Although my powers seemed to be the same as my grandfather's, there was no guarantee that they actually were. Until we faced each other I had no idea how they would tack up against each other.
I couldn't even be sure that the powers given to him by Panacea's new body were as strong as those in his original body.
What I did know was that our powers were different on a fundamental level from those of most parahumans. Most parahumans had all the power they would ever have the moment they triggered. They learned to use the powers more efficiently, or to use powers in interesting way, but generally they didn't change.
Our powers were more like the human body. Exercise one part and it would grow stronger. Allow another part to atrophy and it might not develop at all. Allow a man to become a runner and his muscles would develop in a completely different way than if he was a weight lifter.
Some people had genetic predispositions to certain sports, but exercise and determination and focus was almost as important.
I suspected that my grandfather had focused on the magnetic part of his abilities because they were what came easiest to him. It had taken time to master various sciences and to develop organizations and groups to further his goals.
He'd used his control over the other kinds of energy to a greatly lesser degree, most likely because he simply hadn't had the time. Unlike in some of the comic books I'd seen, someone simply didn't learn a dozen languages or become an Olympic level athlete without giving up on other parts of their lives.
Becoming the best at something took focus, and I suspected that my grandfather had plateaued in his development as a parahuman because his focus was on other things right now.
That gave me an opportunity; I couldn't match his century of experience in the magnetic arts, but if I could grow stronger in the skills that he had let atrophy it might give me tools I could use when the time came.
To do that I needed to get stronger, to practice in what I was going to do without my grandfather looking over my shoulder. It probably wouldn't take him a long time to realize what I was doing, and if he was to start practicing too, or worse attack me before I or the world was ready it would be a disaster.
That meant that I had to get far away from him before I started using my powers.
I was already better at him at using wormholes. I still wasn't sure why he disliked doing it. It had a chance of disrupting electronics in the vicinity, but I was working on ways around that, and it was so convenient that I wasn't really sure why he wasn't using them on his daily commute to work.
Maybe he liked flying, even though it was painfully slow compared to a quick jump through space and time.
The fleeting thought that I might be able to use my abilities for time travel passed through my mind, but I'd seen what happened to time travelers in my grandfather's mind. They thought they were traveling back, but all they were doing was creating a new timeline while the one they'd left was undisturbed.
Time travel wouldn't solve anything, unless I simply dropped my grandfather off in the dinosaur age, and if I did that I'd probably come back to find the world ruled by insect people or something equally horrible.
All of this was why I was staring at Tattletale feeling like I was constipated.
"Not working, eh?" she asked.
"He can make it work, I can make it work," I gritted.
Actual telepathy was an ability that didn't even exist in this world, so it wasn't like I could go to anyone to ask about how to activate it. I'd thought about asking my grandfather, but I hadn't wanted to give him a look inside my head.
The fact that Tattletale was the only one who knew I could do it didn't help. She was the last person whose mind I wanted to read, mostly because I suspected that I wouldn't like what she was thinking about me.
"I can see why you'd want to do this," she said. "Even what I can do is pretty cool, and the way your powers work, you might not even get thinker headaches. Still, are you sure you can do it?"
"I did it once with Emma," I said. "Ears, eyes, mouth... I don't even know what it meant, but it just about broke her."
"It might actually help," Tattletale said thoughtfully.
"What?"
"Having you able to see what you look like to other people when you are running all over them."
I scowled. "You aren't exactly the picture of tact and discretion yourself. "
"Oh, you don't want me as an actual psychic," Tattletale said serenely. "I'd rule the world in like, a week."
"Right," I said. "Like you are so much help with this."
"This is new ground," she said. "Most parahumans know how to use their powers from the time they get them. They don't need any help unless they are trying something weird with it. You don't exactly fit the usual mold."
"Well, don't you have any ideas?" I asked.
"How did you feel when you were reading Emma's mind?" Tattletale asked.
"How did I always feel around Emma?" I asked tiredly. "Upset, excited that I finally had some control."
Tattletale bit her lip.
"Have you considered that all of this might be useless? He's got a hundred years of experience on you, and unlike most people he's young again and isn't exactly likely to die any day now."
"You think I haven't thought about that? How would you feel living in somebody's shadow like that, especially if you knew they were crazy and a villain at least half the time."
"You've got the exact same powers," Tattletale said. "And he'd better at using them than you. Even worse, he's an actual genius and you... aren't. I've seen your grades from school. Odds are he's going to see through anything you try and none of it is going to work."
"I've got to try," I gritted out.
