A/N: Chap 24 Review Responses are in my forums as normal. Many people noticed a continuity error in the last chapter resulting from a discarded draft that I didn't quite edit out enough. It's been fixed. I'm also pleased to announce that I finished the first draft of the final chapters of the story. It's tentatively going to be 49 full chapters and an epilogue. Normal posting will continue weekly until the story is complete, since that is also a part of my writing/editing process.
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Ballad of A Lost Girl
On the morning Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay, Lisa Wilbourn woke up to a boiling stomach and throbbing agony from her burns. Her good eye welled with tears that just made the burns sting worse.
The door opened and Mr. Pitter walked in, pushing a large metal tub with one hand while pulling a small surgical cart with the other.
"Good morning," he said in that dead, soulless tone of his. Chronic depression. Coil killed abusive wife in return for loyalty. Only joy was treating kids. Lost everything. No longer feels anything.
The information her power delivered was nothing new, because nothing about Pitter changed. He left the door open so that one of Coil's handful of female mercenaries could see inside, and then helped Sarah out of her pajamas.
She fought him at first when they began the routine, just on principal. Her power assured her that he saw her as nothing more than a patient-a piece of meat he had to keep clean. A pet to wash and feed and keep healthy. In a sick irony, he actually was a very good nurse. Before his ex-wife destroyed his life, he might have even been a good person.
Now he was just a shell. Like Lisa herself.
Pitter had a habit of humming under his breath. He did so as he efficiently, professionally washed her. It was a children's nursery song, one he used to sing to the kids he treated.
She said nothing as he took an electric razor and shaved her still short-hair on the unburned side of her head down to the scalp. There was no good way to care for it without getting the burns wet, and so he shaved it every bath and then just sponge-washed her unburnt skin.
"Stand?"
Sarah tried. Nausea bent her over, and she would have fallen if Pitter's strong arm hadn't caught her. He held her as she vomited bile all over the floor. The act of vomiting caused knives of agony to shoot across her whole body from her burns, which just made her throw up again while sobbing.
Opioid addiction. Tolerance. Upping dosage every day for same pain relief. I'm going to die. Coil's going to use me until my power fails, and then I am going to die.
The realization of that cold, simple truth hurt, but like her knowledge of Pitter, it was nothing new. She knew the moment she woke up in agony in a concrete bunker that her life was over. But the intellectual acceptance was not equipped for the emotional and physical reality of just how long it would take for her life to end, or how much it would hurt in the meantime.
Pitter placed two morphine patches on her left shoulder. It didn't make the pain go away, but blunted the worse of the pain so she didn't throw up any more. He picked her up out of the tub, and then stood her in the middle of the floor as he carefully toweled her dry. He stepped back to his surgical cart and removed a small stack of large, individually wrapped bandages.
"Blasto made these," Pitter said casually. "Mr. Coil believes they will help heal the infections and the burns better than the last patches. They won't remove the scarring, unfortunately, but at least the burns will be healed."
Nothing new. Had patches available. Under orders not to apply them until Coil said so. Coil needs me cognizant enough to function.
Whatever her power might have told her, the sheer, numbing relief as Pitter gently layered the first patch over her burned scalp stole the strength from her knees. She flopped down to the cold, hard cement, barely feeling the pained shock of the fall against her bare skin.
In the hall way, the female mercenary looked away.
Pitter simply knelt down beside her to apply the other patches, each ten inches square. He layered them like tiles, ensuring ever square inch of her burns was covered. The relief brought tears to her good eye.
He dressed her, just like her parents used to when she was a baby.
"Please stay there," he said.
She remained frozen as he walked to the door. The mercenary carried her Beretta 92FS in her hand. It was surplus military issue, Lisa's power unhelpfully informed her. Full magazine, bullet in the barrel ready to fire.
Knows I'm a cape. Knows I could be dangerous. Will shoot me if I make any attempt to talk to her.
The worst part was how very tempted Lisa was to do just that—to engage her executioner. Suicide by mercenary. She didn't, though. Couldn't, really. It wasn't that she wasn't so miserable that suicide could be a considered a viable option. Rather, the horror that she might end up dying the same way her brother did kept her mouth shut.
