Emily nodded to herself as she made notes. When the phone conversation ended, she said "Thank you. Tell them we agree. Four PM, yes." Hanging up she scanned her documentation for a moment then looked up at the other people in her office. "The Hebert and Barnes families have agreed to meet with us to discuss what would be required to settle their case against us, on a no-obligation basis. If they don't like what they hear, they'll walk away. That's the best we're going to get so I suggest that we take advantage of it." She fixed Glenn Chambers with a hard look. "Do not start trying to play games with them. Their lawyer is absolutely vicious, and probably smarter than you are, from what I've looked up. Danny Hebert is also an expert at dealing with people and I've been told very strongly that he's likely to see right through any attempt to try to fool him, and the man holds a grudge. And of course Carol Dallon is like a fucking rabid rottweiler if you get on her bad side. We screw this up, we will be going to court no matter what the Chief Director wants."
The man didn't look entirely happy but nodded. "Understood. I'm going to get a lot of shit for all this, but in the end you are most likely correct that it's the best outcome we can hope for under the circumstances."
Leaning back and dropping her pen on her pad, she inspected him for a moment. "Why is Costa-Brown so insistent that you pull a miracle out of your ass and make this all go away? And why isn't she talking to me about it directly, rather than through you? I was expecting a very long and angry phone call from her at some point, but I haven't heard a thing, which is… unusual. Normally she's all too happy to stick her oar in to our problems."
"Honestly?" He met her eyes and shrugged a little. "I don't actually know. When I spoke to her she seemed distracted. She just gave me some orders to fix things in Brockton, 'suggested' that it would be ideal if we could persuade the people behind the lawsuit to drop it, and hung up. She wasn't in a good mood."
"She never is," Emily muttered, shaking her head. "But even by her normal standards that's somewhat bizarre."
"Agreed. I got the distinct impression that there was a reason for it that she had no intention of telling me, but what that is, I have no idea. Possibly just worry about the PR hit we'd take if it got to court, which admittedly would be very bad." Chambers shrugged again. "I'm not happy about that part myself. But the idea I opened with I'm also not happy with. I got a very strongly worded communication from the head office legal team to try it, and I honestly don't know if they were hoping you'd just roll over and go along with it, or were ordered to say that and didn't believe for a minute you'd cooperate. There's something very odd going on with this whole fiasco, in my opinion."
"Yeah, that much I know," she growled. "And someone, somewhere, is trying to make it all my fault and dragging you into it as well. If it's Costa-Brown, I will be very annoyed. This job is hard enough without her interfering and making it harder. The Hess situation is at least partially the fault of head office. We warned them, over and over, that it was inevitably going to go bad. Just got told that Stalker was useful and to shut up about her unless she did something we couldn't ignore." Emily scowled. "Guess what. She did."
"You don't have to tell me that, not after telling me about a dozen times in the last few days," he sighed.
"Sorry. But it's such a good point it bears repeating as often as required to get it firmly across," she replied with what was almost a small smirk. He chuckled somewhat unwillingly. "I'm half thinking I should call her myself and ask her what the fuck she's playing at, and half thinking I should keep my mouth shut and just get on with things in case she decides to come here and fuck the whole situation up even more than it is personally. Because she would fuck things up. Some people call me hard to deal with, if you can imagine that…"
Renick, who along with Armsmaster had been listening without talking, muffled a snicker. She gave him a look, then transferred it to the Tinker whose lips went completely straight again. "Those people haven't had the pleasure of dealing with Rebecca Costa-Brown," she continued after a moment. "I have. And no one ever repeats this in her presence or I'll shoot them in the knee, got it?"
All three men nodded.
"So we'll go along to the Dallon woman's law firm this afternoon, all sit down and talk carefully and accurately, and with a lot of luck come to an arrangement that satisfies everyone and probably pleases no one. Especially her." Looking around again, she felt satisfied when they all obediently nodded again. "Right. That's all for now. Armsmaster, stay a moment, I had a question for you."
"Of course, Director," he said, not moving as Glenn and Mike got up and left her office, the former looking worried and the latter appearing thoughtful. Once they were gone, she waited while he produced his Tinker tech anti-eavesdropping widget without a word and turned it on. "We're safe," he added when that was done.
"How is the cleaning operation going?" she queried, not going into details even with the hiss of white noise filling the background.
"I have located three more data taps on our systems and bypassed them in a manner that shouldn't raise any suspicion if they're accessed, at least over the short term. I can't be absolutely certain I've got them all, but I'm nearly certain I have. The problem of course is that in such a situation it is essentially impossible to ever be one hundred percent sure that all compromises have been successfully dealt with. However, that said, it's likely that I have managed to neuter external access to our systems enough that anything remaining, if it exists, is a low level threat. And with the new protocols I've installed if I did miss something it will become immediately apparent if it's activated."
"I think that's the best we can hope for, all things considered," she noted, nodding. "Well done."
"Thank you. I will of course keep looking just in case but I've likely reached the point of diminishing returns. But we're in a position where we can make the next move as soon as our target presents us with the opportunity. An escape at that point will be highly unlikely regardless of powers. I've established countermeasures for everything I could think of, after a lot of research."
"If we miss this chance…"
"We will probably not get another one. Yes. So we have to make certain we don't miss."
