A/N: As stated in the previous chapter, the chapter lengths between this chapter and the last were off, so I'm posting both.
Chapter Ten: Living the Dream
Masquerade is not happy with us.
Oldman will get over it. How much did he charge you?
5k.
Ouch. Like I said, we're not all nice people. That said, I have very highly ranked sponsors within the organization. If there's a problem, they should take it up with me or my sponsors, you should be fine. Have you decided on a cape name?
Quintessence.
Nice. As in the classical Greek fifth element of unearthly perfection?
Taylor looked at the text string on her phone for a moment before remembering that Entourage held a Ph.D. For all her youth, the woman was exceedingly intelligent and educated.
Yeah.
I like it. Good choice. I'll submit the SPCA license application today. You'll probably have to go in for an examination next week, but in costume you should be fine. Do you have everything else you need for now?
She needed friends. She needed her family back. She needed her life back. Taylor shook her head and thumbed a reply. I'm good, thank you for all your help.
My pleasure, Darling. Talk to you soon.
With that essential communication done, Taylor turned to her project for that afternoon. She found herself with a laptop, a mobile hotspot, and a small gas-powered generator. The generator seemed wildly inefficient to her, and she had some ideas she thought could improve it, but for now she was more interested in getting online.
It took almost an hour to get the laptop and the mobile hotspot up and running. The hotspot used a pre-paid account and it looked like Entourage had paid for three months' worth of heavy data usage.
As soon as she had the generator going to charge the laptop and had the laptop updated, she went online to try and get some idea of what was happening in the world.
The various news sites all echoed the same message—things were falling apart. The Three Blasphemes had assassinated the Prime Minister of Belgium. The governor of Ohio, her entire family, and three hundred of her supporters were killed by the Slaughterhouse Nine despite efforts by the local Protectorate and PRT to save them. Four heroes and fifty-three PRT agents died trying to defend the governor, whose policies seemed key to reviving the state and possibly propelling the woman to the White House. The only good thing to come out of it was the death of two of the Slaughterhouse villains.
The Chinese Union-Imperial invaded Taiwan, forcibly enslaved the small nation's capes, and ruthlessly slaughtered the entire Taiwanese independence movement. No one cared. There were no talks of sanctions or reprisals or support from America or any other nation. It didn't even make front page news—it was buried in the International Section of BBC news. No American news outlet cared enough to talk about it.
On that same site, she read about how the last remaining functional government in sub-Saharan Africa collapsed when Ashbeast wondered slowly through the country's capital, vaporizing everything in his path. There were next to no causalities from the walking volcano because of how slowly he moved, and yet the fragile government could not survive the loss of its infrastructure and collapsed in a civil war that raged around the meandering monster. The lines of refugees fleeing the impossible creature and the war that seemed to follow him made for great content for the news sites. And yet, once again, there was no indication of any international aid.
The news sites made for a horrid comment on the world.
Taylor wanted more than anything to do a search on her name. However, she knew better than to risk it. Instead, she searched the Kill Order list the PRT put out. The Slaughterhouse Nine were at the top, as always. Jack Slash, the Siberian, Crawler, Bonesaw, Mannequin…those names gave even the strongest heroes nightmares. She scrolled down the list until she came to the end. Her name wasn't there.
Worried and a little confused, she searched PRT's Most Wanted List.
It read like a copy of the Kill Order list, but this time she found her name. The picture of her was from her last yearbook photo—a grainy, small color shot. Her lips were curled in a pathetic attempt at a smile she didn't feel, and even then she looked haunted. The PRT had digitally made her eyes black.
TAYLOR ANNE HEBERT
Wanted For Capital Murder With a Parahuman Ability; Mass Assault With a Parahuman Ability
DESCRIPTION
Date of Birth: June 19, 1995 Place of Birth: Brockton Bay, New Hampshire
Hair: Brunette Eyes: Black* (no visible sclera or pupil)
Sex: Female Race: White
Occupation: Student Nationality: American
Languages: English Distinguishing Marks: Pure black eyes
REWARD
The PRT is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading directly to the live arrest of Taylor Anne Hebert.
