Progenitor: Chapter 14
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A/n: Merry Christmas
I swarm through the dark depths of the building, weaving through rubble and corridors alike, all to chase down that one remaining target. The faint and distant sound of footsteps upon broken glass and tile rung in my head. The sound of a heartbeat reverberating across my skulls. I could taste it in the air, the faint whiffs of gunpowder, sweat, and anticipation. A chittering ping echoed throughout the building, and moments later came the return.
There you are, I grinned, the pleasures of the hunt at the forefront of my mind, 2nd floor, 5th corridor. Here I come.
A recon form, small, scurrying and covered in eye and ears rounded the corner. Hidden in the dark, it spied on the last Merchant in the building. Immediately, I frowned. Whoever they were, they were doing a good job clinging to the shadows. Even with my enhanced night vision, I could only gather so much from their silhouette. I could tell they were a woman, but that was really only from her scent.
Regardless of who she was, she seemed to be a cut above most of the other Merchants I'd found in here. She moved more methodically, slow and smooth, yet lacked the hesitation I'd seen in others. I moved the recon-self to try and get a better angle, not that I had much of a chance of catching much light this deep into the Bur-
Bang
I blinked, an expression spread across my multitudes. In my hesitation, three more shots ripped through the air, massive chunks of lead tearing through the meat of my small form. Even if it didn't really kill me, the sheer force behind them caused the small body to all but explode.
Still, it wasn't dead. I formed eyes upon the floor and walls from the still writhing sacs of flesh and gore that had been strewn about. With them, I was barely able to catch a flash of the gun she used on me as she moved into another room.
A handgun? I thought, slightly confused as ran over the image I'd captured again and again.
It looked like a revolver, similar to the one that the Merchant woman I'd dealt with weeks ago had used, but...different. Sleeker, and certainly more hard-hitting.
I'd been expecting a rifle, but I suppose a handgun cartridge made some sense. From what I remembered, they tended to fire larger slugs at lower velocities, so it'd have less penetration but a larger impact. A rifle would probably go right through my smaller forms, while the pistol blew them apart.
Well, I thought as I reallocated my biomass in the shadows, there's a way to fix that.
I tracked her as she moved through the building as it gestated. She moved with a faster pace now, searching rooms with a purpose. The more I watched, the more it seemed familiar. The way she checked corners, walls, and the ceiling in rapid but thorough scans.
Maybe she's a veteran of the Nilbog Campaign? I considered. I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end I mentally shrugged.
Time to end this
As the woman moved into a large room filled with rubble, a tendril lanced out from the shadows and wrapped around an ankle. A lightning-fast shot blew apart the connecting stands and left a wriggling lump of flesh latched onto her boot. I tried to dig through the thick leather of it, but a gloved hand ripped me off and threw me into the air before another snapshot blew it apart.
No matter.
Something burst out of the rubble beside her, numerous arms reaching out with serrated claws for her. She immediately twisted and fired three shots from the hip in a flash of motion, but the bullets crumpled against it's hardened carapace. It tackled her to the ground, tendrils filled with anesthetic coiling inside it's mouth. They catapulted out of it's face, twin stingers ready to inject my custom cocktail into her bloodstream. She twisted her head away from one and snatched the other with a gloved hand. I twisted the innards of my body, creating hundreds of smaller claws and stingers to tear open and seek any bare scrap of flesh to infect.
Suddenly, I felt a pressure against my abdomen. A pressure that erupted into a fire that raced through my being, scorching it all into ash.
Pain
True pain exploded through my collective as a massive chunk of my biomass suddenly went dark. I looked through my other eyes in the room and saw the large form I'd made hovering over her, it's body dissipating into glowing embers in the air. The massive creature that had composed half of my entire biomass disintegrated before my eyes.
For a moment, I froze, my mind racing as I tried to process just what I'd seen. It was impossible. Was that a power? Was she a parahuman? I hadn't managed to get a scan of her body yet. That seemed the most likely answer, but…
But I knew that effect. Hell, everyone did these days. The way my body had dissolved into motes of light, wholly and completely, it could only really be one thing. The weapon that Hero himself had fashioned to win the Nilbog campaign. The large, sleek, glowing weapon held in her hands only confirmed my fears.
A Disintegrator.
What?...What?...HOW?!