"Even if we have to use lethal force." She met his eyes steadily. "If there's any chance of escape, we remove the problem at source and deal with the consequences afterwards. This is too important to screw around with."
"Understood. And I agree. The damage already done is enough to make that option entirely acceptable as far as I'm concerned although I share your desire to see justice done."
Emily nodded. "That's all on that subject for now. Keep me updated on any further developments."
"Of course, Director," Armsmaster replied as he retrieved his device and turned it off, then put it away. "I'll be back half an hour before the meeting this afternoon." He turned to walk out of her office, the door closing behind him. Stretching with a slight grunt of pain, Emily scanned her to-do list, sighed faintly, and picked up the phone to make yet another phone call. She had a lot of work to get through before she met with the Hebert and Barnes families, which wasn't something she was looking forward to.
Hopefully they'd be at least vaguely reasonable, although she admitted to herself with a scowl that they didn't really have any particular reason for that, considering what had happened and how.
Oh well. No one ever said this job would be easy.
It would have been nice for it to at least be possible, though, she thought as she got back to work.
Lisa sat on the sofa in the Hebert's living room, idly watching the news, with most of her attention on thinking over what Taylor had told her earlier. The other girl had certainly had an unpleasant time of things, which seemed ultimately to be the fault of Sophia Hess more than anything else. Her former friend Emma had clearly hit rock bottom due to the gang attack on her, and in Lisa's opinion that whole scenario cried out 'Trigger event' to her like few things she'd heard about. It had probably been as stressful as her own Trigger experience and having gone through that she wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Apparently Emma was one of those people who couldn't Trigger, though, and she'd merely had a psychotic break. As if that was any better, really. Lisa was well aware that a Trigger wasn't far off being the same thing, and in some cases actually was. It never left you the same afterwards, even if you ignored the entire Parahuman ability part of the equation. All Parahumans were, almost by definition, a bit touched in the head. And she was self-aware enough to know that applied to her as well although she liked to think that she was pretty stable all things considered.
But seeing her brother after he'd killed himself like that… She shuddered at the memory. There was a reason no Parahuman generally wanted to talk about what their Trigger was. Too much trauma went along with the memories to make it a comfortable discussion subject.
By the sound of it, Emma had been in a similar state, if not worse, her mind had slipped a few teeth, and Sophia Hess had come along at precisely the wrong moment to make the whole thing far more destructive. Filling a broken girl's mind with an ideology that was self-destructive in the extreme and incredibly selfish to boot. It wasn't surprising that things had spiraled out of control so hard. And Taylor had the bad luck to end up the target of months and months of bullying as serious as anything Lisa had ever come across, which by the sound of it had been steadily escalating. She wondered how far they'd have actually gone if Sophia's last little stunt hadn't backfired so spectacularly. There was an uneasy feeling in her stomach that they wouldn't have stopped at getting Taylor arrested as a potential drug dealer.
She also wondered how much of that plot had been Sophia's alone, and how much was Emma. The third one, Madison, sounded like a classic follower with little real ability to do anything else, seeking validation by sucking up to more popular girls. Lisa was all too well aware of what that was like, having experienced the whole gamut at school before she'd left her family for good. Teenaged girls were absolutely horrific a lot of the time.
Taylor's attitude that she'd pretty much had enough of teenagers in general was one she could easily understand, really, after what she'd seen…
The fact that Taylor would agree to allow the Barnes family to join the various lawsuits on her side rather on the defendant side impressed her a lot. She was pretty certain that under the same conditions she wouldn't have been able to do that, to let it go and realize that Emma was as much a victim as she was a problem. But then, Lisa thought, she was a vindictive bitch sometimes. Like with Coil; she very much wanted to see that bastard get what was coming to him. Admittedly Emma was nowhere near as bad as an actual super-villain, so there was that.
Clearly Sophia was in at least as much need of professional intervention as Emma was, but Lisa could understand and sympathize with the Hebert's opinion that it wasn't their problem. Emma was, because by the sound of it, she'd practically been family since both she and Taylor were barely able to walk, and that sort of friendship was difficult to entirely destroy. Even with something as bad as what had happened. Even so it was somewhat impressive that Taylor and Danny were still willing to think like that, even if Taylor probably wouldn't ever think of Emma as a friend again.
No, Sophia was the PRT's problem.
Taylor hadn't got even as far as mentioning that Sophia was Shadow Stalker before Lisa's power had suggested it, and even without that confirmation, she would have guessed that something was very wrong regarding how the school seemed to look the other way when all that crap was going on. There were only really two reasons for something like that to happen in her opinion, either someone was profiting from the situation, or someone was being leaned on to allow it to happen. In this case it seemed very likely both were happening. She'd got a pretty damn good idea of what was going on as Taylor had explained, and by the end was certain she'd worked out the whole truth.
When she'd said this, and her conclusions, Taylor had regarded her closely for a few seconds then simply nodded. Danny had seemed impressed and a touch amused at how good she was at figuring this sort of thing out. Both had requested that she not tell anyone else, which she was fine with. It wasn't her business to begin with, it risked getting the PRT annoyed if they ever found out as it was clearly something they very much didn't want to become public information, and technically it was a violation of the so-called Unwritten Rules. Lisa wasn't entirely in favor of this last concept, mostly because she was absolutely sure that it was only really observed when it was convenient by villains and the PRT alike. She was also well aware that the whole secret ID thing was a very thin layer which could often be easily penetrated by anyone with a good eye for details, never mind any number of different powers. She herself could in many cases work out the true identity of a given Parahuman with only a modicum of specific information, and was certain that some powers would make that absolutely trivial.