REMARKS
Prior to her parahuman trigger, Hebert was described by school officials as a troubled loner with potentially suicidal tendencies following the death of her mother in a car accident two years prior. She did not participate in any after school activities and was not a member of any social groups.
CAUTION
Taylor Anne Hebert is wanted for the alleged murder of three fellow students (ages 15, 15 and 16) with a parahuman power, manslaughter for the death of five more students killed in a fire she started, and the assault of 1,600+ high school students, teachers and staff with a parahuman power.
Additionally, during initial attempts to detain her, Hebert used a parahuman ability to assault and severely injure multiple PRT agents and three Protectorate members. While in custody, Hebert used her parahuman ability to murder a senior Protectorate member.
After a lawful order sentencing Hebert to the Baumann Parahuman Detention Center, she used her power to damage her transport and master Air Force personnel at Grand Forks Air Force Base to facilitate her escape.
SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
As authorized under Title 18 USC Chap 203, the PRT has classified Taylor Anne Hebert as an extreme danger to herself and others. Do not approach or interact with Hebert in any capacity. If you spot the suspect, call your nearest PRT office immediately.
- PRT North-Northeast, Brockton Bay
"Suicidal?" she whispered. A corner of her mind stressed out how minor a point it was, and yet it still bothered more than anything else that that the school told the PRT she was suicidal. Suicide was the one thing she never considered, even at the worst of her bullying.
She looked back over the page again, this time dwelling on the Reward section. Live arrest, it said. It wasn't much, but at least there wasn't a kill order out on her. Even so, looking at her face on a wanted notice didn't just chill her. It filled her with a deep, driving rage. The fuckers took everything from her, and even after that they just wouldn't leave her alone.
She made a point of looking at a few other of the wanted parahumans on the list, hoping to obscure her interest in her own notice. However, she couldn't resist using the opportunity to look at Parahuman's Online, the largest dedicated Parahuman forum in the world. It took only moments to set up a throw-away account.
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Topic: Winslow Simurgh
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►America
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 10th 2011:
First confirmed use of telepathy in a cape outside of Simurgh and she fucking burns down her school, kills eight girls, knocks the entire school out, and then fucking kills the most popular hero in the city.
On the first day of school after Christmas Break, PRT and Protectorate responded to a parahuman event that burned down half of Winslow High School in good old Brockton Bay, NH, home of Nazis and Endbringer-fighting fire dragons. They found the entire student body, faculty and staff unconscious for nearly two hours. If not for PRT agents rushing in to drag kids out, the body count would have been a lot worse.
At the center of it, they found Taylor Hebert pretty much untouched surrounded by the remains of three other girls. When the agents tried to take her in, she used telekinesis and telepathy to not just knock them out, but to keep them out of commission for days, and then handed the Protectorate heroes their asses until Armsmaster managed to tranq her.
Three days later, after murdering Miss Militia while in a level 10 containment room, the Chief Director and the New Hampshire Superior Court signed off on her Birdcage Order.
Only, guess what? She escaped the transport at 40,000 feet going Mach 2!
► XxVoid CowboyxX (Winslow Survivor)
Replied on January 10, 2011:
It's a set up. I know Taylor, we sat together in classes and she was always nice to me. What the news isn't telling is that the girls who died were fucking with her hard. I heard they pushed her into her locker with a bunch of toxic shit and then just stood there laughing while she screamed to get out. I read that triggers make capes do weird things. If I'd been locked up like that and I triggered, I'd probably go nuts too.