Pitter returned with cleaning supplies. He mopped the floor around her, wiped down her desk and the computer monitor. When he was done with that, he removed the thin, foam mattress and bed frame.
A minute later he returned with another mercenary, carrying in a larger wooden frame which they set in the same corner. Another trip brought in a mattress—a real spring mattress with a pillow top, a large foam wedge to let her sleep at an incline, and several fluffy pillows that smelled brand new.
Next came a night stand in matching style to the frame.
Finally, to Sarah's surprise, Pitter brought in a large, flatscreen television which he secured to preexisting cables and anchors in the wall. The last thing they brought it in was a tray of food. Her power identified it was a light vegetable stew with a slice of French bread. The smell made her mouth water.
Pitter guided her back to her new bed. The mattress was so thick she could sit on it from the floor. He pushed the food tray to her, tucked the napkin into her top, and then regarded her frankly. "Do with wish me to help you eat?"
Lisa was right handed, but the burns made using her right arm unbearable. If she'd had any pride, she would have made due with her left. Her pride, though, was burned away when she watched Lung kill her friends and then laugh as he made her scream.
She nodded.
The food felt at once heavy and wonderful in her stomach. He gave her additional medication—another pain pill, and then a pill to offset the opioid-induced constipation. And then he left her sitting on her bed, staring at the blank television.
"Five, four, three, two, one…"
The door to her cell opened again, and Coil stepped inside.
"You look better," he said.
She said nothing. Given their recent exchanges, Coil took this as a victory. Lisa didn't care.
"You did a service, and in return you were rewarded," Coil said, as if speaking to a child and not one of the most highly rated thinkers in the country. "I've told you before that we could have such a mutually beneficial relationship. But now, that relationship must advance. You see, my other pet has made a prediction. Can you guess what she told me?"
Lisa flicked from Coil's featureless, bony body to her new bed and television. "Something you need me to analyze. Something big."
"Big indeed. According to my other pet, there is a better than 90% chance that Leviathan will strike Brockton Bay. More importantly, there is an 80% chance that a cape named Quintessence will join the fight."
"You mean Taylor Hebert."
"Yes, Taylor Hebert. The only known, confirmed parahuman telepath in the world. A free-telekinetic without Manton limit. A limited pre-cog and confirmed Tinker. And a powerful healer. She is important. And if she were to join us, there is very little I couldn't do to help save the world. I need you to monitor the events of this day. I need to know if her power does everything Alexandria thinks it does, and if opportunity presents itself, I need you to help me capture her. Do this for me, Tattletale, and your service will be rewarded. Right now, I've offered you relief for your burns. With Hebert at my side, I could offer you full restoration. A new team. Freedom. Will you assist me?"
Coil already knew what she would say. He used his own power to whittle down his pitch to just the right words. He checked every box—saving the world and restoring her body.
"Sure," she said, not trusting herself to say anything more.
Coil gave a satisfied nod. "Excellent. I'll have additional equipment brought in for your job today. I'm glad you made the right choice, Tattletale. You are a truly lovely, talented young woman. I would hate all that potential to go to waste."
He walked out, leaving her stomach to clench with a need to throw up again.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Lisa's new chair felt luxurious—richly upholstered, velvety fabric, since the leather could aggravate her injuries. Reclining, swivel, large enough for her to curl her feet up under her. She did so as she pulled the keyboard closer. On the new, larger steel desks, five separate monitors each articulated twenty camera views from drones that Coil had spread through the city under his civilian guise.
She was looking at direct PRT feed, and so she saw when Alexandria teleported in with Strider, the independent mover cape who had become an indispensable part of Endbringer fights. She watched as one of those capes that accompanied Alexandria spun around in obvious disorientation before falling to her knees. That particular drone did not capture sound, but Lisa felt comfortably sure that she was being very noisily sick.
Teleportation hard counter to her power.