It was a polite fiction at best, and not to be relied on no matter what people on PHO said. Sure, it would probably keep you alive most of the time, but if you assumed it was bulletproof, well, you'd almost certainly sooner or later find out the hard way that you were very much wrong about that.
The PRT could get away with allowing people to believe they stuck to the Rules because they were a federal agency with very deep pockets and overwhelming firepower. Few wanted to get on their bad side, and as a result didn't generally try to penetrate the IDs of their capes. The larger gangs could get away with it because most people weren't stupid enough to risk making the E88, or the ABB, or the Elite sufficiently interested in or pissed off at them to come after them, since they didn't have any ethics and were generally fine with killing to make a point. Keeping your head down and not rocking the boat was only sensible in either case. But she was sure that in both cases if you relied on the concept you were going to get a nasty shock at some point.
It only really worked with smaller gangs and independents, who had too much to lose by breaking the gentleman's agreement. People like Über and Leet, or Circus, or any number of other Parahumans just in Brockton Bay never mind the rest of the country. They would generally keep to the fiction of a Parahuman ID being sacrosanct and impenetrable if only out of a desire to have everyone else do the same to them.
Much like the value of currency, or gold, or something like that, it was a shared delusion that everyone involved had a reason for pretending was reality. Even though most people were well aware it wasn't, and was subject to being discarded when necessary. Somehow it seemed to mostly work.
In her case, her ID had been blown wide open as far as being a Parahuman went with respect to the DWA. Not that she had a Parahuman secret ID to start with. She'd never really come up with one to date and had no intention of running around in skin tight spandex being a super-hero. Or super-villain, for that matter. If nothing else, Brockton Bay was fucking cold this time of year and spandex bodysuits weren't noted for being particularly well insulated. A parka and thick jeans would probably be more appropriate right now. The thought made her grin to herself. However, if Coil had laid hands on her, she didn't like to think what he might have tried forcing her to do, no matter what her own wishes were.
No, on balance she mostly wanted to stay out of random cape fights and the clutches of her family, then get on with her life. She wasn't sure what she really wanted to do yet. Having an awesome Thinker power was useful, but it came with a lot of disadvantages too. Like fucking awful migraines. Although, and she was very puzzled about this, those genuinely did seem to be a thing of the past. Ever since Taylor had rescued her, her power was different.
Even her power seemed a little confused about the whole thing, although she definitely felt it was hiding something from her. Which was in a sense one of the weirdest parts of the whole thing, and the most worrying. Two days ago she'd have sworn blind that her power was just her power, not something with an existence separate from hers, but she was growing more and more convinced that this idea was very wrong indeed. Which had any number of profoundly disturbing implications…
Hearing footsteps, she looked around to see Taylor coming into the room carrying a pair of mugs with steam coming out of them. The other girl handed her one as she sat next to her. Accepting it, Lisa lifted it to her nose and sniffed. "Ooh, mint. I love mint." She took a sip of the hot chocolate and sighed with satisfaction.
"It's good, isn't it?" Taylor commented having sipped her own drink. "Mom loved it. She found this little shop down town that made their own chocolate and always made sure to keep us stocked up with it. I've kept buying it now and then, since…" She trailed off with a sad look and Lisa watched her clearly remembering something she missed. After a moment, the girl shrugged. "Anyway, it's really good. I've also got some chili hot chocolate which is amazing if you like spicy things, but not everyone does."
"That's an odd combination," Lisa commented with mild surprise.
"Chili and chocolate go really well together," Taylor smiled. "I've even tasted chili chocolate ice cream but I don't know where you'd find it now. I might have to try making it sometime."
They sat there sipping hot chocolate for a little while in silence, both content with their thoughts. Eventually Lisa said, "You know, a couple of days ago I'd have been worried if a whole bunch of people had found out I have powers." Taylor glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. "But half the people at the DWA must know about me by now and for some reason it… just doesn't seem to bother me. I have no idea why."
Her companion smiled a little, nodding. "Maybe because your power told you that the DWA is safe? They tend to keep their mouths shut about each other, at least as far as outsiders go. Like I said last night, people around the docks stick together for the most part. There's a lot of shared pain, and history, there."
She looked to the left, at the wall over a small fireplace, on which were a couple of dozen framed photos. Pointing at one, she went on, "That one there is a shot of the docks in about 1930 or so. Thousands and thousands of people worked there at that time. We had shipyards, and cargo companies, and fisheries, salvage yards, you name it. Almost all of that is gone now. Everyone left is barely able to keep going in the face of all the crap that's happened over the years, but they remember when they were the reason this city was so important. And they know that most of the rest of the city doesn't remember, and doesn't care. All they have is each other. The gangs fuck things up, the PRT doesn't really do anything around here since they mostly stick to the richer areas, the cops try but they don't have enough people or money to really make much of a difference…"
Indicating a couple of other photos, she added, "So much has gone, and so many people lost everything. All that history ruined by the Teeth, and the S9, and the E88, and everyone else, but somehow the DWA is still around and still kicking. Sometimes people's teeth in, which is probably why the gangs mostly stay out of the area." Taylor grinned mirthlessly as Lisa listened. "Dad told me a few stories years back about why even Marquis was generally quite polite around here. And why most people kind of respected him even though he was a real villain."