► Psych Ward (Winslow Parent)
Replied on January 10th, 2011:
Does it matter? My daughter wasn't able to sleep for almost a week without waking up in the middle of the night screaming her head off about monsters and fire. She's not the only one. The PRT provided counseling for all the kids, and from what I've learned every single one of them have had severe traumatic flashbacks to the psychic attack Hebert caused. Whether she was abused or not, she hurt a lot of innocent kids. More importantly, she murdered Miss Militia. As far as this parent is concerned, she really is the Winslow Simurgh and deserves that Birdcage order.
So it went, entry after entry, in pages already numbering over a hundred, all condemning her for what happened at Winslow. Part of her wanted so much to start typing her side of the story. But if she did, she'd be telling the PRT right where she was. Not that it would help—telling the principal and teachers about the bullying didn't help at all. Why would telling people her side of the story help anything?
She backed out of PHO entirely and checked local news.
WINSLOW SIMURGH IN SEATTLE!
Her stomach clenched as she read about her brief stay in Bayview West hospital. The PRT caught everything on security cameras, including…
Taylor winced. She executed someone. There was no other way to say it—he was never a danger to her even as he held a gun to her head. The whole situation was just so frustrating, and she was hurting and angry that instead of getting credit for saving a hundred lives she was facing arrest, that Taylor simply lost control.
Another body to add to her count. Cursing, she turned the laptop off.
She spent the rest of the day making a list of things that might help make the place more livable. The note pad and packet of disposable pens she purchased from the Buy'n Large were invaluable.
As the sun set, she turned on one of the battery-powered lanterns and refilled the propane heater. Returning to the cot where she'd been making her list, she was surprised at what she'd drawn. It wasn't a list—it was a detailed diagram with script she'd never seen before, but could somehow read as if born to it. She stared at the diagram with a sense of increasing confusion.
Had she drawn this? She flipped the page from the molecular furnace she'd drawn and looked in shock at the next page, which carefully diagrammed out a lightsaber. Not just how to make it, but the chemical formulas of the various alloys and parts within. Page after page of alien script outlined details of technology that she could never have imagined.
Except…it was familiar. Though she hated thinking about that horrid day when her old life ended, she remembered the vision of the creatures in space. More than remembered—the knowledge felt like it had been branded into her skull with near digital quality. And with that information came unbelievable streams of technology beyond anything she had imagined before. Weapons and robots and cities that floated in space.
Just considering it made her eyes water and her head hurt.
"What am I?" she breathed aloud. "Am I a fucking tinker, too?"
The thought was interrupted by achime from her phone. She scrambled over to the pew where she'd set it while she cooked herself a hamburger patty on her camping grill for dinner.
It was Entourage.
Great news! Your license application went through on a priority basis. PRT asked you to report to UW Medical Center Monday morning at 10 am for testing. You're officially listed as a corporate-sponsored rogue healer named Quintessence. If you pass, your license will be approved immediately.
Taylor's hands shook and she had to slow down because of typos. Will you be there?
I can be if you need me.
Can be. Not Would be. Taylor paused as she started to type in a desperate 'Yes, please!' and thought about the subtext of what Entourage said. There seemed to be an expectation there—similar to being sent to a store owned by a hostile party. There was an expectation of self-sufficiency.
No, I should be fine. I'll text or call if I need anything.
Great. Good luck!
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Taylor spent Sunday trying to make her space livable, and when she'd done as much as she could, she put on sunglasses, a baseball cap, and risked a trip out in her sedan to the local Goodwill for clothes, and then a grocery store for essential toiletries.
After all the running, fighting and fear, it felt odd to have a day…off.
Monday morning, though, felt different. Taylor woke early, cleaned up as best she could with the camping equipment, and then pulled on her new healing costume. Ready for the day, she climbed into her little economy car. She would like to have said she was getting comfortable driving, but the truth was she still felt nervous doing it. She especially felt odd driving in her new costume as she passed through the dead heart of old Seattle.
Taylor found herself remembering the first day of Mr. Gladly's World Affairs class. The day was remarkable only because Mr. Gladly began to class by screening Tony Borden's award-winning documentary Surviving Seattle in class. Her mother was a huge fan of Borden, and so for that reason, if no others, she remembered the documentary very well.
