Rosie stared at the various flowers from behind the thick goggles she wore. Despite dusk rapidly approaching the sun was still a hellish bright to her and Taylor's eyes. Their room was a perpetual twilight. Taylor's eyes, hidden behind a pair of sunglasses herself, watched her Little Sister wander around in the steamy glass room. The room, or green house though it was not very green or very big to be a house, was part of the building they lived in now.
The building, well asylum because Taylor knew that is what it was, even if she didn't like the word, was rather large with numerous hallways and rooms she couldn't go to. For someone who had spent years wandering freely it was grating in a way. But it wasn't so bad.
"Have you met any of the other patients?" Her mother asks as the pair sit on a worn bench. This was the second time she and Rosie had been allowed to come to this garden room.
She gives a shake of her head. "Not yet. The doctors say maybe eventually but right now they don't want to mess with our routine." Taylor says still unsure of her thoughts on them.
She moved her legs in a partly swinging method with her feet brushing the stone flooring. She wished she could swing her legs idly, but it was hard to find any chair that was high enough for her to do so.
The simple sound of metal moving with her legs was a true joy. The braces she had been given were so much smaller than the ones she had worn with her suit. Those had to be cut off to help remove the suit from her when she had been in the hospital. These were smaller and she doubted she'd be able to dance and leap with them but she could run and jump and move without fear of her legs ripping like paper.
She forced her hands into fists while she and her mother talked of little things, what they had eaten, what they were drawing. Small things that were easy to say and do. All the while Rosie ran around the room to stare at the host of bright colors.
The room was like a tiny Arcadia in a way. She had liked Arcadia. It had been fun to run in and climb the trees before falling.
"Have the doctors been nice?" Her mother asked like she did most evenings when she visited.
Taylor nodded. "They are. When Rosie is tired they don't bother us, they let us stay in our room. They help me if I can't figure out a word and are patient." She kept clenching and unclenching her fingers. Across from her Rosie was sniffing a flower. Or about to take a bite out of it. Taylor wasn't quite sure.
"They ask for permission when they run tests and they don't try to break in the room at night." Taylor paused for a moment. "I don't trust it. I want to. It's nice. But I don't trust them. I keep waiting for them to come when we are sleeping. To run games… experiments and surgeries on us." She says and remembers the long fear she had when she and Rosie had had x-rays taken to see the slug's better. The utter fear she held that they would be killed for their ADAM.
But they hadn't. When she had told them what she'd do to them if they tried and how it would kill the sisters to remove it, they thanked her and said they'd focus on other things. "They know we make ADAM but they don't try to take it. I don't understand why. Why are they being nice and good? We aren't their family or friends so why would they be kind?" Taylor said, causing Annette's heart to break a little.
The mother wrapped her hands around her daughters stopping the nervous opening and closing, Taylor flinching only slightly from the touch. "Because they want to help you, Taylor. They want you to be able to move on and live a life without the shadow of Rapture. They-"
Taylor interrupted. "But why? They don't hurt us, they don't want to make something or gain something, so why are they doing it? No one in Rapture ever did anything unless it was for some goal. Do they feel guilty?" Taylor asked not sure why they would but struggling to figure out why strangers would ever show empathy to someone without some gain. Friends helped each other but they weren't friends.
"Taylor, they are helping you because it's the right thing to do. You both went through something that no one should have to. And they want to help you move on from it. They are good people following their conscience." Annette promised her daughter.
Taylor shrugged. "I guess." With that she sat up wanting to end the conversation. She rose slowly, her legs straightening in as she reached her full height.
"Rosie, it's nearly time for bed, if you don't stop eating flowers I'll…." She said not used to any idea of disciplining her charge. Rosie, who had eaten the flower and a number of other flowers yawned and protested.
"But they are bright like ADAM." She said, skipping across the room in her slippers. Her outfit was designed to be similar to a little sister's dress as it became clear she refused any other type of clothes due to it being against the Rules. Instead she had been given a small closet of different colored dresses, made to be identical to the original in design. This one, a bright red, contrasted harshly with Rosie's black hair.
Shoes had been another issue for Rosie as she didn't see the point of them nor had she ever worn any in Rapture. Instead she'd wear slippers and socks. Socks she found great fun in sliding across their room, usually falling, and repeating until she grew bored.