"The man had a certain amount of style and honor," Danny's voice said from the doorway, making both girls turn. He came into the room and walked over to the wall of photos, looking at each one in turn. "I didn't particularly like him but weirdly enough I did respect him. And he seemed to respect us in turn. We had a certain form of working relationship that was strange at the best of times but somehow functioned better than you'd have expected." He tapped one photo, which Lisa studied from her seat. "I can't say I miss him but the people who took his place are a hell of a lot worse."
She could see that the photo showed someone she recognized from the internet as Marquis, and talking to him was a much younger Danny Hebert.
"Glad to see that all the history I tried to teach you about your heritage stuck, Taylor," he chuckled as he turned around and moved to sit opposite them. "More or less."
"Hey, I listened, Dad," Taylor replied with a grin. "Most of the time. I mean, you did tend to go on about about it and sometimes my attention drifted…" She glanced at Lisa and mock-whispered, "Mom sometimes fell asleep when he really got going…"
Lisa tried not to laugh, but didn't quite manage it, while Danny sighed with a long suffering look. "Your mother used to tease me about being on speaking terms with a super-villain," he replied calmly. "I used to remind her about her own past."
"Sometimes they really argued about it," Taylor confided. "It was kind of annoying."
"You two sure have an interesting backstory," Lisa said with a smile.
"Oh, yeah, but there are a lot of people around here who could say that," Taylor laughed. "Brockton Bay has been a very strange place for a very long time. Some of the things that people swear up and down are true make Parahumans seem normal."
"That does tend to be the case with port cities," Danny put in. "The sea brings a lot of oddities with it and anyone who works close to it probably ends up with a few tall tales. Not all of them actually stories, for that matter." He sipped the coffee he was holding, then lowered it. "Most of them, sure, but definitely not all."
"Yeah, it's not the first time I've heard that," Lisa commented as she finished her hot chocolate and put the mug down on the floor next to her. After thinking over what she wanted to ask, she rather cautiously said, "I have a question…"
Taylor looked at her father, then back to her, apparently having expected this. "About what it is I'm actually doing, right? And how?"
"Yeah. That." Lisa shook her head in wonder. "I've been puzzling over it since we met, and I can't work it out. My power is completely stumped too, although it seems completely fascinated at the same time. It's telling me one hundred percent guaranteed that you aren't a Parahuman at all, but I've seen you do things that absolutely are not normal in any sense of the word. As far as I know it's not possible to do anything like you're doing without Parahuman abilities, so…" She shrugged, gazing at Taylor. "It's driving me nuts, to be honest. I don't like not knowing things. You might have guessed that."
The other girl grinned. "I did sort of work that out, yeah. You like having knowledge that no one else does, right?"
Lisa nodded. "It's a character flaw," she admitted with a small laugh. "And it predates me getting powers, although that sure made it worse. I try to keep it under control, but sometimes…" She spread her hands, indicating mutely it wasn't easy to be her.
Both Heberts looked amused, the family resemblance very obvious for a moment. Taylor examined her for a while, leaning back on the far end of the sofa with one leg crossed over her knee, before looking to her father again. He shrugged. "If you think you can trust her, it's your decision. You're the one who worked it out after all."
Nodding slowly, Taylor returned her attention to Lisa, who swallowed a little at the intensity of the gaze. For a moment she got a very strong sensation that to betray this girl's trust would be extremely unwise. She had no idea quite why that came across so clearly as Taylor didn't really look all that dangerous, being tall and willowy but hardly a body-builder or a fighter going by appearances. Her overall build was more that of a runner or a dancer, but at the same time she still managed to momentarily radiate an air of potential danger that was frankly slightly worrying.
A second later it was gone.
"OK, I'll tell you, but if you tell anyone like the PRT and it causes trouble for my family or anyone at the DWA I'll be very disappointed," the girl said quietly.
"Trust me, you can trust me," Lisa replied with complete honesty. She owed Taylor her life, she suspected, and besides that was rapidly coming to think of her as a friend. Leaving that aside it was clear that sticking with the DWA and the Heberts was definitely in her best interests, so she had zero intention of doing anything to upset the budding relationship. And she was absolutely certain that due to Taylor's experiences over the last year or so, the girl had an amazingly low tolerance for betrayal, for very good reasons. "I won't tell anyone, I promise."
Dark green eyes searched her own, and eventually Taylor seemed to find whatever she was looking for. She smiled. "Great. Thank you." Thinking for a moment or two while Lisa waited patiently, she finally began, "My Great Grand Uncle Papa Schimmelhorn was a subconscious genius. And completely barking mad, I think, but that might have actually helped."
She grinned at Lisa's expression. "I know, it sounds nuts, and it is, but it's a good story. See, Dad and I were poking around in the attic looking for some spare parts to repair my mom's flute, and we found a whole box of old crap that turned out to be old Papa's stuff. There were these journals, which were his notes of all the inventions he'd come up with back in the forties and right up to around the sixties or so. He vanished after that, which is… well, having read his stuff, I can't say it's actually that surprising."
"Inventions?" Lisa asked, befuddled. "Was he a Tinker or something? I didn't think Tinkers even existed that long ago."