An auto shotgun was one thing, but this? This was a monster, capable of vaporizing any biological lifeform and melting gaping holes in anything else with one blast. Only things with durability on the level of the Endbringers or Alexandria could withstand endure a blast against it. It was said that a Disintegrator would either annihilate you, or it wouldn't leave a scratch, there was no in-between.
As I tried to crunch the massive piles of data I'd gathered from the experience of half my entire being getting disintegrated, I couldn't help but agree. More importantly, though, it meant I couldn't fool around anymore. This wasn't a joke, this was a frankly terrifying level of power in the hands of a gang. That could not be permitted under any circumstances.
As the woman stood back up and shouldered her Disintegrator, I gathered what forces I had left, shaping them into the weapon's only weakness. I only had one chance, if I let that weapon go who knows what kind of devastation the Merchants could unleash?
She looked around carefully, no doubt wary of any more creatures.
I growled, fury and anger at what she'd done to me fueling my purpose. My entire being growled with me. Hundreds, no, thousands of genetically fine-tuned insectile creatures chittered loudly in the ceiling, walls, and floor.
The woman looked around, fear finally creeping into her form. She turned her Disintegrator towards the wall, as if to blast her way out.
I wouldn't give her the chance.
Like a wave, I crashed upon her.
To say she fought back would be like saying a man resisted the raging tempest of a Typhoon. It was over in an instant, the insurmountable deluge of me smothering her light like a man's fist snuffing out a candle. I bypassed the only two blast of the gun she managed to get off, latched onto her bare neck, and bit in. My custom venom poured into her veins. I could see the way her nervous system reacted, her brain stuttering into a lower level of operation as sleep overcame her.
Moments later, she collapsed to the ground face-first as a boneless heap.
My swarm gathered at her feet, and slowly formed me piece by piece.
Serves you right I thought, sneering at her sleeping body, you merchant piece of…
Hold on
Something about her DNA...hell, her whole body, was familiar to me. Very familiar.
I swallowed thickly, I have a bad feeling about this.
I gently grabbed her shoulder and turned her over with one hand, and with the other, I converted the outer layers of flesh into a bright bioluminescent organ. Light erupted in the room, illuminating everything as I twisted my eyes back into a traditional human spectrum. The moment I turned her over, I cringed.
There was no mistaking that those Kurdish features.
"Ah shit," I cursed, grimacing at that star-spangled bandanna as the last flicker of consciousness left those familiar brown eyes.
"I am so fucking grounded," I sighed despondently as I allowed my face to flush with shame and embarrassment. Already my mind was spinning through the millions of ways I was now fucked. I gave the unconscious woman a guilty look.
"Sorry Aunt Hannah."
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That took longer than I'd thought
I'd been fiddling with the lock for the high-security elevator when the beetle-shaped partition I'd left on Aunt Hannah alerted me to her rising brain activity. I could sense the way she slowly regained muscle control, REM falling out of cycle, and her melatonin returning to normal levels. I briefly consider injecting GABA and glycine to artificially impose sleep paralysis so she couldn't shoot me in the back with a disintegrator before I'd explained everything, but I threw that out with barely a second's thought.
The last thing I needed here was to get myself in even more hot water.
Instead, I walked up to her with slow measured steps, even as I could feel her mind slowly recalling the pieces of the past hour. Or, well, attempting too. I'd still injected her with amnestic/anesthetic I'd given everyone else, I'd just given her a counter agent to go along with it so she wouldn't be as affected. Even still, she'd been well and truly asleep for nearly half an hour, and I couldn't be sure how much of her short term memory had remained.
Sure, I'd given her a counter-agent to the amnestic/anesthetic I'd injected into her bloodstream, but as far as I could tell that only reduced the effects, it didn't negate them. Case in point, it'd taken her nearly an hour to finally wake up. Who knows how much she'd lost?
There we go
I saw her eyes flutter and felt her heart stutter as her mind dig itself out of the gutter. Her breath trembled, muscles twitching in growing awareness. I could sense the moment when she realized she wasn't somewhere familiar, the way tension snapped into her form. Aunt Hannah hid it well, I had to admit I was impressed. I couldn't see it on her form draped on the chair, she'd even managed to force her power to keep the form of the Disintegrator on the floor, but I could read it in the chemical breakdown of her body from my beetle on her arm.
Intentionally making my footsteps loudly scuff the floor, I tried to let her know I was coming so she didn't get spooked when I crouched down in front of her. I tried to catch Aunt Hannah's eyes, but she was stubbornly keeping them closed. Frowning, I opened my mouth.
"I know your awake."