That was definitely a point Coil would be happy to know. Most powers had a hard counter—Grue was a hard counter to Shadow Stalker, though both were dead so what did that matter? But the Siberian was a hard counter to Alexandria (any everything else). She was likely a hard counter to Eidolon as well, though they'd never tested that. For all her supposed power, for Quintessence to be susceptible to a relatively common mover power was a glaring weakness.
Lisa tried very, very hard not to pay attention to the fact that, even in her deep bunker, she could hear the Endbringer sirens.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"What the fuck is going on?"
"Holy shit did you see that? We're pushing him back!"
The voices kept pouring through the armband frequency that Coil had tapped into for Lisa's monitoring.
Though the main fight was taking place more than a mile away from the hospital where Quintessence was assisting with Panacea and Othala, the early picture Lisa pieced together was unusual compared to past fights with Leviathan shed studied. For one, in almost every fight from Kyushu to Newfoundland, the Endbringer managed a first strike that usually took out no less than ten capes.
This time, the initial strike only took two down, due in large part to Quintessence's early warning about the briefing building being targeted.
Pre-Cognition confirmed.
In one of the monitors from the hospital, Lisa could see hospital staff moving with quiet, determined efficiency through the triage area. It looked almost like a dance, the way LVNs and RNs swirled effortlessly around and between doctors and patients, always where they needed to be to ensure that Panacea or Othala had a patient in front of them. Throughout it all, like a shark in a sea of minnows, Quintessence went about from patient to patient, stabilizing and triaging more effectively than trained professionals with decades of experience.
Lisa let her eyes slip out of focus and the moment she stopped focusing on individuals, she saw the pattern.
Movement unnaturally efficient.
Directed. Like ants in a hive. Each knows where they need to be and what their job was.
Only discordant movement is Quintessence.
Not like a shark. Like the queen bee in a hive. The hive moves around her as she directs.
The armband buzzed. "Fuckin' A, did you see that! That was fuckin' beautiful!"
Australian, a flying artillery cape from Queensland. Lisa flicked her eyes to another monitor—this one a mounted camera on top of the Brockton Oil building. She took control of the monitor and zoomed in through the squall, which had momentarily moved to concentrate around the battle itself. Through the rain she could see various lines of blaster capes firing at a point below the buildings that she presumed was Leviathan. The capes moved in a V-formation, almost like geese on migration. Each shot of their various lasers and other weapons were perfectly timed and concentrated.
Even as she watched, the Endbringer must have lashed out because a blade of water flew up with such speed it seemed impossible that all the fliers wouldn't be cut in half. Abruptly the sky lit up as, against all odds and expectations, five of the most powerful force-field producing capes managed to be right where they needed be to shield the blasters from the attack.
Movement unnaturally coordinated. Directed. Each knows where they need to be and where they need to strike.
Sarah felt her jaw hanging open and she stared back down at the CC monitor where Quintessence continued moving calmly through the waves of incoming injured.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Lisa's power caused her head to throb worse than the burns. She couldn't turn it off, though, any more than she could have shut her mouth.
Quintessence hovered in the air like a black-clad angel, just feet from Leviathan's face. More astonishing yet, the Endbringer had frozen for over half a minute now, as if touched by Brockton's time-stopping Ward, Clockblocker.
Telepathic attack. Not even aware of her proximity to danger. Looking for something within Leviathan.
The monster's long, prehensile tail began to rise over its shoulder, prepared to cut Quintessence in half.
The levitating cape must have come out of her fugue state, because she screamed. The audio on the hospital's hard-mounted cameras wasn't good, but the scream was loud. And following it, a pulse of brute telekinetic power equal to something Eidolon might have produced.
The blast flattened the hospital's parking garage and the secondary clinic near the main hospital and sent Leviathan flying backward. Even as the Endbringer flew backward, though, it's water echo struck Quintessence out of the air.
The small figure flew backward in the midst of the water, struck the wall of the hospital and fell to the lake that gathered around the hospital's steps like a broken rag doll. Lisa refocused the camera and zoomed down to see Taylor Hebert's battered face, bruised and bleeding and exposed for all the world to see, since her helmet didn't survive the blow.
