Author's Notes: Again, further chapters are available on Spacebattles forum. Special thanks to MarkerIV and Fantasyra for their awesome idea bouncing skills and Trier for the super edits!
This chapter took a little while to fix as there was a lot that people seemed to dislike about the characterization. Hopefully this version fits a little better, and jives with future events more cleanly. Honestly, I can't believe I'm only posting chapter six here when Chapter twelve is currently in progress. Heh. Seems so friggin weird. This version is not perfect and never will be, but it is as good as I believe I can make it. I do hope you enjoy it, as I hope you do with all my works to come.
Chapter Six: Interlude - Eyespy
Immigrating to Earth Dalet had worked out well for us Heberts. After the move, I had gotten a management position out at BigRoad Communications near Washington DC, only two hours away from Villa Grove University where Taylor was now attending. I managed a group of fifteen voice installation engineers who were responsible for remotely configuring customer's phone systems. They were a rowdy and young bunch, most between 25 and 35 and often I felt like they were no better than teenagers. Still, it was a nice change from managing a union of older disgruntled dock workers.
A relic of corporate culture was the closed IRC chat room conveniently titled #nope. There, my engineers vented their compressed stress, usually in the form of various internet memes or the latest youtube video craze. Being their supervisor came with the benefit of shameless indulgence without having to look them up, and also came with the necessary degree of separation required to laugh.
After a year of working with my team we were comfortable enough with each other that they knew I would let that sort of behavior slide so long as the work got done and the customers, both internal and external, were happy.
"Hey James," I called out. "Could you handle Joey's request in #bizvoip? She has been waiting five minutes to have a Voice Portal admin password reset so she can walk a customer through recording their auto attendant greeting."
Honestly, I didn't know what a lot of that meant. But handling people was my job, not the actual software and hardware. Occasionally I felt out of my depth, but most of the time one of my people could explain to me exactly what was going on, if I needed it.
I didn't like to do that often. It didn't pay to be less knowledgeable than your subordinate, and it paid even less to look less knowledgable. These kids knew their shit, and keeping up could be a hassle, so I actually spent a large amount of my time reading manuals in order to at least pace them, if not catch up.
"Sure Danny," James said, "but checkout #nope. That girl is priceless!"
For most, that comment would not be a concern. I'd been linked more videos of idiots doing stupid crap, that I could hardly believe how many there were. I've seen video compilations of stupid, and after seeing a hundred plus men take it in the nads to a theme song, the abject horror dissipates enough to start laughing. Those, and the horrible videos like them that so amuse my new subordinates have slowly removed my capacity to be instantly traumatised by what I see. By now, I couldn't imagine the video was so disturbing that I'd have trouble with it. Priceless. Unusual word choice. Something about that moment, that exact phrasing, caught me on edge. Nervously I clicked the link.
"Cripple for Capes."
"Aww... Fuck."
Before the video had even buffered my heart knew. She hadn't lasted a week. Not even a blooming week.
I palmed my face nervously and let one eye peek as the video finished buffering and began playing.
Social injustice was the heart of it. Our family's weakness, though Taylor never knew it. Her mother had been quite the avid protester for various civil causes before life came along and distracted her with more important things like pregnancy and raising a child. Even I still wasn't really emotionally past the ferry issue regardless of how that universe and its associated problems were completely lost to me.
The video played. Taylor, Skitter, Weaver, Khepri. I couldn't tell which name was most apt. She held the crowd in the palm of her hand. Even over the distance granted by time and space it still felt like I was there and she was working her magic. Her cruelty to the girl 'Hero' was heartbreaking. That was all Skitter, so willing to hurt others when she felt it necessary.
No evidence of the butterfly girl anymore. She'd apparently needed the cold, the heartless, the daunting, and the indomitable. If it had been any other girl it would've been almost funny how she steamrolled over every comment the professors tried to put forth, until they were wallowing in their own guilt, and the crowd was practically in tears.