The former chef turned documentarian was one of the lucky few to survive Leviathan's attack on the city. The film he made about the attack even won an Emmy.
Taylor, trying her best to ignore the spit balls Madison kept shooting at her, watched the blend of historical footage and recreations with the deep appreciation only the daughter of a literature professor could have. Borden might as well have been speaking in iambic pentameter, his narrative was so lyrical.
The attack occurred during the morning rush hour of April 1st, 2003, when a thirty-foot tall macro-hydrokinetic monster appeared without warning in Elliott Bay.
"Pike Place Market was already under water when the first alarm began to wail," Borden said, managing with that simple statement to convey the utter horror of the experience. "I was on the sixth floor of the Crown Plaza. I heard the roar of the water first. Denny, my producer, grabbed the camera. Neither of us realized it would be one of the last things he ever did."
The horizon to the east was glowing orange with the approach of day, but to the West it was dark. The footage Borden's producer caught didn't show water—it showed the darkness encroaching across the city, from Duwamish Head to the Marina, as the water wiped out power and all the structures in its way.
The first wave made it through downtown. The next ten waves swept over the entire isthmus, dumping millions of tons of salt water and debris into the fresh water of Lake Washington on the other side. The monster himself emerged just north of Mercer Street and began his rampage.
Because of the critical early hour and lack of warning, the first capes to respond did so without any coordination and died almost immediately.
Borden's mesmerizing narration summed it up better than any textbook could. "By the time the Triumvirate arrived, almost one hundred thousand people, including Denny Tortini, were dead, and another two hundred thousand seriously wounded. It could have been even worse. I'm alive today because of Legend. The heroes saved as many people as they could, but they couldn't save the city. Either by accident, or more likely by design, the stresses Leviathan placed on the topography of the city resulted in one of the most powerful earthquakes the region had ever seen."
Though few cameras caught Leviathan's arrival, several caught good shots of the monster, scarred and pitted from his battle with Eidolon, Legend and Alexandria, slipping back into Puget Sound as the city shook itself apart.
The rest of the documentary concentrated on the efforts of those that remained to rebuild the once great city despite bureaucratic stalling and middling interest in doing so from Washington. Like Newfoundland, the government considered Seattle a lost cause. Any shipping in the Northwest now routed through the port of Everett or south to Tacoma.
She thought of the documentary now as the bus drove on an overpass directly where Tony Borden's producer died.
Taylor saw a partially collapsed mountain of concrete in the middle of a scoured field of mud, cracked cement and several copses of young trees. A long finger of water pointed toward them, as if about to flick half of the crumbled stadium away.
She remembered from the documentary that the Seahawks used to play there, at the Kingdome. Now it, like the Seahawks, was gone. In fact, almost all of old Downtown Seattle was simply gone. The only thing new or intact was the highway which ran over and through the dead heart of the shattered city. Traffic slowed as the elevated highway collapsed down to two lanes each way. She could see cement columns and partial sections of the old highway rising from the apocalyptic vision of Seattle's corpse.
The scars Leviathan left were breath-taking. She saw towers literally torn in half, while others looked as if they'd been hit by cosmic baseball bats. Small lakes littered city blocks that once housed hotels and office buildings, while the famous Pike's Place Market was a roughly-hewn inlet now.
Eventually, though, she reached the relatively unscathed University District in the northern part of the city. The difference between north and south was startling, primarily because all the city, county and state administrative services moved north. That meant North Seattle had come a city in it's own right, propped up by various government agencies, while the economically devastated south and west side of the city continued to flounder.
The University of Washington Medical Center even had new construction going on—a tall structure that looked like it would add a lot of space to the exiting hospital.
It took a lot of slow driving and more than a few honking horns from impatient drivers before Taylor found the sign leading to an underground parking area across the wide street to the hospital itself.