It was at that moment that I realized two things. First, I'd actually forgotten to discard my disguise of tall, muscular, black man in his prime with an almost unnaturally deep voice. Second, that, Aunt Hannah could be a terrifyingly fast draw under pressure.
Within one blink of me realizing my mistake, I was staring down the barrel of her Disintegrator, the light at the end radiating with the ominous glow of a dying star, the whole weapon trembling with fury a billion hounds fresh from hell tearing at their frayed leash.
"Move, and you die," Aunt Hannah growled.
I dropped the disguise, the false flesh falling away like so much raw fat cut from the bone. The inert biomass plopped to the floor, splashing out our feet, and leaving me in my bare skin of Amelia Hebert staring at my Aunt Hannah with a stunned expression.
She paused, lowering her gun and staring at me with wide eyes and a slack jaw. "Amy?!"
I sagged, smiling at her in relief, "Yeah, Aunt Hannah, it's m-"
She shoved the Disintegrator into my face again.
"Prove it," Aunt Hannah said, a dead serious look in her eye, finger on the trigger.
"...Uh" I stared at her stupidly, jaw slack.
"PROVE IT!" She roared.
My mouth ran before I could think better of it.
"I first met you in person after Aunt Grace dragged you into a girl's night out with mom, and they dragged you home because you couldn't hold your liquor and wouldn't stop hitting on other patrons, and you threw up on my backpack and mom got mad 'cause it ruined my school stuff but Aunt Grace was super happy 'cause she said it'd finally dislodged the stick you'd shoved up your ass the size of-mmrph"
"Up up up" Aunt Hannah shushed me with a hand on my mouth. Her Disintegrator had disappeared in a flash of green light, and an emerald war fan appeared in one of her pockets.
"That's…that's enough..." She began hesitantly, unable to look me in the eye. Not that it could hide the embarrassment radiating off of her. "...I believe you, Amelia."
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. "Put on some clothes."
I rolled my eyes. Humans.
Still…
"Fine." I sucked up the inert ooze around me and peeled off a set of pseudo leather clothes from my skin.
Aunt Hannah gave me an odd look before eyeing the room around us. At a guess, I opened my mouth.
"All the Merchants are asleep on another floor. They shouldn't wake up for a few more hours. Even if they do, they're all tied up." I shrugged, gesturing to my own bare face. "We got privacy, you can take off the mask."
Aunt Hannah looked hesitant, but after a moment she finally tugged down her star-spangled scarf. "Merchants?"
"Yeah, the…" I blinked, "You don't…"
She looked at me uncomprehendingly.
"Oh no…" I said quietly as it dawned on me.
"Amelia." She scowled. "Oh no what?"
"You...may have forgotten more than I thought?"
"Forgotten?"
"Yeah, I mean I tried to counter the amnestics I gave you, but it looks lik-"
"Amnestics?!"
"Uh...yes?"
"...!"
"In my defense, you used a Disintegrator on me first."
"...!"
"...granted I did kind of ambush you with a tentacle monster."
Aunt Hannah buried her head in her hands and groaned, exhaustion pouring off her.
"Just...just explain what happened. And where we are."
"Uh...do you promise not to get mad?"
She peeked out from her fingers to level a withering glare at me.
I cringed.
"Right, well, see, what happened was…"
About five minutes of very awkward explanations later, Aunt Hannah was staring at me with the kind of abject disappointment, shame, and complete disbelief that I'd really only seen on my father. After what felt like hours of pained silence, she finally opened mouth.
"What," She said flatly.
"Well...I mean…" I started, "it seemed like a good idea at the time?"
"You say that like you made a mistake," She said with a dangerous gleam in her eye.
"...yes?" I said, nearly wincing at the pitch.
"And it was?"
"Um...drugging you?"
Aunt Hannah gave me a pitiless smile and a humorless chuckle, her dark eyes promising nothing but grim tidings in my future.
"I'll let you think on that," She said, getting up and patting me on the shoulder as she walked to the door. "In the meantime, I'll be heading towards a window before we get blown up."
I blinked.
"Wait, What?!"
I yelled, jumping up to my feet and chasing after her.
"You didn't think I came out here alone, did you?" She asked, a smile in her voice.
"I mean...I did, actually." I frowned, "But if you weren't the only one out here, why'd you come in alone?"
"Well, it's hard to remember, since the past hour is a bit fuzzy thanks to somebody," She said pointedly.
I winced. "Sorry."