I could feel objects in the room starting to levitate, and I ruthlessly tamped them down. Getting under people's skin was what Tattletale did; I wasn't even sure if she could actually control it.
"Why? Because he hurt your feelings? Because you aren't the biggest gorilla in the room any more? How does it feel to just be a sidekick?"
"How did it feel to find your brother?" I hissed, leaning forward and staring at her.
Her faced drained of color and it took me a moment to realize what I'd said. I'd had a momentary image of a silhouette on a wall, a feeling of horror and despair so great that it was the worst day of her life.
I'd seen inside her and I'd immediately turned on her.
"I... I'm sorry," I said.
"I thought if I made you angry enough that it might jog something loose," Tattletale said quietly. She wouldn't look at me, which made me feel even worse. "Do you wonder sometimes just how different you are from your grandfather?"
Was she calling me crazy or was she calling me cruel. My grandfather had a bad habit of surrounding himself with bad people, people that he could discard easily and without regret.
My lips felt suddenly dry, and I licked them.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to lash out like that, and I shouldn't have used that against you."
I still wasn't entirely sure what it was; the image had been too quick. It was something that was deeply meaningful to her though; that much was clear. I'd once heard that trigger events were intensely private and I suspected that I'd just gotten a glimpse of hers.
"Apparently the first thing you latch onto is painful memories," she said, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here. She'd agreed to help me though, not least because she felt the way I did about my grandfather. "You'll have to practice a lot more before you can get to the good stuff."
"Like people's ATM codes?" I asked.
"Hopefully you won't be having to deal with anything like that. Me either," she smiled weakly.
"I really am sorry," I said. "I think I've got a vicious streak somewhere that I wasn't even aware I had."
She stared at me for a long moment. "Do you think? You've been de-limbing people and squishing people inside their armor for a while now."
"There were extenuating circumstances," I protested.
"What kind of person thinks... hmm...I could tie them up and turn them in to the authorities, or I could pull their limbs off in a horrible and grotesque fashion. De-limbing it is!"
"I'm not like that," I said weakly.
"Not like what, your grandfather?" she asked. "You don't seek petty vengeance, or even not so petty vengeance on people you think have slighted you?"
"I'm not crazy!" I said. "I'm going to be better than him!"
"That's what you say about everyone," she said.
A sudden image came into my mind.
"Are you thinking about pork dumplings even while you are making me go through all of this?"
She smiled. "Can't blame a girl for being hungry. Also, it shows that you can see things that aren't deep, dark, horrible secrets."
"They put that in the dumplings and you still eat them?" I asked, shocked by the image that came to my mind.
"Nope, I was just seeing if you were paying attention," she said. "And it also means that you can see surface thoughts instead of just buried and repressed memories."
I had a sudden, uneasy feeling that Tattletale was going to have fun with this; maybe as punishment for my comment earlier, or maybe simply because of her own nature.
Either way, I'd asked her to do this and I could hardly back out now.
"So why do you want superpowers?" I asked.
The man, a dockworker stared at me over the table. His hat was in his hands.
We were in a conference room at a local Hiatt hotel, one of the few that had not been destroyed by Leviathan's wave and one where the rooms were finally going for prices that couldn't be considered gouging.
"I want to make a difference," he said.
I reached forward to touch his mind. I frowned at what I saw there.
"You realize that the reason the Protectorate pays the way they do is because the work is dangerous," I said.
His head snapped up and he stared at me for a moment before his shoulder's slumped.
"I need to feed my family," he said.
"And the construction work everybody is doing isn't enough?"
"The money is good," he admitted, "but people are saying that there's only a year and a half of work left, at the rate things are going, and what's going to happen after that? It's not like I have any real skills."
"There's no guarantee that this process would even give you powers strong enough for the Protectorate to be interested in you," I said. "There's even a small chance that it might turn you into something less than human, a freak of nature. Is that really what you are going to want for your family?"
He was silent for a moment. "It's a chance, anyway. The way things are going, there's going to be a lot of guys looking for jobs in a couple of years and only a few jobs. I need to help my family."
I frowned. "We're working on that, setting up factories that have good paying jobs, trying to turn this city around."
"It's a nice dream," he said, smiling wistfully. "But even somebody like you can't beat the whole world."
I sighed. "It'll be a few weeks before we're set up enough to give you an answer. In the meantime, remember the non-disclosure agreements you signed. The Protectorate might frown on what we're about to do, and they might stop it from happening at all."
"I'll keep my mouth shut," he said firmly.
A glimpse inside his head showed that he meant it too.
As he left, I sighed. I'd been suspicious when my grandfather had asked me to help vet his prospective new mutants, but it was giving me an opportunity to practice my new skills at telepathy, and my social skills as well. I was seeing a half dozen people a day.