Settled in a spot as slowly and carefully as she could, with only a minor tap of the front bumper against the garage wall, Taylor turned off the car's ignition and stared at the blank cement wall as she tried to gather her courage.
Her stomach felt like she was on a rollercoaster. She knew that police, the FBI and the PRT were all looking for her. And yet, wearing nothing but a silly costume and a mask, she expected to be able to walk out into the open and get a government license? The whole situation just seemed so ridiculous. The alarm on her phone dinged. She had five minutes.
"Come on. You can do this."
It took an act of will to climb out of the car. She wore her crimson slacks and vest over one of the plain white shirts she bought from the Buy'n Large. Fortunately, the off-white overcoat that Masquerade made for her was lined enough to provide some protection from the cold. With her hood and mask the car mirror confirmed that her face was sufficiently hidden.
With a deep, shaky sigh, Taylor sank herself deeply into the Force, extended the suggestion of obfuscation, and started walking quickly toward the medical center. Even with a projected field of indifference, Taylor herself felt odd walking amongst the crowds of people coming from or to the University hospital.
She fell in with them, depending on her power alone to not be noticed.
Until the time came when she had no choice. She stepped through the doors with a line of patients and family into a large, open lobby filled with light, steel and glass. Compared to the area she just left, it looked modern and rich and clean. The information desk stood across the large, crowded lobby.
Her phone told her it was time. With another shaky sigh, Taylor let her suggestion drop and started walking across the floor. At first, no one noticed. Slowly, though, people started subtly moving away. In today's society, wearing a mask was a statement. It was similar to wearing a gun in that someone in a mask had a power, and most powers somehow could be weaponized.
By the time she reached the information desk, the hundred or so people in the lobby were aware that a parahuman stood in their midst. Behind her mask, Taylor felt her cheeks burning. It was too late to change her mind, though. The moment she let people realize she was there, her course was set.
It appeared the only people not intensely aware of her were the couple at the desk in front of her. The man was just barely her height, with dark, curly hair and a long, arched nose. He was talking quickly and incessantly, while in the Force he projected jarring nervousness. The woman beside him was hugely pregnant. In the Force, Taylor could feel two sparks of brilliant, untainted new life within the woman's bulging stomach.
The mother was giving her information to get checked in while the nervous young father looked around the room until he spotted Taylor and snorted. "What's with the mask?"
He was so completely wrapped up in his own thoughts he didn't make the connection everyone else in the room did at a glance. He sounded disbelieving and even insulting. An odd thing happened, then. All Taylor's fear and self-consciousness just dried up in the face of this man's sarcasm. She responded in kind.
"I'm so scary I'll drive you mad without it," she said dryly.
The man snorted again. "Right, kid. You supposed to be a cape or something?"
"Or something."
"What's your power? Filing?"
"I could show you, but then the PRT would be after me. Who needs that kind of attention? Besides, you're going to be busy enough with your twins, you don't need to pick a fight with a cape."
The man stopped smiling, and his wife turned to look at Taylor in surprise. "Excuse me?"
Taylor scanned the woman almost instinctively.
"They're perfectly healthy. The girl is going to be around six pounds. The boy will be around five pounds. Your blood pressure is a little high, but you'll be fine. Your husband, however, has tar in his lungs, and an arrhythmia in his heart. If he wants to see his kids graduate, he needs to stop smoking those cigars and see a cardiologist."
The wife turned and glared at her husband. "You told me you stopped six months ago!"
"But Alessa, you can't…."
She grabbed his coat. "Come on." She led her husband away toward admissions, talking firmly to him the entire time she waddled.
The three people behind the desk were staring wide-eyed at Taylor as she took a step forward.
"Quintessence. My corporate contact scheduled an appointment with a Doctor White at 10 am for a parahuman healing license."
The older of the three frowned. "White…oh, yeah. The PRT doctor. They…have a license for that?"