"Hmph," She kept moving.
Still, I could tell she didn't know where she was going.
"Let me lead the way," I said, jogging in front of her, "It's the least I can do."
"Yes," She said drily. "It is."
Oh yeah, I'm going to have a fun week I grimaced, already envisioning the endless taunts from dad.
A few turns later, I'd taken us to the outer wall facing a row of broken windows.
"This'll do," Aunt Hannah said, pulling on her power in a flash of green light to summon a sledgehammer. A few bashes against the fractured glass to clear out the sharp edges, and she dismissed it.
While she worked, I couldn't help but worry about what she'd said. "So...blowing up?"
"Yeah," She nodded, turning her power into some kind of boxy-device attached to pistol grip and a collapsible stock. "Yeah, well it's a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I went out with a drone escort."
"A...a what?" I blinked in disbelief, "You guys fly drones up there?"
"Yeah, all the time," Shen shrugged and clicked a button and a blinking green laser light shone out of one end. "But they're autistic, so it's fine."
At my befuddled look, she explained. "That means they're specifically designed not to communicate with other devices, especially through digital networks. Instead, they rely on things like laser or quantum coms to interact with whatever station they're tethered to. Combined with the best Ladon encryption codes out there, they're as close to unhackable as you can get."
"There's an ocean of difference between 'unhackable' and 'mostly unhackable'." I pointed out.
"Well, the only way you could get access to them is by directly plugging into the drone, or into the station it's tethered to. Even then, you have to get through encryption algorithms devised by the greatest tinker in the world." Aunt Hannah responded, "command figures the power projection and long term support that the drones offer is more than worth the risk. Given how effective they've been since we introduced them, I have to agree."
"I feel like most people would be opposed to the idea of a bunch of robots hanging over their heads watching their every move just waiting to turn on them." I frowned.
"Yeah, well it's not exactly common knowledge. They use stealth tech to stay quiet." She explained, nodding at her device and leaning out the window to point it up into something in the Brockton Bay skyline. "And I need to tell it that I'm ok before command shoves missile or two down our throat."
"They're armed!?" I shouted, feeling the hysteria creeping in.
"Not like that," She waved me off nonchalantly, "Not these ones anyhow. Best they got are some less than lethal measures like foam grenades or stun lances. It's biggest weapon is its sensor and communications package."
"The PRT has a direct line to the Naval base out in the. Wouldn't take but a few calls to send some UCAV's to check the situation out. Maybe even some Marines or a couple of cruise missiles if they're feeling trigger happy."
"Are you fucking insane?!" I exclaimed, "You'd really turn the middle of the city into a warzone?"
"We're already at war, Amelia" She answered coldly.
The display on her device lit up, a happy little chime pining off it. She smiled with her eyes as the faintest smirk played upon her lips. "We're good. Looks they sent Armsmaster this way instead of a missile. Heck, knowing him he might still swing by."
I scowled, my bones twisting under my skin in discomfort. The idea of armed drones hanging up there, waiting to rain down destruction at any moment feeling deeply unsettling. And the idea that Aunt Hannah knew about it and was ok with it?
It made me feel sick.
It wasn't too much longer for Aunt Hannah to finish her work up. She sent a few updates to her eye in the sky, and console made sure she was alright. I figured part of it included codes and passphrases for making sure she wasn't mastered or under duress. The most surprising part was what she said next.
"Alright," She said, pulling herself back inside the hall, her posture ever so slightly more relaxed than before. "Gave console the update on the situation, and about how I'll be finishing my investigation. Also told them about you."
"You told them about me?" I said, taken aback.
"Well," She rolled her shoulders, the boxy device in her hands flickering into a basic gauss pistol holstered on her thigh, "Not you specifically, but that I'd met up with an independent friend and I'd be looking into things with them."
"Huh," I said, relieved, "I guess that makes sense. Wouldn't want them to freak out if they catch a glance of me with you."
"Yeah, I'll probably get grilled about it later at base, but we have protocols for this kinda stuff." She agreed.
"What are you gonna tell them?"
Aunt Hannah sighed, her shoulders slumping forward, "it's probably going to be a messy conversation and involve a whole lot of redactions."
I furrowed my brow, "Why would you be redacting anything?"
"Because your identity is classified." Aunt Hannah explained.
At my blank, stunned, expression she continued.
