her hair looked like straw almost. Sleep hadn't come easy or lasted long since that night. Amy said it was probably stress. Her power hadn't seen anything different about her.

She got in the shower and turned the water as hot as she could take it. Letting it cascade over her, waking her up.

The worst part of all this she thought was nothing she had done to that… 'girl' had really lasted. It was so fucking rare that she couldn't hurt someone, couldn't put someone down. That girl was strong for sure, but anything Vicky had done to her had seemed to just melt away, she just went back to pristine undamaged flesh. Maybe a power like Alabaster from the E88.

But.

It wasn't normal. It wasn't like a real person. There was a wrongness about her, an otherness. The thing she did, almost like her aura, but so much worse. It wasn't fear that she had felt when that image had appeared around her. It was mortal fucking dread. Whatever that was didn't belong in the world. Should not have existed.

Turning the water off and stepping out of the shower, she looked at her body. The skin on her arm was pale, felt new. The couple moles she had were gone, that small scar on her elbow from when she fell down the stairs when she was eight, gone too.

Wrapping a towel around herself she went back to her room and got dressed. She was going to school today. She had to.

She had to get out of the house and be normal. Normal for her at least.

RECOVERY

-S-

She refused to go to school. Refused to leave the house really. Refused to talk on the phone and refused to see her friends. Madison Clements refused anything except the presence of her parents and even that was only because they lived there.

Her hand was still in a cast, but the stiches had come out of her neck quite a while ago. She'd have a scar, but…

She wanted to go to the police. She really did. She wanted to tell them every horrible thing they had done, wanted to tell them it was their fault that Taylor was the way she was. The police were watching her. She had already attacked her once. They thought she might do so again. Emma and Sophia were being watched too. Madison really didn't think it mattered at this point.

In her heart, deep inside, she thought that if Taylor whatever she was now, wanted to get her, she would. Madison had looked in her eyes and seen nothing human there. Whatever Taylor was before. Weak, afraid, prey as Sophia had said, she really wasn't that anymore. Madison didn't even think she was human anymore. Humans don't try to eat you.

Madison's hand went to her neck again. She'd have a scar, but… Did that matter anymore? The only thing Madison thought that mattered was not dying.

She looked around her room. She always had a light on now. At least one. It was near midnight and her room was so bright. Stuffed animals on her bed, posters of bands on the wall. So cute. That was her thing right? Cute… She didn't feel cute anymore. Cute didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was never seeing Hebert again. Never being near that thing again. She was so happy that she hadn't killed someone at first… Hadn't killed a girl for the only reason that her friends thought it would be funny. Then…

She looked at her hand. The doctors said she'd be lucky to regain partial use of it.

It was near midnight.

All the heat left the room.

Her breath came out in puffs of white.

Downstairs she heard glass break.

She slid off her bed, slippers placed on her feet. Her robe wrapped around her. She moved to the door, slowly, listening for other noises in the night. There it was, rustling downstairs.

Slipping out of her room, into the hall. The dark hall, darker than it should have been. The only light coming from the stairs. One foot in front of the other, Madison made her way downstairs, hand sliding over the wall, looking around the corner as the stairs entered the living room.

There, on the ground, lain out side by side. Her parents.

The sound of her own breath filled her ears, she couldn't hear anything else. Her feet carried her to them, she couldn't blink, couldn't look away. As cold as the air was, she couldn't see their breath. She didn't see their chests rise.

Figures, armored in black, clothed in black, faces covered in black, surrounded her. She hardly noticed. She looked at her parents.

She didn't know, didn't understand what was happening. Everything went dark around her, rough cloth pulled over her face. A blow to the back of the head.

She stopped knowing anything for a while.