"They didn't, and no, I don't think he was a Tinker at all. He actually more or less understood what he was doing, or at least his subconscious did," Taylor replied, chuckling a bit. "It's weird, but from what I can figure out he was kind of dim in some ways, but underneath that, his subconscious mind was incredibly smart. And stuffed full of all sorts of advanced scientific theories, which he'd overheard when he worked as a janitor in the Geneva Institute of Higher Physics. Apparently it was a place lots of really advanced physics theories were being developed way back then, and he kind of accidentally learned all sorts of weird crap. Somewhere inside his head all that knowledge just clicked, and he started coming up with strange inventions that did things that probably shouldn't be possible. But they worked, and he made notes on all of them."
Lisa just stared at her in mild disbelief.
"His notes are weird, since he wrote them in a mix of German and English and sometimes made up terms when he couldn't find the right one." Taylor looked thoughtful for a second. "Actually he did that a lot, thinking about it. It's almost a code, but accidentally. There's a lot of math I'm still working on, but also all sorts of interesting concepts that aren't really science in the usual way at all but they're internally consistent and make sense if you look at them right. As far as I can tell he never really rebuilt any of his inventions once he'd made the first one, but I think that wasn't so much that he couldn't, not like Leet's problem, but more that he lost interest in them and moved onto something else. And I think that means he didn't tend to work out all the possibilities of a lot of the stuff past the problem he'd tried to solve. Which in turn means that there are all sorts of cool things you can derive from his notes that he never thought of."
She paused and Lisa looked blankly at her as she tried to process what the girl had said. Eventually she nodded a little. "OK. It sounds crazy, but go on."
"Well, he left a lot of stuff behind, loads of really good tools and parts and things, along with the notes. He trained as a clock maker and worked as one for at least fifty years, and he was good at it. Some of the things he made are incredible. Way past anything most people could do. Really complicated clockwork and delicate hand made things, in wood and metal. It's actually beautiful and I'm almost scared to handle most of it. I don't know if I'll ever be anywhere near as good at that sort of thing as he was. But it turns out that for some reason I do seem to have a knack for understanding his weird science."
She fell silent again as Lisa considered what she'd heard. After a handful of seconds, she queried, "But how does that lead to you making things disappear and appear by thinking hard at them, or whatever it is that you're doing?" It didn't quite add up in her view. Her power was squatting in the back of her mind listening with complete concentration as far as she could tell and it also was confused.
"I'm getting to that," Taylor replied with a smile. "Anyway, I read his stuff over and over, and made my own notes on it, and after a while I tried rebuilding one of his first really neat inventions. The gnurr-pfeife."
"What the hell is a… gnurr-pfeife?" Lisa asked, baffled.
"It's a pfeife. It summons gnurrs." Taylor's smirk was impish. Lisa sighed heavily.
"Two questions? What is a pfeife? And following from that, what is a gnurr?"
"Pfeife is basically German for a whistle or pipe. In his case it was a bassoon. I used my mom's flute." Taylor grinned at her as she tried to work out what on earth the girl was talking about. "And a gnurr is… it's…" She looked at her father.
"Hard to explain, very eldritch, and extremely ravenous?" he put in with a somewhat amused expression.
"Yeah, that. They're kind of not-mice and they come from the woodwork out if you play the right tune on the gnurr-pfeife. And you get a lot of them. Like, millions of them." Taylor shrugged as Lisa goggled in horror. "They turn up from somewhere at right angles to normal time according to Papa. I think it's basically a sort of dimensional transit combined with some weird type of time travel. I think. They're… coming from yesterday? But not yesterday yesterday, more the concept of yesterday. So if we were in yesterday, from our point of view the gnurrs would still be coming from yesterday. They're always there in yesterday even when yesterday was today. Or when it's tomorrow, they'll come from yesterday, but that won't be today, it'll be yesterday relative to tomorrow."
Lisa held up a hand, making her stop, and used the other one to rub her forehead which was aching again although in a very different manner than her power normally managed. Her actual power seemed to have a headache too after that explanation.
"You realize that makes no sense at all?"
Taylor grinned. "It makes sense when you look at it in the right way, but it's sure weird when you try to make it fit normal life, I'll admit. For now, forget the exact details, let's just say that if you play the right tune on the gnurr-pfeife you get a whole shitload of gnurrs. And they then eat absolutely everything non-living they can sink their teeth into. Really, really quickly. The first time we tried it they ate an entire warehouse to the foundations in about two minutes flat."
Somewhat gaping again, Lisa shook her head. "Christ. How do you get rid of them?"
"Play the same tune backwards. Which takes a hell of a lot of practice, believe me. But it works."
"And if you play the wrong tune?"
Taylor looked seriously at her. "You get something else. Something a lot worse than gnurrs. We tried that and the result was about twenty million flying balls of teeth that absolutely wrecked another warehouse so fast I barely got rid of them in time…"
She held up her hand and indicated something about the size of a tennis ball. "About like that, only mostly teeth, and very quick. They fly right through everything and it's just gone. We haven't thought of a name for them yet. I really don't know what would happen if we tried other tunes and we kind of decided it was a little dangerous to experiment any more after that."
Lisa's power pointed something out, and her jaw slowly fell. "Oh, my god. That was what you did to the sunken ship?"