"The government has files on your whole family, Amy. They did it because of Annette. It's not a particularly special case, either. My understanding is that we've got detailed files on the personal lives of every major parahuman operating in North America." She said, "It's just that those files are classified at the highest levels. Most people working in the PRT don't know they exist, let alone what's inside them. The only reason I have access to your mother's file is because, well, I helped make it."
"So you just have fucking specs on all of us!" I shouted, "You're analyzing our every fucking moment, trying to see if we step out of line or what you can use as leverage?"
"Or course." She shrugged, "the 14th was a wakeup call. We thought we understood Archon, but we'd never seen that level of sleeper cells coming. It was the kind of threat we'd never considered since the cold war, and even then, nothing on this level. The fact that he'd discovered a loophole to avoid precogs only made it all the more terrifying."
"If we have to sacrifice a little freedom to keep this nation's people safe, I'll gladly pay that price."
"That's easy for you to say," I scowled at her, "you're a part of this system, you're a cog in the machine. What about the rest of us? How do we know that the government won't abuse this power? How do we know they won't use this information to quietly silence the troublemakers?"
"They're laws in place to stop that. Checks and balances. The constitution provides for-"
"Like that really matters." I cut her off, "The constitution is only a piece of paper, it only matters as long as people listen to it. If the whole government decides it likes it nice comfy throne and it wants to burn that ancient scrap of whims in front of us, what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"
She stared at me for a long hard moment. There was a conviction in her eyes, a fiery light of pride and truth that refused to be snuffed out. But how the fuck was I supposed to back down? How was I supposed to just nod along to the idea of this country becoming a police state?
Finally, she opened her mouth. "You need to have faith in the American people, Amelia."
"I would think you'd know something about that."
I exploded in fury, my skin literally bristling flickering in an array of aggressive colors, bones cracking and jutting out of my flesh in jagged spikes, and eyes flashing with orange bioluminescence.
"Don't you fucking dare!" I growled, "You don't know the first thing about faith!"
Aunt Hannah just looked at me coldly and said, "I know if we'd had these policies two years ago, your mother would still be alive."
And like that, all the fight drained out of my body. In its place, I felt a cold discomfort.
Is...is that true?
I didn't want it to be, but...it made a certain kind of sense. I wanted to deny it, but no one could deny the kind of damage Archon's sleepers had done, or that it had lead to mom's death. Would it have been enough? Would that kind of tradeoff been worth it? I was hardly the only person who lost something that day, what about everyone else? Would they have been spared pain if the government had played big brother earlier? Was freedom worth the price for safety?
Suddenly, I wasn't so sure anymore.
"...Sorry," I muttered, shrinking in on myself. I felt small now, like an idiot child put in her place. I felt like I should have been right, I wanted it so badly to be true. But…
But at the end of the day, I wanted my mom back.
"Sorry," I repeated, hanging my head, "I just…"
Aunt Hannah stopped me with another hand on my shoulder. "I know," She said simply.
There wasn't any anger on her face now. No more stone or coldness. The fire was still there, but it was now burning with the warmth of understanding.
She didn't need to say anymore.
"Come on," She walked back into the building, "If I remember right I came out here to investigate the spike in Merchant activity. I'm hoping I can ask some of those guys you got tied up about the recent kidnappings, border expansion, and this 'black ooze'."
I chuckled mirthlessly. "Ah...yeah...about that…"
She sighed tiredly, "I'm not going to like the answer to that, am I."
"If it helps, dad already chewed me out over it?" I offered.
"Hmm. We'll see how he feels about it after this newest escapade."
I winced.
"Er, well, in that case I already have my own lead on some stuff,"
She eyed me from the side, "Oh?"
I chuckled, feeling a bit nervous now that I was on the spot. "Yeah…"
Although...now that I think about it…
"Yeah...and I think you can help me out with it."
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A/n:
Alright, next chapter out. Hope ya'll are having a nice holiday season. More importantly, I hope ya'll like this chapter.
I had both my beta's go over it, and they said its good, so here you go. Most worried about the whole Aunt Hannah thing since, well, there wasn't much in the way of leadup for it.
Ah well. I've got a plan and it either works or it doesn't. No use worrying about it now.
Next chapter will be out...in a week? Maybe?
I'm doing a lot of updating to a bunch of stories right now and I'm working on posting a new one. Once this arc is over I'll probably shift over to monthly posting, as planned.
Though I dunno, maybe my new story will bomb harder than Nagasaki and I'll fall back to this.
We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the season and this chapter.
I'll worry about everything else later.