Where had I failed so badly as a father that this had become the norm? I watched with barely concealed tears of my own as my child consigned the rest of her classmates to die, within her perilously realistic fantasy , and then stalked off into the afternoon sun like some sort of twilight monster.
Fuck how do I fix this?
I swivelled in my chair away from my desktop and booted up my laptop. The device was my sole guilty pleasure that I had managed to bring from Bet. It wasn't technically a legal import, nothing from Bet was, but the data on it was priceless to me. I connected it to our LAB network's wifi and quickly clicked through the various prompts required by Windows to access the network.
As Taylor had grown up, I'd felt whole. I loved being her father and even though she was a Mommy's Girl through and through, she loved me just the same. Things faded after Annette died though, and we'd drifted. She turned out the world diving further and further into introversion, and the smiling girl I and my wife had raised became a stoic parody of herself that I didn't know how to relate to. The bullying only made it worse, because It had been going on for so long and I'd never even noticed.
After Taylor had left and started spending nights at Lisa's, I knew that I'd failed as a father. Annette was probably ashamed of me. Maybe it was stupid, or even embarrassing for an old Union man to spend time scrapbooking and collecting videos but somehow I'd needed to get closer to her. The girl I'd abandoned. So I gathered. Just trinkets at first, and old pictures of Taylor and her mother, placed on the fireplace mantle. I dug out a few home videos recorded ages ago and repeatedly watched them on an old VCR player.
Priceless memories. All gone.
Most of it was trashed in Leviathan's attack, and what little remained I'd been unable to bring over. I'd managed to snag a stuffed cat she'd loved as a baby before leaving, ruined now by the waves, but still precious to me. My physical reminders of the happy girl she'd once been, dwindled to that one piece, and the pictures and videos from her years as a villain, hero, savior, and mindless child in an adult's body, on a laptop.
The Parahumans Online website was fueled mostly by people too nosy to stay out of danger with cell phones. They'd been the key to half my laptop's contents. I had collected photos and videos of everything I could, shameful or not. My favorites, depressingly, were the little ones spent teaching her to speak again. To read again, which had always been one of her favorite hobbies. In the moment those times had been so hard, but now that they were in the past she felt like my little girl again. It felt like maybe I had been a good father.
What does it say about me, that twice I could feel like I'd been a good father, and twice my daughter had flung herself into near villainy without regard for anyone else?
I pulled up Firefox searched Youtube for the video. Once found, I downloaded and saved the video to the directory where I kept all things Taylor. After it finished, I browsed the directory briefly, glancing at the preview images and thinking about the contents of what I had collected. I moused over the video where some fearful member of the ABB had recorded Lung getting attacked by a swarm of bees and spiders. Almost clicked a video from only ten months or so ago when she'd been trying so hard to read a children's book… and failing rather cutely. Her frustration, now that the trauma was passed, had been adorable. At the time it had felt hopeless, but luckily she was smarter than him even with only half her mind. She recovered.
Snippets of the Leviathan battle were there. A video of her declaration of ownership for the boardwalk of Brockton Bay. Pictures of her fighting against the Slaughterhouse 9, one rare find, saved on a cell phone of a man I'd met by pure chance, held a scene of her holding Mannequin's head. That was one of the few I had found that I had no mixed emotions about. Only pride. The Behemoth fight that had become national news, and easy to gather. Another labeled "Arcadia" made my heart clench a little.
...A security camera view of her as she murdered Tagg and Alexandria. I think that was the first time I'd ever been afraid of my daughter. She was my little girl wasn't she? So how could she have become…?
Happier videos of her heroics as Weaver and the celebration at the end of the Golden Morning where she released the last of her hostages and disappeared into the portal eased the pain of her villainy. Finally, and warmest of all were the pictures taken two days ago when I dropped her off at college.
Here you go Taylor. Fresh meat. Feel free to take all the territory you want. Its yours now, you little conqueror.
I shuddered. I felt guilty at the thought, but only a mild pang. She was a fox and this whole world was a henhouse. I'd long come to terms with the fact that my daughter was a ruler, a veteran in a world of children. I just prayed she didn't try to rule the wrong city. Country. Or fuck, the World.