Movement from all of the other monitors dragged her eyes up and over. In the emergency room, nurses, faculty and healers alike stumbled and looked around in momentary confusion. They recovered quickly, but the smooth efficiency of their steps was gone.
Alexandria swooped in and clotheslined the monster as he fell. His tail reached up, wrapped around her waist, and slammed her into a vacant building. But then Scion arrived—the first and most powerful cape in the world. The fight was as good as over.
Her eyes sought the monitor where Quintessence fell and she felt her stomach drop.
Armsmaster stood swaying in the rain. One of his arms was gone at the shoulder, though not bleeding. Internal mechanism of his armor, providing treatment and pain relief.
In his good arm, he held his famous tinker-tech halberd pointed right at the unmoving face of Hebert.
A new cape arrived. Beautiful, black teenager, lighting powers. She knelt over Quintessence and shouted something at Armsmaster. He snarled back a response, and the cape, Mujaji, stumbled back from Quintessence with a confused expression.
Unmasked. Will never be Quintessence again.
The main speaker on her desk beeped loudly at her. The sound was followed moments later by Coil's silky, slimy voice. "Tattletale, report. What's happening at the hospital?"
"Quintessence faced off against Leviathan. Some type of telepathic attack that slowed him long enough for Scion to arrive. He knocked her out with his water echo. Her mask was destroyed. If you want this girl, you'd better move quick, Boss. She's been unmasked, and it looks like Armsmaster's about to murder her."
Lisa's power helpfully informed her that Coil did make a call in his civilian identity as a PRT assistant director, because a second before Armsmaster swung his halberd at the defenseless, unconscious Taylor Hebert, a streak of white light briefly overwhelmed the monitor.
Legend stood between the stumbling Armsmaster and Hebert. He arrived in the same flash of light as the laser blast that knocked Armsmaster back. Again, the hospital audio wasn't good enough to pick up exactly what they were saying, but Lisa didn't need her power to guess it was an order to stand down.
Alexandria arrived seconds later. In the sky, Eidolon floated down, but didn't land. He simply watched. Others were emerging from the hospital—the ambulatory injured, nurses and doctors. Many had phones and were recording everything.
New outlets paid good money for street-level Endbringer footage.
The deed was done. Quintessence's private identify was destroyed.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Legend walked purposefully down the narrow "hall" of the triage area of Brockton General. On either side, curtains provided some modicum of privacy to the injured capes. However, unlike any Endbringer fight he'd seen (and he'd seen all but a handful), more than half the spaces were empty, the curtains drawn back and the beds untouched.
The normal statistics of a fight against Leviathan was one in four capes dead, with injuries easily topping fifty percent. On bad days, casualties topped fifty percent or more with injuries approaching seventy-five percent.
So far, they were looking at a ten percent casualty rate and twenty percent injures. All signs pointed back to one reason: Quintessence. Taylor Hebert. The Winslow Simurgh.
At the end of the hall, he reached the private rooms. These were mostly in service for the senior Protectorate heroes injured in the fight, such as Chevalier and Bastion. New Wave had two family members here, he was sad to note. Brandish stood outside the door, looking exhausted and filthy from the day's fight.
Legend didn't say anything. Instead, he just placed a hand on her shoulder. Brandish wasn't a touchy person, but she didn't move away from the touch.
"She saved my husband's life, you know," Brandish said. "And my niece and nephew both. She stabilized them enough for Panacea to restore them. She said she could heal their minds too. It's just hard to…"
Legend nodded, unsure what to say.
"She was found guilty in absentia," Brandish continued. "The established rule is that any cape can appeal an in absentia adverse ruling. I'm not going to let you send that girl to the Birdcage. Not after what she did for this city today."
Legend just nodded. "Remember that, then. Because she's going to need all the help she can get. Go, be with your family. You have my personal number, call if there's anything I can do for you."
Brandish wiped her eyes, nodded firmly, then stepped into the secured, guarded room. He nodded to the two PRT agents at either side.
The room was small. A single hospital bed sat in its middle, flanked by the various machines of health. An IV drip hung down into the arm of the slim child that occupied the bed.
