"Test run seventy four complete. Field decay as predicted. Area is safe to enter." Angus clicked off the microphone, glanced out the window to check the status of the test zone visually, then turned to the instruments on his console. As the others in the control room moved around doing their own jobs, he scrolled back through the recorded results and jotted down notes as he checked the results against the calculated parameters. Everything lined up nearly perfectly, showing yet again that Taylor's theories were sound. By now he'd have been startled if that wasn't the case. The only variation shown made him frown a little, then turn to another screen and carefully inspect the results.

"Andy, we've got a power fluctuation on generator nine again." He looked over his shoulder at one of his grad students, who nodded absently as he checked his own computer.

"Yeah, I see it. I thought that one was maybe a little marginal on the initial test phase, although it did pass. I think the tesseract coil former may have a microfracture which is very slightly distorting the field shape. Probably a tiny flaw in the original casting we didn't spot. I'll get it pulled and a new one swapped in, then have Kate check it out."

"Good, thank you." Angus stretched, smiling. "Other than that, everything's working nicely. The latest modifications seem to have improved field density by nearly ten percent."

"9.8742 percent, in fact." Andy chuckled. "What was it that Taylor calculated it would be?"

"9.87421 percent. Exactly." Angus grinned as he turned the chair around. "And I have little doubt that if our current instruments actually read to five digits past the decimal point we'd find that missing 0.00001 percent lurking there."

"That girl is scary smart," his student noted wisely, several of the other people present in the room nodding agreement.

"To a level I've never had the privilege of seeing before," Angus smiled. "I am so very pleased that we've ended up working together. It's certainly been interesting."

"Yeah." The younger man looked at him with a smile of his own. "A lot of people are going to end up being surprised when all this eventually becomes public knowledge. She's almost single-handedly rewritten half of physics." After a moment, he asked, "So when is she going to become Doctor Hebert?"

"To be honest she's already met or in fact exceeded pretty much everything required for a Ph.D thesis just in the initial phases of our research," Angus replied, shaking his head in wonder. "We'll have to see, though. There are some practical issues past that, but in my own view she thoroughly deserves such a qualification. Most likely in multiple disciplines. I have little doubt that in the end she'll accumulate more degrees than all of us put together. On the other hand she doesn't seem all that interested in such things, she's more invested in learning."

"About what?" Anise, one of the other grad students on his team, asked.

"Essentially everything," Angus laughed. "She does have more curiosity about the world than anyone else I've ever encountered." The rest of them grinned. "All right, get that generator replaced as soon as possible and we'll reset for the next run this afternoon. Until then, I have a conference call with DARPA about Project Hawkflight, so I'll be unavailable for..." He looked at his watch and thought. "Probably three hours. Try not to collapse the building into a singularity while I'm busy, if you could."

He stood and left the room as the others smiled, hearing them get to work behind him, and thinking yet again that Taylor's mother would have found this entire situation both highly amusing and something to be intensely proud of.

Her daughter had certainly exceeded all expectations to a remarkable degree, he mused as he walked to his office. He wondered what her next trick would be...

Taylor looked up as her father came into her room, his face showing he was rather sad but as always at this time trying to not betray that. Unfortunately for him she was much better at reading his expression than he was at hiding it. "Ready?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," she replied, equally subdued, as she stood and put the textbook on astrophysics she'd been correcting with a pen to one side. Smoothing down her clothes, she checked in the mirror that she looked right, then walked out after him. At the bottom of the stairs she put her coat on and picked up a small backpack, then followed him to the car. Both of them got in, he started it and backed out of the driveway, then headed for a destination some miles away. Neither of them said anything while he drove, busy with their own thoughts as they were.

She looked in the side mirror and noticed some cars back a familiar vehicle, knowing it contained a pair of people who were tasked with keeping her and her father safe. No one had really talked about it but she had a good memory and despite whichever agency it was cycling through quite a number of vehicles and personnel she'd quickly memorized all of them over the last few months. There would be another one in traffic ahead of them too, she knew, and most likely at least one more in the general area pacing them from the side.

All in all she didn't mind. They were doing their job and were very discreet, and it was a little flattering thinking that a whole secret government team was set up specifically to keep her and her dad safe. Considering the world, it wasn't a bad thing to have backup, she thought. As long as they stayed out of the way unless something happened she was fine with it, and who knew? They might one day actually be needed. She'd much rather have them and never require the support than find out that she did need them and no one was there. The thought of ending up in some horrible situation all alone gave her chills. For a number of reasons.

After an uneventful trip, they arrived and parked the car. Both got out, her father locking the doors, them coming around to her as she waited. He put his hand on her shoulder, which she covered with her own, giving him a small smile. Then they walked into the building, the receptionist recognizing them and smiling.

Five minutes later after signing in and going up three floors in the elevator, they stopped outside a door with '307' written on it. Her father looked at her. "I'll wait in the usual place. Take as long as you need."

"Thanks, dad," she said gratefully. He patted her shoulder again, then walked off in the direction of the visitor's lounge. Behind her, the elevator dinged, opening when she glanced back to reveal a man in a suit who looked at her without reaction, then headed in the other direction. Almost smiling on the inside, she took a breath, then opened the door, entering the room. Closing it softly behind herself, she sat down next to the bed, looking at the figure lying in it.

"Hi, Ems," she said very quietly as she put her hand out and brushed some of the red hair aside from the face of the comatose girl in front of her. "How have you been?"

There was no answer, of course. There hadn't been one since that day.

"Yeah," she sighed after a few seconds, leaning forward and carefully and very gently hugging her oldest friend. "That's what I thought."