She'd spilled everything to me, broken english slowly returning. Awkward, and uneven, sometimes even tearful she'd told me her story, but I still felt that she never let me in. Never let me see the true feelings behind each action as she stoically recounted her memories of joining the Undersiders.
Everything she'd done, always had a purpose. Taking over the bay, to help fix it, because only she could.
Couldn't she have found a better way? Did she have to rule like a master over sheep?
Tagg and Alexandria.
Murdered for revenge. Her worst act, to me. It was the only one without that sense of purpose behind it.
The years since spent fighting the Endbringers. Endless footage that I'd had to pick and choose from because there'd been so much. The pride and terror of remembering how she would constantly risk her life for capes far weaker than herself. There was so much good that she had done.
So why can't I see the silver lining in this? Dammit, she had to have had a reason. She always had a reason! She didn't have to DO this!
It didn't matter what I told myself. I still felt betrayed. Betrayed, because I'd thought we'd finally reached it. I could grow old knowing my daughter had lived to reach her Garden of Eden, as it were.
My mouse lingered on one of my favorites, a video of her speaking to children sometime after she'd become Weaver. But I closed it instead. Not here. I was too scared that someone else might step in to see them.
I was moody and awkward for the last twenty minutes of my shift. I anguished over the clock, and snapped at my subordinates for pointless reasons. I didn't have any time or patience for it today. I had to make sure my daughter didn't lay claim to Centralia. Luckily it was already near the end of the day.
I left work right at five and in a rush. If I only stopped to grab a quick burger from Jack in the Box I could get to Taylor in about two hours, spend 30 minutes talking with her, and then make the 2 hour trip back to D.C. Getting me back to my modest abode at about 10ish. Not the most ideal plan considering I worked tomorrow at seven in the morning but it would have to do.
"Hey boss!" Terrence, one of my senior engineers, called out to me as I threw on my jacket.
"What, Terrence?" I asked curtly, making it known that I was in a hurry. I was normally much kinder but at the moment I just didn't care.
"It ok if I clock some overtime tonight? I'm going to reorganize the lab, clean things up a bit." His flippant tone showed he hadn't even noticed my irritation.
Overtime was cherished at the company. The time and a half pay on the hour was greatly coveted and infrequently available. I was going to have to make sure we had the budget for it when I got in tomorrow but at the moment I had bigger problems.
"Whatever, just make sure you finish it and that it looks good."
"In a rush boss?" He asked softly finally picking up on my social cues and body language. I swear all of my employees have aspergers.
"Bit of an emergency. I'll see you tomorrow, Terrence."
My mind was already hours away, trying to form the words that would inevitably make it to my daughter's ears. I stalked out of the office and got into my small black Honda Civic. Exiting the parking lot, I merged into traffic and was shortly on the highway. Sentences kept bouncing around in my head seeking outlet. I must have had the 'conversation' with Taylor a dozen times in my head before I finally pulled into the lot near her dorm.
I walked the path into her dorm with weighted and slow steps that got me there much too quickly. The two hours that it had taken me to get here went too fast and I still wasn't certain on just what I was going to say. Time was up, I knocked once - hard, on the door.
My daughter's hug, her voice, so seemingly normal, reminded me heavily of the weeks before Arcadia. When I had known nothing of her heroism nor her villainy.
My emotions were still tumbling half an hour later as I left the dorm. I was simultaneously proud of my daughter and horrified that we were at the end of the quiet that had defined this last year. My steps felt no lighter than they had when I'd entered as I walked back to my car. In fact, they felt heavier.
I'd put on a bold face for her friends, but the truth was I could feel myself breaking apart.
The air was cool. Twilight was nearly ready to give up its hold on the sky and let it plunge into darkness, and deep black clouds were rolling in. It would rain tonight, probably on my way back. A few leaves lay on the sidewalk signifying the coming fall weather. My steps were marked with the crunch of the dried and dead ones that had already fallen.