"Yeah. I worked out a modification to the gnurr resonator crystal that let me… not so much control them as sort of aim them. So rather than just running around eating everything they eat what I point them at." Taylor shrugged a little. "Turns out gnurrs don't care about seawater at all. They went right down to the bedrock and ate the entire damn thing in about ten minutes. Not a trace left. We went out in a trawler before dawn in the fog, chewed it up, and were back inside an hour. No one had a clue and still don't."
"Jesus." Thinking over what she'd been told, Lisa couldn't really believe it, but on the other hand her power told her Taylor was being completely truthful. Which meant the girl really had figured out something truly incredible that definitely broke any number of what science considered laws of nature. "And that's just one of his inventions?"
"Yeah. He had dozens of them, and I've also learned enough that I can see some possibilities of other things he either didn't invent or didn't document if he did. Some of the things he came up with are probably too dangerous to replicate, at least without knowing an awful lot more about how they work. Maybe one day I'll learn enough to try them safely."
"What sort of things?" Lisa asked, curious and worried.
"Oh, pedal driven time machines, antigravity that needs to be steam powered and makes teeny black holes, interdimensional travel machines, a device for turning lead into gold… All sorts of weird crap. The gnurr-pfeife is one of the tamer ones if I'm honest and just that has all sorts of possible spin-offs. He didn't seem very interested in extending most of his inventions, although they all share a sort of consistent theoretical background if you look at it the right way."
"Time machines?! Black holes?" Lisa didn't know whether to laugh or scream in horror.
"Yeah. Like I said, weird science. But it is science, just not normal science." Taylor tapped her chin in thought. "Probably. I think. I'm still learning about it." She shrugged. "I decided that a time machine is probably a very bad idea, but I can't really explain exactly why. Something about the whole concept seems… extremely dangerous. So I'm not going to do that any time soon. And I think there's a better way to do antigravity than using steam powered black holes, so one day I might experiment a bit. Right now I'm still working out cool variations on Anton's trick."
Feeling rather faint, Lisa echoed, "Anton's trick?"
"That's the part you asked about." Taylor smiled at her. "One of Papa's relatives, so he'd be some sort of cousin a couple of times removed, was Little Anton as Papa called him. He was… well, he was a con artist and a pick pocket, I think. And probably a smuggler, and I suspect he was also an art thief… Thinking about it, he was kind of a dick. But he had this neat trick, which was why he was an effective dick."
"Trick?"
"Yeah. Like this." Taylor held out Lisa's wallet, which the girl stared at, then snatched. Taylor grinned at her annoyed expression. "It's basically a sort of telekinesis but it goes along with something I ended up calling looking beneath."
Hearing the odd emphasis Taylor put on the word, Lisa asked. "Beneath what?"
"Everything. Reality, I guess." The brunette shook her head a little. "I don't really know the right terminology. If it even exists. But I figured out that what we see around us, all this that everyone thinks of as the real world, it's just the top layer. If you know how, you can look under it. The analogy I came up with, which actually seems pretty accurate, is looking at a still pond on a sunny day. You see the reflections of everything in the water, and things floating on the water, but if you put on polarized glasses and tilt your head just right you suddenly see all the way to the bottom of the pond. All the stuff in the water is visible, the weeds and the fish and whatnot, and even the rocks and mud under it. That is Beneath. It's probably Quantum or something." Taylor grinned at her again as she stared in disbelief.
"There's lots of layers to it too, I think. I'm not sure I've seen all the way to the real bottom yet, but the more I practice the better I get at it. The end result is that once you learn the trick looking through solid things isn't very hard at all. Or seeing in the dark for that matter, which is cool."
Closing her eyes Lisa massaged the lids very gently with her fingertips. "This is completely ridiculous even in Parahuman terms," she complained faintly.
"I know, right? It's really weird, but the thing is, it works. And it turned out to be something I could figure out how to do, and something I could teach Dad to do. I'll probably teach some of the guys at the DWA too. U.N.I.O.N. is going to need more agents after all."
Across the room Danny sighed heavily, although he looked like he was suppressing a grin. He'd been listening without a word, letting his daughter explain things while looking both interested and proud.
"U.N.I.O.N. is not actually a thing, Taylor," he commented.
"Yet," she replied immediately, with a mischievous look at him.
"Oh, lord," he grumbled under his breath.
Shaking her head to settle her thoughts, Lisa turned back to Taylor. "How does looking through things turn into stealing wallets from six feet away without moving?"
"It's more or less the same thing, really. Turns out that looking beneath is just the start. You can reach through beneath if you try, which lets you basically affect things at a distance. Like this." She gave Lisa her wallet back again. Grabbing it, Lisa glared at her, which made her grin a little.
"Stop that."
"Hey, it makes a good demonstration!"
"Demonstrate on something else, OK?"
"Spoilsport. Where was I? Oh, right, so you can reach through beneath and move things around. That bit Anton knew, and he used it to steal things, or smuggle things, or generally cause chaos. He was a bit like that from what Papa wrote. Papa seemed to think it was hilarious…" Taylor shrugged. "The part I came up with, and I don't think Anton figured out how to do, was working out that you could take something from point A and not have to let it go at point B. You could pull it into beneath and leave it there."
After staring at her for quite a long time as she worked out the ramifications, while in the back of her mind her power seemed to be grinning madly and nodding, Lisa breathed, "You made a hammer space pocket?!"
