I dropped the soldering iron at the third knock on the door.

"Coming." I yelled, more than a little annoyed at the interruption. I cursorily studied the work I had done so far. After making sure everything was correct, I turned away, hurriedly running up to the door of the warehouse.

I pulled open the door, expecting to be met with the face a certain blonde supervillain. I was surprised when instead, I was confronted with an unfamiliar face. It was a boy with curly black hair, wearing a white shirt, with a heavy-looking box in his hands.

I felt the irritation rising. I needed security cameras yesterday.

"Hi there," he said, a wide smile on his face.

I narrowed my eyes as I reached backwards toward the improvised gun I had strapped to my back. His eyes wandered toward my moving hand for a moment before snapping back into place, but the smile on his face didn't waver.

"Can I help you?" I asked the stranger.

"I'm Lisa's friend." he replied.

I frowned in response.

He rolled his eyes, "She couldn't make it today, so…", he looked backwards toward where a van was parked in the distance. I really needed security cameras, "the boss sent me instead."

"I'm Alec, nice to meet you." he said as he turned back to me.

Hearing the name, his face slotted into its spot. I had seen a vague image of him before, when Tracy had given me her report on the Undersiders. I relaxed slightly.

"Oh, the one with the-" I snapped a finger, letting my other hand drop from the gun on my back, "with the annoying power. Come in." I turned away, but before I could take a step back toward the desk that hosted my work, I paused, realizing something.

"Wait, is that box for me?" I pointed to the box he was holding.

He nodded.

"Great," finally. I pointed to a corner, "Put that stuff over there. Thank you."

I walked back to my desk, sitting back on my stool as I picked up the tools I had been working with before this little interruption.

"Wow, you set all of this up in a week?" he said after putting the box on the ground, a sliver of wonder in his tone.

I huffed with irritation, "Yes, yes. It's a bit messy, but this is just a temporary lab."

"Huh, I would love to see what a permanent lab looks like."

I didn't deign to answer. Instead, I made a gesture at the laptop that sat on yet another brand-new desk on the side, telling Tracy to resume her report. The entire setup was connected to the satellite dish on the roof and was powered by the electricity that came from batteries which sat at the other side of the room. Batteries, which in turn, were charged by solar panels – also on the roof. Nothing particularly genius, but it would do, for now.

"Riiight," Tracy spoke through the laptop's speaker.

I resumed working on the circuit, breathing in the cancerous fumes. I welded the pins as precisely as I could, not that it mattered much. The silence was only broken by the creaking of the door hinges as Alec shut it behind himself.

After a fairly long moment of quiet work, the boy gave an irritating chuckle.

"What?" I snapped as I turned to him.

"I, uh, think your friend there has something to tell you." he answered, pointing in the direction of the laptop.

"Oh," I turned to where he pointed, where Tracy's avatar was trying its best to pierce the boy's skull with her glare through the screen.

"Oh," I repeated, understanding dawning on me. I made a dismissive gesture as I turned back to the circuit, "It's fine, Tracy. I'm sure Alec here wouldn't abuse any information he gets here."

"Sure…" she replied in an uncertain tone.

I sighed, "Just go on, Tracy."

"Fine," fortunately, besides a short pause, she didn't argue further,"The next candidate is Clint Warren, otherwise known as Automaton. He is a rogue tinker who spends most of his time around the west coast. He… is rumored to be in possession of devices that can create pocket dimensions. Oh, and as bonus, he may or may not be associated with the Toybox."

"Hmm," I replied, most of my focus on my hands.

"Then we have Jacob Greene…"

Then in the midst of her reading the profile, the other person in the room interrupted her, breaking my concentration again.

"So…"

I took a deep breath, then slowly put aside the tools I held in my hands as I turned back to him.

"Yes?"

"Aren't you supposed to give me something?"

Ah, right.

God I was scatterbrained.

"Right." I held up a finger, "give me a moment."

I bent down where I sat, reaching down to pick up an inconspicuous box from under the desk. After I grabbed it, I turned around and pushed it firmly into the boy's waiting hands.

"There," I turned back to the circuit, picking up my tools again. "The blue prototype paralyses anything you shoot at." I paused, "Well, if it has a nervous system that is. And the other one can pretty much vaporize anything. You can recharge them with sunlight. There's an indicator and everything."

"Huh, really?" he asked as he opened the box.

"Yes. Yes. Do tell your boss to deliver the rest of my lab as soon as possible. Thank you. Now leave please."