As I glanced around at the beautiful landscaping I remembered thinking this was a great place for her to live. That I could afford the few extra hundred dollars to see her in the apartment rather than just a dorm where she might feel confined. Silly now. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd put her in a prison. She wouldn't be confined anywhere.
It all felt so hopeless! When I had been reunited with her, she had been in such poor shape. Her body had been put through the grinder, her arm was gone and at times that seemed like the least of her problems.
She could barely talk or understand when someone was talking to her at first. It was like some critical piece of her cognitive ability was missing. Simple things like making her way to the restroom or bringing a spoon to her mouth were so difficult but she had recovered. It had taken months and months but she had managed. I still saw the emotional scars crop up occasionally, PSTD like symptoms- nightmares, random crying fits, but for the most part she was functional. Now once again, powers were going to take my baby girl away from me. Hurt her. Morph her. Turn her into that… bug.
Fuck I was separating the two of them in my own head. Skitter and Taylor, like they were two different people.
She and I both knew her promise no matter how earnestly given would not restrain her for long. Something would happen, some life she could save or some wrong she would need to fix and the moment would compel her to action. She would take it too far though. She would bring the proverbial gun to the knife fight while all I could do was watch.
Sit back and fucking watch.
I opened my car door and got in, sitting motionless for a few moments before my emotional control shattered completely. The tears came and I started bashing on the steering wheel and dashboard, yelling and cursing my hatred for the world, Scion and anything else I could name. I could not protect my daughter. I couldn't even hold her hand as she plunged into it all. Once again I would be helpless against a world that seemed determined to throw her into the fire.
I snapped. It came as I wept into my steering wheel, and it flew by in an instant. I saw it, saw them. Two orbiting entities, a cycle that was ment to continue in perpetuity. Both dead now. Broken through chance, and by my daughter's will, pieces breaking off them like bits of diamond falling off a whole planet of the beautiful stone. The image of a furious golden man and then a sensation of being burned in an all encompassing fire swam in my mind's eye for a moment that lasted an eternity.
I awoke from the vision in a sweat and was still, silent with tracks of tears falling down my face. I knew and yet did not know what I had just seen. The images tried to slip from my memory and I wordlessly fought to hold on to what I could, succeeding, unlike dreams after waking, where no matter how you tried they slipped from your grasp.
I DID know what it meant, and the thought was horrifying. Now? Why now? Why here? Hadn't losing Taylor been enough for me to trigger at Arcadia? Hadn't watching my daughter play a part in the death of Behemoth been enough? What about seeing her broken and dying, unable to even speak, missing her arm, at times seeming more an animal than a person?
No. None of that had been enough but this was. Why? Why couldn't it have happened sooner? I could've helped! I could've… done something. Anything. I didn't even care what my new powers might be. As far as I was concerned they could rot. Life ruiners. Warbringers, the lot of them, but of course, since when did my will matter?
They activated without direction as my overwhelming desire to see Taylor again almost pushed me to go back upstairs. Then suddenly she was there. I could see her in her room with her friends. She was sitting in front of a large TV, eating potatoes.
"So speeches like last Thursday… Are they the norm with you?" Sophia asked.
"...No."
I laughed myself back to tears as my daughter lied her teeth off. A bitter laugh, filled with the knowledge of what must have just run through her mind.
I was startled by a sudden sound and the image broke. A security guard was tapping on the window. I rolled it down.
"Are you ok sir?" He asked.
The guard was young, obviously a student who was working part time. Probably new to his position as he appeared to be more than slightly nervous and uncomfortable in his blue uniform. I took a couple of breaths to put myself together before answering. My thoughts went to Taylor again and I could see that she was with her friends and smiling.
Maybe this wasn't so bad… If only it had come sooner.
"No," I told the boy, gently as I could. "But I think I am going to be. I think I am going to be alright."
He smiled and we both nodded a farwell. I pulled out of the lot and and eventually onto the highway.