The child was only fifteen. According to the court brief, she wouldn't turn sixteen for another month. And in the repose of ill-health, she looked even younger. She didn't have a classical beauty, but her features were striking. A wide mouth with thin lips with a slightly undersized nose. Her eyes were large, and with the dark rings of injury and exhaustion, made her look almost skeletal. Her hair was black, curly, and hung just above her shoulders.
Despite fifteen broken bones and internal injuries, she'd received almost no treatment, yet. A red tag hung from the frame of the bed, denoting her status as a villain. A villain who'd made a good living for several months healing people in Seattle.
The air in the corner of the room shimmered a moment before Eidolon appeared courtesy of a teleporting power. He held two large, grease-stained bags with a picture of a hefty African-American man on it holding a huge burger. The caption announced that "Chubs Does It Better!" With his other hand he levitated three separate drinks.
Eidolon wordlessly handed a bag over and Legend took one of the drinks before he pulled up one of the four rolling chairs that occupied the room. He lifted a hand and made a circling motion. Around the room, the walls briefly glowed.
Thus secured from eavesdroppers or intruders, Eidolon removed his mask to reveal heavy, ugly features coated in sweat.
"It's a sauna out there," he muttered. He put his bag of burgers on the edge of the bed, right next to Hebert's foot, and started pulling out his meal.
Legend pulled over the rolling lunch chart, grabbed a stool, and did the same.
Both looked up when the secured wall of the room fell into a pit of nothing, replaced instantly by what looked like a white, featureless hallway. Through the hallway walked Alexandria, her cape barely touching the floor behind her.
"You didn't wait?" she asked.
"Hungry." Eidolon's answer was more grunt than speech, but made the point well enough. "Got you extra jalapenos, the way you like it."
"Apology accepted." Alexandria too removed her visor, pulled up a cart, and ate at the other side of Hebert's bed, closer to Legend.
Legend found himself looking at the scar that ran over her left eye, and the gaping wound that used to hold it. It was a permanent reminder of all they lost.
"Brandish has already offered to represent her," Legend said around a bite of fries.
"She may have to," Becky said. "I just spent the past hour getting yelled at by the Attorney General, the New Hampshire governor's office, the state's representatives and senators, and the governor of Washington state personally. I've already received summons to testify before the Joint Committee on Parahuman Affairs. My civilian life is going to be busy for the foreseeable few months."
"Doesn't this girl have links to the Elite?" Eidolon asked. "Won't they help?"
With her mouth full, Alexandria just shook her head until she could speak. "I tried calling Entourage. The situation with the Elite is…fragile."
Legend sat up in concern. "What do you mean?"
"It turns out the reason we haven't seen or heard from Bastard Son is that Hebert killed him. He and Nonpareil both. Evidently Entourage was aware and tried to cover it up, but one of Elite's internal Thinkers caught on. Entourage is one of Agnes Court's darlings, but losing their most dangerous cape is a blow. Other governors are calling for Entourage's head. At the very least, Elite has formally cut ties with Quintessence. No help there."
"Damned," Legend muttered. "Any reason why Hebert would have done something like that?"
"He tried to assault her and her partner with Nonpareil's help," Alexandria said flatly. "She took exception to it."
The after-battle Chubs meal was a tradition going on thirteen years, now. Ever since Sydney, in fact. Chubs was Eidolon's favorite restaurant in Houston, and once the public learned that arguably the most powerful member of the Triumvirate went there after every Endbringer fight, the restaurant became a chain. They hadn't had to pay for the food since '99, when Chubs himself announced that any cape that fought an Endbringer could eat for free after the battle.
For the longest time, they didn't talk about the extraordinary day, or the extraordinary girl that was giving them such an extraordinary problem. Instead, they simply ate and basked in the relief that came from surviving another unwinnable fight.
Eidolon finished first by means of taking three bites at a time. He leaned back with a loud, satisfied belch, wiped the grease from his face and hands with a wetwipe (included), and gathered the trash into a bag. He then placed a hand on Hebert's bare ankle, wincing.