He chuckled in response, "Fine."

As he walked away, I returned to my work.

"One more thing," he said just the moment he had opened the door and I thought I would be left in peace.

"Yes?" I answered as courteously as possible.

"Can you make something for me?"

I raised my eyebrows as I turned toward him, "Give me the rest of my lab and I will happily do that." I answered with a smile before turning back to my work.

A long moment later, the door finally shut and I took a deep breath as I returned to what I had been doing before. I wanted to work in as much silence as I needed. Not that it made much difference but I already had too much information and little to no acceptable plan. Besides, she had already given me the most useful data that she could find.

Still…

"Continue please." I ordered her.

Tracy resumed rattling off names and abilities as I worked in silence. I listened intently, trying to come up with a reasonable plan of action. I needed to act faster, if only so I didn't have to go through the entire process of registering for a new school. Dad was well-meaning, and I wasn't entirely done with this dimension, but safety was paramount, for myself and for Dad. Which reminded me… I had to tell Dad about what I was doing.

I sighed internally as I listened to Tracy go on and on. There were options, certainly. But nothing immediately jumped at me as a quick solution. God, this was going to be a long, laborious process that I did not want to go through, wasn't it?

Approximately ten minutes later, when Tracy's information had been long exhausted, I was finally done. I pushed myself off the stool and picked up the water bottle that sat beside the laptop and took a sip. Then, I stared at the circuit for one last time.

"So, what do you think?" I finally prompted as I carefully picked up the board and walked toward the device I had worked on for the past few days.

"I think your intended timeline is too… fast-paced, to put it mildly."

I sighed as I pushed a cable into a slot on the board I had been working on, connecting it to the other device, "I know what you mean, and it feels like we can take our time. But I'm worried this is just the illusion of continuity speaking. I'd much rather get this done as soon as possible. In any case," I picked up the device as I plopped down on the ground, leaning against the wall cross-legged, "start the analysis." I said as I put the thing on my head like a particularly oversized hat.

"Beginning analysis."

I closed my eyes and tried to be as calm as possible. There might yet be another important issue I could take care of with relative ease, hopefully. I tried to ignore the weight of the device as best as I could, letting my mind wander freely.

After what felt like an eternity later, Tracy finally announced that it was done.

I took off the device and put it on the desk, but didn't get up from where I sat.

"So?" I asked as I massaged my neck.

"Well, it's certainly interesting…" she trailed off uncharacteristically.

"What is it?" I asked, closing my eyes again as I leaned backwards.

"The connection is obvious. The… protrusion… the Corona Pollentia between the frontal and the parietal lobes, is certainly the most active in that regard. But… we can't just carve it out because it's not the only area that's accessing something it shouldn't be able to. It's like the entire thing is melded into your brain. Removing a part of it will just damage the connection, not rip it away it entirely. And that may have unforeseen consequences."

Great.

"And?" I prompted.

"It may be possible to remove the connection with precise surgery but you'd have to take a risk. And the only way to make sure it'll work as expected is for me to study your brain inside out, which would basically destroy your brain."

I sighed.

God, why couldn't I have just one fucking problem that I could solve easily. It was stupid, so fucking stupid. I couldn't cut away my connection to the parasite and I couldn't find a single parahuman that did what I wanted. That was besides the fact that if I did find someone, I had to reverse-engineer that particular pile of shit, since it was unlikely that any ability I found was exactly what I wanted, one way or the other.

And I didn't want to take months building interdimensional travel from scratch. That was obviously not—

I felt a spark lighting in my brain.

I pushed myself off the ground and hurried toward the box that the parahuman boy had brought, tearing it open.

It was insanity, pure insanity, but maybe I could use one of my issues to solve the other.

"Taylor?" Tracy said in a worried tone.

"What if," I started as I emptied the box on the ground, "We use the administration node that's connected to my brain to access the database on the other side—"

"No, we're not- are you insane?"

Thomas Calvert examined the 'prototypes' he had just tested out. They worked fine, ridiculously fine in fact. He had already approved more funding to this mystery tinker girl that had somehow found her way to his little group of teenage supervillains. He had been appropriately skeptical at first when Tattletale had brought it up, but she had been convincing enough that he had been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Now, though, with everything else he had found out about the girl, and with the two weapons sitting on his desk, he had no doubt he had found something valuable.

Perhaps it was time to run some… safe experiments.

He split the timeline.