Nearly an hour of mindless driving passed. The weather worsened considerably. Thunder suddenly boomed and in the distance a spike of lightning flashed before rain began to fall. During the drive my power kept activating instinctively. Visions of places and people I cared about, even in Earth Bet. I probably had less attention on the road than a drunkard but I didn't care.
Taylor. It showed me her talking. Making friends. The two girls really had seemed to like her, and she liked them in return. She sounded so normal and where her words had failed to restore my hope this… this little image of her being so very happy… this did wonders.
It wasn't just Tayor though. With my will I suddenly found myself looking at Annette. My wife… but not this one. She was another Annette. Anne Rose, Taylor had taken to calling her, and I liked that. I didn't want anything to ever replace her mother's memory. Seeing this form of her smile and being treated well made me feel good as well.
By the time I was halfway home my spirits had lifted considerably. With this.. with this I could truly see my daughter. See the girl I'd raised and know if she really was the hero of her story, or the deluded villain I'd seen in that video in Arcadia. In Tagg's office.
With this, I could protect her, no matter which turned out to be true. Warn her, watch over her. Maybe even be a real father to her.
I peeked in on her again, just one more time, and blanche d.
Oops.
I felt a tad guilty for that, but after the months spent spoon feeding her, helping her change with only one arm until she could do it herself, accidentally seeing her step into the shower almost annoyed me.
Maybe… there was a better way of keeping her safe? Could I find dangers to her? Could I… ask what I was looking for and maybe get a vision of someone I didn't know?
"Show me the largest danger to my daughter's safety…" I demanded. My power obliged.
The vision coalesced into an above view of a brown head of hair and a very familiar pair of computers. One laptop and one desktop. My work desk? But who…?
I recognize that guy!
Terrence from work? I was confused for a moment before the images on his screen became clear. Images on MY screen. Horror filled me. My laptop. Oh god, I'd left it out and he…! Oh god what had I done!?
He was watching the Behemoth fight from my laptop. On the other screen he'd connected to, YouTube was shining.
Oh god… how could I be so STUPID!?
Horror lingered only for a moment. Sudden rage, hot and burning, took its place and consumed me utterly. My vision seemed to cloud over in a red fog. I snapped back to reality in anger and fury.
My hand groped frantically for my cell phone. My fingers grasped it then hurriedly found Terrence's cell in my directory and dialed it.
The vision was still there, held in the back of my mind. I watched him jump, shocked as my call interrupted his viewing of my PRIVATE computer and then pulled out his phone. Was that fear in his eyes? If not, it soon fucking would be. If he had done anything… told anyone…!
"Hey boss. Something up?" He asked, and I heard the words in stereo from my vision and the ear piece. They only cracked a little, but more than enough that his nervousness would've screamed an alarm even without my powers.
"Terrence." My voice boomed through the phone. The combined stress of the evening was leaking into my words. I probably sounded more like a bear than a man. I don't know if I'd ever been so mad in all my life. "Stop what you are doing. Right now. And I may just let you keep your job."
"Wh-what!? I don't-!"
I didn't let him speak. There was no time to let him make excuses. I had to keep him off balance and spring into action. Now I had something I could protect. Fuck, had he uploaded anything? The Arcadia video would ruin her!
"You're going to close that computer. You're going to forget everything you saw on it. Or you're not going to have anyway to pay off Sandra's new car, come tomorrow. Get me, son?"
"F-f-fuck." He stuttered and it annoyed me. "Fuck! You and her are..."
"Going to be a nightmare for you if you don't close that laptop and get the hell out of my office." My rage was cold. It simmered and I could practically feel his fear. Was this what Taylor did to people? "I will know if you don't. And god help you if she finds out what you know. I surely can't stop her. I wouldn't even try."
"Shit… fuck fuck, Y-Yes Sir! I'm going! I'm going and I won't tell any-!"
I hung up and tossed the cell into my bag. My vision returned to my body only to see a wall of red lights in front of me.
I had only a moment to mirror Terrence's thought. "Fuck..."