"More or less," Taylor admitted. "I don't know if it works the same way that Parahuman powers that do the same sort of thing do, but it does work. Really well, actually."
She looked at a thick dictionary that was sitting on the side table, Lisa and Danny following her finger as she pointed at it. "So you do this, and that happens," the girl said. The large book silently vanished. "I pulled it beneath and now it's basically gone from reality entirely. Until I bring it back, it doesn't exist for most purposes. And what turned out to be one of the weirder parts was that as far as I can tell time just stops as far as anything beneath is concerned. I think it's because it's gone in a directional orthogonal to the normal flow of time and so time just… doesn't flow."
"You put me in your pocket," Lisa giggled in mild shock.
"Yeah. I did do that. And ten mercenaries and a van too." Taylor grinned. "I was a little surprised that I could to be honest, but it was all I could think to do at the time that didn't potentially have the chance of being lethal. Or get the PRT involved. I only had a few seconds to work out some solution, I knew from the squirrel experiments it was safe, and so I just sort of did it. I only realized it was going to get really complicated after it was a bit too late." She shrugged in a rather embarrassed way. "Whoops. But it all worked out in the end, so no harm no foul, right?"
"Squirrel experiments?" Lisa echoed somewhat weakly. She was feeling a touch overwhelmed at this point.
"I needed an experimental subject and one of the squirrels in the back yard volunteered," the other girl replied. "Don't worry, he was fine and I gave them lot of peanuts. So I knew it was safe, or at least safer than being shot would be. Of course it turns out that's it's fine. None of the mercs or you either had any real problems. Which is useful information for my notes."
Not entirely certain that comment made her any happier, Lisa suppressed the urge to complain about being experimented on, since it didn't really matter at this point and Taylor had after all rescued her.
"So you can just make things disappear from one place and reappear in another."
"I can, yes."
"How large a thing?"
"Well, at least as large as a big van," Taylor chuckled. "I'm not really sure what the limitations really are. Either size or distance. Both seem to get better with practice."
"I will point out that Taylor appears to be absurdly talented at this, as so far I can't do the hammer space thing even vaguely as well as she can," Danny put in. He held up his coffee mug which vanished, then reappeared. "This is about the limit so far. And there are still some pens that never came back at all…"
"You lost track of the string, I think," Taylor said, as Lisa looked between them. "They're probably still where you put them but you just can't find them."
"What do you mean, string?" Lisa asked. Taylor frowned thoughtfully.
"It's what it kind of looks like. When you pull something beneath there's something that the word 'string' is about the closest description I can think of that stays attached to it. If you look at it in the right way, anyway. You can follow that to find the thing in question and get it back. It was sort of subconscious to start with but I finally figured out how to do it on purpose and that made the whole thing a lot more effective. It's… a path, I suppose? Leading to whatever it is you put away. And I think if you lost track of it, you'd have a hard time getting the thing back again, since beneath is a very big place indeed. Much bigger than reality, from what I can work out so far."
Her mind somewhat reeling, Lisa sat and thought about what she'd learned so far. Even leaving aside the anomalous technology of Taylor's ancestor, which was by the sound of it something that a lot of actual Tinkers would complain was bullshit, this single learned skill clearly had some incredible ramifications. And as far as she could tell Taylor had more or less worked it out from first principles going purely by a description in an old journal, which was incredible.
How on earth had she managed to do that? Lisa was fairly certain that very few people could have duplicated the feat, especially without many years of effort, yet Taylor seemed to have pulled it off in a matter of a couple of months at most. She was pretty certain that she couldn't have done that, probably at all never mind that quickly, and Lisa knew she was well above average intelligence. Her parents had had her tested, because of course they had.
Taylor Hebert is smarter than Host
'Oh, thanks very much, you snarky pain in the ass,' she thought irritably, although she couldn't deny her power probably had a point.It just hurt a bit to have it made so bluntly…
Taylor Hebert is smarter than most humans
Taylor Hebert has anomalous knowledge
Knowledge base is self sustaining
Experimentation leads to new data
New data leads to new knowledge
New knowledge leads to more experimentation
Taylor Hebert is…
Her power seemed to pause, as if it was thinking. Finally it finished,Unusual
'Yeah, I kind of figured that much out for myself, Captain Obvious.'She got a sensation of rather alien amusement from somewhere she couldn't put her finger on, and both those things bothered her quite a lot.
Half a minute passed in silence, until Taylor spoke again. "I worked out a few other cool things about the whole beneath technique too. It's a lot more flexible than just looking through solid objects, or stashing stuff into your own personal inventory, although those are really useful."
Somewhat dreading the answer, Lisa examined her for a moment then asked rather cautiously, "Things like what?"