After a moment, she sat back in her chair and picked up her backpack, opening it and pulling out a book, then dropping the bag on the floor once more. "Things are going well for me and Dad, and everyone at the DWU and Gravtec. It's a lot of fun. I've nearly finished the home schooling course too, although Dad was saying that maybe I should try Arcadia next year just so I don't forget how to talk to people my own age."

She paused, smiling a little. "I don't know, though. I like the people I'm talking to right now, some of them are really cool. You'd like Professor Drekin, he's really smart and has helped us enormously. Doctor Calhoun is neat too. And you wouldn't believe some of the things I'm learning."

Taylor glanced at the various monitors, assessing the readings. "Doesn't look like anything's changed. I guess that's good and bad." She turned back to the unconscious girl. "I wish Panacea did brains," she sighed faintly, smiling regretfully. "She's so good with everything else, but…"

The room fell into silence only broken by the faint electronic sounds from the monitoring equipment. Eventually, she shook her head. "One day, I'm going to find those people and really do something horrible to them, trust me on that, Ems. But for now, I thought today you'd like something different," she said, opening the book. "Mom loved this one, she used to read it to me when I was sick. It's really old but I think you'll like it."

Flipping pages, she found the beginning of the text, and began, "At the first smile of day, when the sun was just beginning to shine on the summits of the hills, men whose custom was to live by rapine and violence ran to the top of a cliff that stretched toward that mouth of the Nile which is called Heracleot..."

Her quiet voice filled the room for the next two hours.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Danny paused outside the door, listening, then carefully opened it. He found his daughter sitting with a book in her lap, one hand holding one of Emma's under the covers. She glanced up at him as he entered, smiling in a regretful way.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Same as always, Dad," she replied. He picked up her backpack and held it open for her to put the book, an old one he remembered well from his wife's collection of literature, into. She'd always had a slightly odd outlook on suitable bedtime stories, he reflected with sad amusement as he zipped it up and watched Taylor lean over Emma's face, her own long curls hiding the pale form below her.

"I miss you, Ems," he heard very faintly, then she stood, reluctantly letting go of her friend's hand. Putting his hand on her back he guided her out of the room, taking a last glance back at his own oldest friend's youngest daughter with the usual feeling of suppressed rage. Not showing any of it, although he suspected that Taylor knew, he walked next to her to the elevator. While they were descending he studied her face. She was clearly, and entirely reasonably, sad, but was bearing up as she always seemed to.

"One day she'll come back," he said softly.

"I really want to believe that, Dad," she replied, not sounding convinced.
"The doctors say her coma isn't the result of major brain damage, after all," he added. "Just some lingering affects of the attack. It could end any time."

"Or it might never end," the girl said with a small depressed shrug. "That's the problem. No one knows."

"Unfortunately true," he was forced to agree as the doors opened. They signed out of the hospital, then headed to the car. As they got in, he looked up, then pointed. "Hey, Glory Girl and Panacea," he said, indicating the flying figure descending to the helipad on top of the building.

Taylor glanced out the window, then pulled her phone out. He smiled as he started the car. She seemed to be quite interested in taking photos of Parahumans at the moment. If nothing else it had the benefit of raising her spirits.

"Chinese or Thai today?" he asked as he pulled out onto the main street.

His daughter, who was concentrating on her phone with a small frown, looked up at him and replied, "How about Italian?"

"Yeah, that works for me. Haven't had a good pasta carbonara in weeks. Gino's?"

"Sounds good, Dad," she smiled, tapping the phone screen a couple of times and putting it in her pocket with one last glance back at the hospital and a thoughtful look on her face. This cleared after a second or two and she reached out to turn the radio on, then settled back to listen to the music as he drove.

"When you've finished upending physics, you could always turn your attention to biology," he said after a couple of miles. "Give it the Hebert touch. Seems to be a fairly potent thing..."

She looked at him and snickered, then got a very thoughtful look again and went quiet.

"Oh, hell, what did I just do?" he muttered, wondering what the next oddity his daughter would come up with would be...

Oh well. He'd find out sooner or later.

Replaying a short segment of the video, Taylor nodded slowly. "OK, that probably means 'energy flux' which means that this might mean 'radiation.' I think." She made a few notes in her journal, which was slowly becoming an English to whatever the hell it was her aliens called their own language dictionary. Replaying the segment again, she listened carefully, while watching the instructor's actions. "Yeah. Got to be 'radiation.' Great, that helps." She corrected one of her notes, then moved to the next segment.

After a few hours of work, she flipped back a couple of dozen pages and studied each carefully. "I'll get it sooner or later," she assured herself, trying to work out how to make some of the sounds required. An attempt that produced a croaking gurgle which sounded like a drunk crow set her off into helpless giggles, and made her father stick his head into the basement and inquire as to the state of her mental health. Once she had, laughing, pushed him out again, she put the self imposed language lessons to one side and transferred her attention to one of her other projects.

Picking up her modified phone she plugged a USB cable into it, then downloaded the latest recorded data to her analysis program and started work on it. A while later she sat back and studied the screen closely, one eyebrow up. "Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser as a certain famous girl would say," she mumbled, running one fingernail down from where a specific curve intersected another one, while making calculations in her head.

"Interesting. Very, very interesting," she added under her breath as she picked up a different notebook and flicked through it looking for the right place. Finding it, she checked the data there, then slowly nodded. "Huh. I was right. Cool."

Making another note, she put the book down on her workbench and studied the graphs in silence for a while. Then she turned to the other screen and fired up the circuit design CAD package.

The new data sparked some ideas she needed new sensors for, and that was going to need some careful design work.

There was Science to be done.

She enjoyed that.

"The Path has become… uncertain."

"What does that mean?"

"I have no idea."

"You have no idea?"

"I know. It worries me too..."