I slammed my foot on the breaks and yanked up on the emergency brake, but it wasn't going to be enough. My power activated unconsciously again at the same moment as my car slammed into the rear end of the Honda Odyssey in front of me at a solid sixty miles per hour.
The glass shattered, but I barely felt it. Barely felt my airbag as it exploded out, or the tug of my seat belt as it held me down. All I could see was the car in front of me propel twenty feet forward in an instant, curving out towards the shoulder and straight into another waiting vehicle.
One of the young children in the back seat, a girl, did not have her seatbelt on. I watched as her body flew towards the window in the aftershock of our collision. My mind superimposed Taylor's face on hers and I panicked. My desire to protect her was overwhelming and suddenly I could feel around her. A blue shield popped into being hugging her skin and clothes close as she exploded out the front windshield and bounced off the corner the car in front of her and tumbled into the ditch. Her limbs flailed like a ragdoll. She flew off of the highway over ten feet, her body scraping along the soaked mud before coming to a stop in the cold rain.
I killed her… fuck, I killed her!
My panic subsided quickly though. She should have been dead, but as the blue shield faded she hesitantly stood up, shaking dizziness from herself and then crying out for her parents and rushing back toward the wreck.
My vision faded from around her and instantly blasted to the parents, snug in their airbags and seatbelts.
Thank god for airbags. Was my thought as I withdrew my head from its own pillow. I slowly moved my limbs one at a time to make sure everything was in working order. I was relieved to find nothing blatantly broken. I groped idly for my cell phone again. My fingers grasped it then dialed 911.
"911, what is your emergency?" The voice over the phone was accompanied by a buzzing sound.
I think I might have a concussion.
"Car accident. On I-95 just north of … ah… Exit 78, I just rear ended a mini-van. It looks bad, but there don't appear to be any fatalities." I was dizzy and disoriented as I stumbled from the car. The airbags and seatbelts looked to have done their job even on second glance as I watched the two parents drearily make their own way from the car. With the exception of course being the little girl. She had been thrown clear. Thanks to the blue bubble I'd surrounded her with she was up… she was alive.
Staring at her, I could no longer stand. I lost my footing, and the contents of my stomach in the same moment.
"Sir, are you alright? What is your name?" The lady over the phone prodded.
"Hebert, Danny Hebert." I said through the horrid taste in my mouth when I had recovered enough to speak. I could tell with a detached sense of reality that my voice was audibly shaking, my heart was pounding. In all likelihood I was going into shock.
"Understood Danny. Please remain calm, emergency services are on their way, and do not hang up the phone." I grunted out my agreement.
"Eye-spy..."
"Huh? " The girl who had been thrown clear was standing beside me now and tugging on my shirt sleeve. Not a scratch on her. The sight brought tears to my eyes. She couldn't have been older than six. Not even two hours into having a power and I had almost killed someone. That she was alive was pure luck.
"We were just playing eye-spy. I unbuckled to point it out..." My eyes flashed to the gaping hole in the windshield of the blue minivan, passengers whose horrified faces were visible behind the deflating airbags. I could see them look from the hole to the vaguely humanoid imprint in the car in front of them. The rest of the passengers stumbled from the vehicle in an awkward daze. Finding me, the cause of their trauma standing by their missing and thankfully whole daughter must have been a shock to their system as well. They joined me in standing around stupidly in the rain for a moment before screeching and hugging the youngest.
"I'll never do it again. P-Promise…" The girl told them, crying her eyes out. I was no better.
Is this what it had been like for Taylor when she had first gotten powers? I was suddenly terrified and it granted me a wonderful window of understanding as to what life must have been like for her at the hospital in those first few hours after her trigger, and beyond.
The father of the family had finished hugging his daughter and was now giving his attention to me. He was stocky and his shoulders were all bunched up and his face was clearly reddening.
I wonder if this is how my employees see me when I am about to explode.
"You were on your damn cell phone weren't ya!" He accused. My eyes flickered to the cell phone which was still online with the emergency response center. While I had been on the phone, that wasn't exactly why I had run into them. My face must have shown my guilt. "You FUCKING bastard! You nearly killed my daughter!"