Taylor had tried to argue for her suit but had ended up having to compromise. She could have it in her room and wear it, but not outside the room so as to not upset the other patients. She hated this rule. She hated the lack of her helmet and the missing weight of her cage and oxygen tank. But she accepted in the end.
The simple scrubs she wore, a pale green, had been given stitched handholds across the back so Rosie could hold and observe the world. That had been the one good part of the compromise in her opinion.
Taylor glanced up at the fading light from outside the glass room. Several of the panes had been cracked at some point and never repaired. Past them laid a thousand beautiful colors of pain as the sun fled from the sky at long last.
It wasn't quite as close to Rosie's bedtime as Taylor said, but visiting hours were closing fast. Despite herself Taylor wanted to sleep. At night she'd stay awake watching for any movement until the sun rose. She'd take short naps when possible during the day but that was starting to fail her. After two weeks of no true sleep her body prayed to the altar of her bed to be allowed rest one night.
"What do you do all day?" Taylor asked as she lifted Rosie up onto her back. She had few memories left of her mother from either forgetting or being trained to forget. She wasn't exactly sure what her mother did when not visiting them.
"I teach. I take a group full of people not much older than you and teach them about dozens of books that are hundreds of years old. We go over themes and plots and why they are still important and how their messages have changed over time." Annette said and Taylor smiled at that. Reading had not been against the Rules but it had never been encouraged. Taylor had gone out of her way to find and read when she could. She wasn't good at it but she had managed.
She had the feeling she had done it for some then forgotten connection to her mother.
"Do you do this all the time when not visiting us?" She asked, herself never really distinguishing between working and not working. Rosie needed protection so she slept when Rosie slept, at least a little, she'd eat when Rosie ate, she'd walk when Rosie walked. It was simple.
"No, when my classes are done and I'm done grading assignments I'll go home. Most of the time it's usually just me. Sometimes I go to the Barnes, do you remember them?" Taylor gave a shrug, not really sure. "You and their daughter Emma were close when you were little."
Taylor nodded along trying to dredge forth shackled memories of her time under the gaze of the sun. Few were dislodged from time's chains. "Could I meet her sometime?" She asked not sure when she'd be allowed to.
Her mother smiled and nodded. "I'll talk it over with your doctors and try to clear it." With that they began their separate journeys, Taylor with Rosie to their room, a staff member outside of the glass room to ensure she didn't get lost, and her mother to return to her home until the next day when she made the pilgrimage again.
Taylor was opening the door, her head bending down to fit under the frame when she heard her mother.
"Taylor… I never stopped looking for you. I know I've said it a few times now but I never stopped. The day I saw you back on my doorstep was the happiest of my life."
Taylor's smile didn't go away until far later in the night.
oOo
"I'm sorry, why do we have to go play babysitter to some psycho cape?" Sophia asked at the order the wards had been given. She leaned back on the sofa rubbing her forehead.
"Two." Aegis said before stopping her as she opened her mouth to reply. "And we are doing it because the director wants to recruit them when or if they get out." He said putting down a notebook of his homework. Even with tutoring, pre-cal was a bitch.
"Ok but explain why we are helping someone who beat a nurse into a wheelchair?" Sophia asked, referring to the story that was being shushed by the PRT. From what Aegis had heard it was unlikely the man would be walking anytime soon. Well, once he woke up that was.
Aegis noticed she actually seemed to be feeling an emotion other than anger, annoyance, or disgust. Did she kick a puppy on her way over here?
"Because the pair are biotinker victims and the older one beat the shit out of Miss Militia." Clockblocker said, reading the thick sheet of contract papers on visiting a parahuman in an asylum. Aegis had handed them out when he had entered the room and the groans were still echoing.
Sophia gave a noncommittal shrug but actually picked up the papers to read through them. Well that was something at least. "So when are we supposed to visit? Because I'd like a heads up before having to visit the retards." God damn it. There went the weekend for sensitivity training.
Aegia shot her a glare. "Currently unclear. When they are farther along in their recovery, whenever that will be."