I wondered how long it would be before someone spilled the beans, non-disclosure agreement or not. I'd only been at this for a week, but I was already waiting for the ax to fall.
My grandfather was going to have the final say anyway; I suspected that this was simply him trying to give me a sense of power while he continued to do what he always did, which was to rule from the shadows.
He was working on the virus, whatever it was. He was paying Panacea a lot of money that went into a trust that couldn't be touched by her parents to help him create the virus. He could have done it without her, but it would have taken months, mostly because biological material wasn't like machines.
He couldn't simply wave his hands and cause a virus to assemble out of pieces of metal. Bacteria and viruses had to replicate themselves, which took time and food. There was a reason that vaccines couldn't be made quickly after all, either.
I still hadn't gotten a chance to talk to Panacea; while nominally this was because he was keeping her too busy after school I wondered if part of it was because he considered her part of his team?
Her powers were a major prize for whatever team got her. The healing abilities alone would be enough to make her worth it, but her abilities as a bio-tinker made a pearl beyond price.
I hadn't read his mind because I knew he had a lot of experience with telepaths; most likely he'd detect my intrusion and he'd find a way to make me pay. However, I was practicing with other people, and that was giving me a clearer picture of what he was doing.
He had Panacea and a villain from Boston named Blasto holed up in an old factory in Boston. This was taking up a lot of his time; apparently the virus that had created mutants had originally been part of a super soldier project in another world, and while he didn't know all the details he did know the basics.
They were using his own DNA as a base for the project, and even so, it was coming more slowly than he liked. While he treated Panacea kindly, he wasn't as kind to Blasto, who was terrified of him.
That seemed like an oversight to me. Terrified tinkers are dangerous tinkers, especially if their specialty was biological. My grandfather would be able to detect any metallic weapon used against him, but what about a virus or a spore?
Abuse Blasto too much, and he might find that he'd caught something terminal.
There was a knock at the door, and I looked up. I wasn't supposed to have another appointment for fifteen minutes. That would give me enough time to write up my impressions of the last guy, to be sent to my grandfather.
Presumably my job was mainly to weed out the people who should never be given super powers. The psychopaths, the people who would use their powers to lord it over others; these were the kind of people who would ruin the reputations of the new mutants race before it even got started.
The last thing we wanted was to restart the mutant hatred that had existed in the past. On this, at least I and my grandfather were in agreement.
I wanted to create a race of heroes, or at least of rogues. It was possible that my grandfather's criteria were a lot looser than mine.
"Come in," I said.
I froze as I looked up and saw Miss Militia walking into the conference room.
"Hello Taylor," she said. "We've heard some disturbing things about what you and your grandfather have been getting up to."
"We've got a lot of projects going on," I said weakly. "Putting a city together isn't something simple after all."
"We've been hearing disturbing rumors," she said. "About unlicensed bio-tinkering, about promising to give people superpowers in return for being part of your own private army."
"That's not exactly true," I said. "We aren't creating an army."
That was a lie, of course. The whole point was to create an army to fight Scion, after all. It was true in a sense as well, though. After all, we weren't planning to take over, or I wasn't, at least.
"We haven't made any promises to anyone," I said. "We're just looking for experimental subjects for a clinical trial."
"Has the FDA had a chance to look at this drug?" she asked.
"It hasn't even been invented yet," I said.
"You do understand that creating viruses that are self replicating is a one way ticket to getting a kill order," she said. "And to being considered an Endbringer level threat."
"S class," I said. "I know."
"You and your grandfather are considered powerful enough to be considered that class. They keep upping your threat ratings. Something like that, though, that might tip the scales."
"We're doing what we can to save the world," I said.
"So are we," Miss Militia said. "What happens if this process goes wrong? Have you ever seen a zombie movie? Our thinkers have looked at possibilities that make what happen in those movies look like a day in the sun. If we think you are about to set something like that off , we'll defend the planet, whatever the cost."
A quick look in her head and I saw that she was deadly serious. They were even now coming up with plans to deal with the both of us, plans that mostly seemed to involve masters, bio-tinker devices and people with esoteric powers that we didn't have any particular defenses against.
"We're all on the same side," I said.
"I wish I could believe that," Miss Militia said. "Tell your grandfather that we want to talk to him."
Apparently flirting with Piggot wasn't going to be enough to keep him on the Protectorate's good side. While part of me was all right with this, another part was upset. We all should be on the same side, at least until Scion and the Endbringers were destroyed.
"I'll let him know," I said grimly.