"I hope so. Otherwise I got all dressed up for nothing."
The man laughed. "I got it, it's on the PRT registry. I've sent the message. A PRT agent will be down shortly to escort you up."
Taylor nodded, suddenly nervous again. She didn't realize there would be PRT agents. She drifted away from the desk, once more aware of all the people staring at her. Wherever she went, people subtly drifted away, trying to keep a safe distance as if she were radioactive.
The PRT agent who arrived was wearing blue nurse's scrubs instead of heavy armor. She looked briefly around the room until she saw Taylor's mask and smiled.
"Quintessence? Hi, I'm Rachel Bends with PRT. Pleasure to meet you."
She offered a hand which Taylor took after only a moment's hesitation. "You don't look like a PRT agent."
"I'm an RN first, PRT agent second," Rachel said. "Doctor White is this way, if you'll follow me?"
Rachel led Taylor through a dizzying array of hallways to an interior maze cut off from the rest of the hospital by a thick wall, a solid steel door, and a security cubicle secured behind what Taylor suspected was bullet-proofed glass. A fully uniformed and armed PRT agent sat at the desk behind the glass.
"Ralph, this is Quintessence for her 10 o'clock."
The agent looked Taylor up and down with a blank face. "Are you carrying any weapons or devices?"
"Just my phone." She fished it out of her jacket to show him.
"Under the scanner, please."
Frowning behind her mask, Taylor held the phone under a Tinker-made scanner. She saw no response, but the agent nodded. "Very well, you're clear."
The door opened with a buzzing sound. Not nearly as confident as she was a moment before, Taylor followed Rachel into the PRT section of the hospital. Which…looked a lot like a typical ER.
When Taylor first heard the name Yvonne White, her imagination painted an image of a tall, Nordic beauty with blonde hair, chiseled cheeks, icy blue eyes and a chest that could crack glaciers. What she was met with was a short, squat black woman who barely reached Taylor's chin and looked vaguely familiar.
She had a much friendlier smile than Taylor would have imagined, as well. "You're Quintessence then?" She bustled over and offered a hand which Taylor shook. "I'm Doctor White, pleasure to meet you. I'd introduce you to my colleagues, but protocols say no names. So, tell me about your powers."
She also spoke very fast.
"Um, well, I can sense illness or pain. And I can use my power to encourage the body to heal itself really fast."
The doctor nodded, removed a little spiral notebook and made a few notes. "I see. Do you have to touch the patient?"
"No, not really."
"Do you think you could use your power to change someone's body?"
Taylor frowned. "No, I don't think so. My power…prefers health, I guess you'd say? Changing what should be doesn't feel like it would work. Otherwise, I'd…" She gestured to her chest. "You know?"
Dr. White looked down at a very prodigious chest and laughed. "Believe it or not, yeah. These suckers are a strain on the back. How about severed limbs? Could you regrow a severed limb?"
"I don't believe so, but I've never tried. I think I could help reattach a limb, but I couldn't just make them grow a new limb. Sorry, I'm not Panacea."
The doctor raised a brow. "Not many people around here know that name."
Taylor's heart stilled a moment before she forced herself to breathe. She suddenly remembered where she'd seen the doctor before and almost bolted out of the hospital. This was the woman at Bayview West, the doctor who was with Nutcracker.
It took every ounce of control she had to take a deep breath and force herself to be calm. "I researched healing capes when I realized what I could do. She was mentioned by name in half the articles I read about the SPC Act. She's never had to get a license because she doesn't charge."
The doctor nodded. "I could see that—she's the most powerful healer in the world as far as we know. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We have five patients in separate rooms. Each has a separate malady we're going to ask you to heal to the best of your ability. I will be asking questions the entire time to get a feeling for your power. Healing capes often have a very narrow specialty or limitation, and the goal of this exercise is to find yours. Do you understand?"
Taylor nodded.
"Very good. Let's get started, shall we?"