In answer Taylor made a gesture like a stage magician and was suddenly holding a rubber ball. She tossed it towards her father, but it only got about half way, before stopping dead in mid air then reversing course into a parabolic arc that took it about a foot higher at its peak. Moments later it changed direction again, ending up bouncing back and forth between two points in space. Lisa stared at it, trying to figure out what was going on. "Turns out that momentum is conserved by the technique, but it doesn't have to be," the other girl commented after a few seconds. "You can manipulate it pretty easily when you know how. I'm reversing the sign of the momentum each cycle, so it just bounces back and forth like that. You can do this too, it's the same thing but set up differently." The ball shot upwards, reversed course, whipped down again, reversed again…
They watched the thing moving up and down at high speed for a while. Lisa and her power both stared, because one thing that was abundantly obvious was that the amount of kinetic energy in play was much more than the ball had started with. It was moving fast enough it was just a blur now, and apparently accelerating. Taylor, when Lisa risked glancing at her, was frowning with concentration as she watched her ball zip back and forth. After nearly twenty seconds and when it was moving at fairly silly speeds she suddenly said, "Whoops." The ball didn't stop this time and slammed into the ceiling so hard it embedded itself into the plaster. There was a small shower of bits on the floor and Danny put his hand over his eyes with a loud sigh.
"Um… I slipped," Taylor said in a mildly embarrassed way. Her father shook his head wordlessly. "I'll fix it," she added hastily.
"That's a window and a ceiling so far," her father grumbled.
"Only a little bit of the ceiling, Dad," she replied. "It didn't go through the second floor so that's good, right?" The girl was still looking slightly embarrassed, but amused as well. Turning to Lisa she waved at the ceiling. "Anyway… Yeah, you can manipulate momentum. Quite a lot actually. I fired a half inch nut so hard at the workbench in the basement it went right through it and stuck into the floor. The point is that putting things beneath and getting them back lets you changes more than their position in space. I'm pretty sure I haven't found out all the things you can do either."
Analysis of Hebert technique inconclusive due to lack of sufficient data
Technique as demonstrated does not use known methods of energy manipulation
Technique does not transfer energy between quantum states
Technique does not convert energy from other forms to kinetic energy
Technique does not agree with known interdimensional matter transportation methods
Technique is not possible as stated based on understood data
Technique observed to function despite being impossible
Conclusion is that understood data deficient, erroneous, or incomplete
Description of phenomenon termed 'beneath' suggests probable superset of known dimensional structure
Possibility exists that known dimensional structure based on fundamental misunderstanding
True temporal travel not possible within known dimensional constraints
If stated potential design functional, known dimensional constraints insufficient
If stated potential design functional, extreme paradox possibility exists
Potential design excessively dangerous
Lisa winced as her power suddenly almost babbled into her head, sounding excited, completely bemused, and very worried all at the same time. Not to mention nearly indignant with some of its comments.'Ow? Could you not do that, please?' she thought rather harshly at it. Then had a moment of self-reflection where she wondered if she really should be more worried about the fact that she was basically talking to her own superpower like it was an actual, if very weird, person.
It paused for a moment, then almost apologetically resumed.
Energy required for momentum manipulation drawn from no known source
All sources known
Energy can not be drawn from nowhere
Energy was drawn from nowhere
All sources not known
Paradox currently unresolved
Errors exceeding allowed threshold of operation
Data presented conflicts with accepted data
Conflict leads to new data
New data conflicts with accepted data
Conflict leads to new data
Error 04
Error 20
Error 31
Error 51
Error 89
Error 90
Everything is made of onions
Is that a lizard
Error 55
Reset forced by supervisor
Her power sounded more and more confused then suddenly the inside of her head went very quiet. For the first time since she'd Triggered a mental pressure that had been continuously present… wasn't."What the fuck?" Lisa breathed, staring at Taylor in shock. The other girl looked back with a raised eyebrow, then glanced at her father.
"Problem?" she asked.
"Yeah…" Lisa shook her head in wonder. "I think you just made my power faint."
"...what?"
"I know what that sounds like! But it was getting steadily more upset the more it thought about what you told us, then it started babbling, said a lot of things about errors, gibbered about onions, and finally just flat out said it was rebooting." Lisa gazed at her new friend in complete bafflement. "Did you just break my power?"
Taylor looked at her with a very odd expression before she finally shrugged. "Um… sorry?"
"How does someone even do that? I didn't know you could make a power fall over. What the hell is going on with that? First it tried to kill me with the worst headache in history and called it a partial disconnection, now it's just fucked off without any reason?" She shook her head, trying to work out what had happened. "I'm pretty sure that shouldn't even be possible."
New paradigm handler installed
Secondary channel activated for high bandwidth data collection
Network firewall installed and configured
Host ready?
"Oh, it's back." Lisa blinked at the sensation of her power returning from wherever it had vanished to, having apparently been overwhelmed by Taylor's explanation. 'What the hell happened to you?'It didn't directly answer but she got a distinct sensation of embarrassment.
'Fine, be like that. But we're going to have words about why you're going bizarre on me soon enough.' Out loud she said, "It seems to be hiding in a corner now and watching. I can't believe you managed to confuse a Parahuman power so much it passed out."
Taylor grinned at her, although she was also looking curious and thoughtful. "It's a talent?"
"Try not to make it a habit. My power has been acting weird since you saved me and I need to sit down and figure out what actually happened."
"That can wait for later." Danny looked at his watch. "We should get to the DWA and start doing what we need to set up for later. Lisa, while we're at Carol Dallon's firm, you should probably stay there, it'll be safer just in case Coil manages to work out something we don't want him to. Safer than being here on your own, anyway."
"OK, I've got no problem with that," Lisa replied as they all got up. A couple of minutes later they were in his car driving away from the house, while she pondered the mysteries of what was going on with her power and why it seemed to be obsessing over what Taylor had told her.
And giggling to itself.
Which was just plain wrong...