"Levi did a number on the girl," he said. "She's lucky to be alive."
"Will you heal her?" Legend asked.
Eidolon scowled. "I've exhausted my best healing powers. Until I get another booster…best I can do is give her metabolic augment."
Like Rebecca's eye, Eidolon's gradually weakening powers were one of those things they simply didn't discuss.
Alexandria, who in her civilian guise was Rebecca Costa-Brown served as Chief Director of the PRT, finished her hamburger far more daintily than Eidolon, though she too used the included wet wipe. She's just have to throw it up later, since her body didn't actually digest food any more, but she loved the flavor and enjoyed the tradition. Legend finished his last.
"So, I guess we should talk about the girl," Legend said. "What do we know?"
Becky leaned back on her stool, her legs crossed and her elbows on her knees as she studied Hebert. "We know from past efforts that she's a blind spot for most pre-cogs and Thinkers. Even ours."
Legend frowned. "Contessa can't see her? Why wasn't I told this?"
"She can see her, she just can't predict her. She has to model around her, the same as she does the Endbringers, Eidolon, or Scion himself."
"Okay," Eidolon said with a shrug. "What about today?"
Becky took a deep breath, and almost smile. "She did everything I hoped she'd be able to do when I called Entourage to help her," Alexandria said. "From PRT drone and surveillance footage, she served as a trump for the entire theater. I could tell myself just from how coordinated the shielding and blasters were, but the footage is fairly dramatic."
"She was mastering people?" Legend asked, alarmed.
"Did you feel mastered? My own power makes me immune to master/stranger threats. No, she didn't directly control where anyone went. Rather, she unconsciously, or maybe subconsciously, directed us where we knew we had to be. She made reaction times better across the board. It seemed almost as if she was somehow extending her precognition we're only seen hints of to every single cape fighting. Not just capes, though. She affected hospital staff as well. When she was injured, the triage center basically ground to a halt before they established a new hierarchy, and even then it didn't work nearly as well."
"It would explain the low casualty rate," Legend said. "When's the last time we've ever had casualties at ten percent?"
"Never," Alexandria said. "Our best showing was the Simurgh attack in London. We managed to get out with eighteen percent casualties. And then only because we think the Simurgh achieved her objective in the first five minutes, and then spent the next hour just playing with us."
"You don't believe there was intent with Hebert's actions?" Legend asked.
"No," Alexandria said. "The footage I saw from the triage center was like watching a queen bee moving through the hive. The same thing happened in Portland against Overmind. She's doing what she needs to do, and everyone else moved out of her way or attended her as she needed."
"What does Contessa suggest?" Legend asked.
"That we let the trial proceed. That the full results from Nutcracker's investigation be made available to the court, including Shadow Stalker's role in her trigger, Miss Militia's slip of judgment with Hebert's father, Director Piggot's failure with the Wards, and Armsmaster's demotion. The public will realize that we've already punished those truly responsible.
"At the same time, we stress what Quintessence has actually done. The best thing we can do is get Ashwinder to testify in court. Or Horizon. Or any of her other patients. And if none of that sways the court, we then pressure the governor for a pardon. No matter what, we're not letting her go to the Birdcage."
"You'll take a public hit," Legend warned her. "After all, you approved the order."
"I've already got my people spinning it," Alexandria said. "Piggot has already resigned and left the city with a nice pension and a bonus to keep her mouth shut. We can throw her under as many busses as necessary."
"So, we're agreed?" Legend asked.
"Didn't think it was even a question," Eidolon said. "Hell, Exalt himself would say she was a good one for the protocol."
"Okay, let's suit up and get the press wheels moving," Legend said.
They secured their various masks, and Eidolon dropped his privacy power. The moment they did, Taylor Hebert simply disappeared. In her place, a humanoid creature appeared—a purple, four-limbed gorilla. It sat up in the bed and looked around before it saw who surrounded it.
"Holy shit!" the Gorilla said in a young woman's voice. "Wow, can I have your autographs?"
A second later, the gorilla simply faded away.
"Fuck," Alexandria cursed, speaking eloquently for all of them.