Vista raised a hand, "Assuming they do join the wards how exactly are they going to work with us? They aren't exactly PR friendly." She said pulling a paper to show pictures of the pair with their pallor and horrible glowing eyes. The suit the older one had was something that belonged to a villain, old bloodstains and all.
She gave a frown seeing the younger ones outfit, if Carlos had to guess she was worried her own attempts to act more like an adult would be ruined by the glowing eyed corpse girl looking like some doll.
"Not our problem. I'm sure PR will come up with something. Gallant," He said to the teen who was pulling his armor off in piecemeal. "You and Vista will be the first one's going when they are cleared. After that it will be alternating, Clockblocker, you and me, and then Vista and Shadow Stalker, then…" He continued on showing the planned schedule.
OoO
"Are you sure on the results?" Armsmaster asked his arms shoulder deep into the guts of the machinery of his bike. He wanted to incorporate some of the hydraulics he had noticed on the sphere and had several ideas how to make more efficient upgrades.
"Yes. From what I can tell the 'ADAM' in the syringes and vials the two girls had, it isn't theirs. This…is" She paused checking something off screen. "Devolved. Cancerous cells spring up and are eaten alive by other cells, it spontaneously combusts, freezes, etc. It's a virus the body welcomes. It's barely blood at this point. More like the ADAM has smothered the blood and is using it to get access to the rest of a body."
She took a breath after that. "But that's on a macroscale. On the micro? Colin this is a miracle cure. I've introduced half a dozen viruses and tumors to the samples and within seconds they've been cured. It perfectly turns itself from a foreign body to human stem cells and then matches itself to where it's needed."
Colin looked up at the sample on his desk surrounded by papers and tools. "And the sisters? How does that compare?" She frowned on the screen, seeming to have wanted to talk more on what she learned.
"Still haven't gotten a sample of the younger's for obvious reasons, but the older one, the ADAM, is less a virus and more adapted. Her cells are mutated to hell and back but it's stable. In the experiments her blood healed itself in moments, it's incredibly oxygen rich, and seems to have mutated her cells to exist around it, instead of it just smothering them."
He pulled himself off his motorcycle and grabbed a rag to clean his hands. "Is that from a more limited supply, those slugs, or related to age?" He wondered what skill the biotinker had to make a creature that could make powers. The brain scans done on Taylor Hebert had shown she had a Gemina Pollentia, albeit extremely atrophied, but her powers came from the ADAM.
Powers given by a parasitic slug. "If someone was to have one of those vials injected, do you think they'd come out of it with powers?"
"Assuming they don't keel over from a tumor replacing their brain matter? It's possible. You'd have to train it though to get it to do like Taylor somehow did."
"However, that still doesn't explain whose blood those vials had. Other victims?" Colin asked. Hebert had said she'd kidnapped others on the orders of the biotinker so it seemed believable that there were a number of unaccounted for victims still trapped in that facility.
"If they were, I'm not sure where. I've found no cases matching the murder of Danny Hebert or have any description of what Hebert described. I'll keep looking though. Still I'm not sure what villain would think putting their lair on the ocean floor is a good idea.. Seems like a Deathwish to me." She said with a humorless chuckle.
Colin matched it with a thin smile. Since Scion had disappeared the battles with the Endbringers had been getting worse and worse. The few aquatic themed heroes and villains he knew of stayed on beaches. To go to the bottom of the ocean and stay there for years was asking for Leviathan to crush it with a passing move.
"How's the sphere project coming?" She asked as the third minute of silence reigned. Colin cursed himself silently having let his thoughts kill the conversation.
"Decently. If I can figure out how the casing is powered I think I'll be able to get it to work." He said referring to the thick net like casing that surrounded the sphere "I've got Battery on standby to help as well as a few PRT troopers. I'm fairly certain the sphere is on a seek and return system. You mentioned you'd be available as well?"
"I should be. I've been scanning the waters near Brockton and haven't detected any anomalies so it may be farther out to sea." He gave a shrug at this. "Regardless of the distance I'll find this lair."
/\\\
AN: Thanks for all the reviews and discussion! It means a lot and I love the theorizing you guy's are having!
This chapter was a bitch tbh. Glad to have it done
Thanks again to BigBadBen for all the help!