I was trying to save mine...
People had begun to stop, someone had lit flares and caution lights on either side of the accident and passersby were taking a good hard look at the results of my mistake.
I felt so guilty.
"She should be dead Dennis." The woman had let go of her daughter and grabbed her husband's wrist tightly, holding him back. He resisted momentarily before relenting as his wife's words were slowly processed. "She wasn't wearing her seatbelt. She should be dead and instead she's ok." The two of them looked at each other before their eyes darted between me and their daughter. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
"She bounced off of that car and went flying..." Dennis' wife trailed off, eerily calm, her voice loud enough to be heard over the thunderous rain.
Abruptly she jerked to her feet and was suddenly in my face, tear streaked eyes demanding my focus as her hands reached out and pulled my head close so that she could talk to me quietly.
"Sir? Sir! Dammit they never stay on the line!" I heard drift over the phone.
"Just tell me one thing... Did you save her?" The question paralyzed me. If I said yes I was more or less outing myself as a cape, within two hours of triggering. How did Taylor keep this under wraps for months? The dilemma must have shown on my face because she nodded solemnly.
Perhaps this is the reason capes wear masks.
"Listen to me," her voice although quiet was more than a little hysterical. Her words were weighty and demanding. "Thank you for saving my daughter... but this? This wasn't 'good.' You could've killed her! "
"I'm… so… sorry… I…" My words were choked, and my mouth tasted bitter. My cheeks were wet with rain that hid tears. I leaned shakily against my totalled car grasping the hot metal for support.
"You're just lucky she's alive, or I swear to god you wouldn't be," Dennis' face was progressively getting more red but he appeared to deflate as I nodded nervously.
I fled from the family and quickly gathering bystanders. With no where else left to go I went back to and hid in the back of my crumpled Civic. As the cops and emergency services showed up I realized that it was going to be a long night and I was going to have to answer some awkward questions.
I'd managed to keep my daughter from finding out about the wreck for a whole month. I'd replaced the Civic as it was a total loss but I was well off enough that I could afford it. Barely.
That woman's words weighed heavily on my mind. I had powers. I'd saved that girl from my own mess. Stopped Terrence, once again cleaning up my own mess. It felt so hollow.
Every day I asked my power for dangers to Taylor and found few of them. She was safe. She was secure, and her notoriety was fading into a pleasantness as her friends grew closer and closer.
I was proud of her. More than I think I ever had been. She was resisting where as I…
Well. Eight Wardens in New York. She hasn't seen me on TV yet or my disguise is good enough that she hasn't recognized me.
They hadn't pressed charges, Dennis, Martha, and their daughter. Thank god. I'd never have been able to keep it a secret from Taylor. But if I became a Warden, tried to help people, how long would I last before I was outed as the biggest hypocrite ever?
Not very long I bet. I had to tell her. I just… didn't know how.
Another insight into how she must've felt. She probably wanted to tell me, back then. Just didn't know how.
My power. I didn't have to be near anyone to save them with it. The distance was limitless but the picture was only limited to a small viewing hole that I could… tag to a person, and never lose sight of them.
My shields could not leave my view. I could only protect one person at a time. But that was still something. I'd have to tell her. She'd promised she'd tell me. So I'd have to do the same.
But how?
I sighed. My coworkers were getting a little weirded out. I hadn't been the same since my trigger, and Terrence was literally afraid of me.
I really just need to move to New York. Driving there ever weekend is killing me.
My sighs deepened. To pass the time I queried my power on what dangers awaited me. None, as usual. My daughte-!
The image of a man formed in my mind. Tall, taller than even me. He was thin and had dark hair. He wore a ridiculous black trench coat with the collar popped that seemed straight out of a bad comic book. The flowers around him, and the grass I could see in my portal view of him withered and died as the wind whipped his hair.
He was already at the school.
I narrowed my eyes…
Nobody hurts my daughter. Not anymore.
She has Eyespy to watch out for her.
END CHAPTER