Disclaimer is in chapter 1. So apparently Tenhawk has resumed posting fanfiction on one of his own sites ( t . evancurrie . ca ) and on patre on (username tenhawk).

Brockton Bay General Hospital.

Daniel Hebert rushed the hospital, not bothering to close the door of the cruiser that had dropped him off. He burst in the doors, heading for the front desk.

"I'm Danny Hebert," He told the nurse, "My daughter, Taylor, was brought in…"

"Yes, Mr Hebert," The Nurse smiled at him, "Taylor is fine. Panacea was here when she was brought in, so she's sleeping now but should wake in the morning."

He slumped, relief flooding through him. The police had said as much, of course, but hearing it from the Nurse made it all the more real.

"Thank God… I can see her?"

"Of course, I'll call in an orderly to take you up," The nurse said, reaching for a phone.

Danny nodded, "I don't suppose you know what happened? The police said something about her locker, but I… honestly I don't think I heard one word in five."

"I understand," She told him gently. "I don't know much more than that, but if you want to ask the one who brought her in, he's right over there with Miss Militia and Glory Girl."

Danny half turned, eyes widening as he recognized two of the city's most well known heroes standing there with a young man he didn't recognize.

"Is he a Cape?" Danny asked, "He's not wearing a mask… and that's not much of a costume?"

"Apparently," She shrugged. "Calls himself Alexander Magus. Not sure what his powers are, but he brought your girl in and then waited patiently to give the police a statement."

"I should thank him," Danny decided, looking back to the nurse, "I'll be back shortly for that escort?"

"The orderly won't mind waiting a few minutes," She told him. "And Taylor won't be awake for a while. Take your time. Worst case, I call for another orderly if something comes up."

"Thank you."

Xander noticed a man watching him from across the ER, but didn't pay it much mind at first. He and the pair he was with were getting a lot of stares, and he more than understood that. Costumed types tended to get looks, even in areas where they were common, after all.

When the man started over in his direction, though, Xander took a moment to evaluate him quickly.

Tall, lanky. The sort that most would underestimate, physically, but probably not twice. Xander had seen that build before, and knew better. The man didn't have either the look or stance of someone looking for trouble, though, so he just continued his conversation with the pair as the man approached.

"Artificer?" Militia asked, curiously, "What does that mean, precisely?"

"It's not a mystery," Xander chuckled, "any dictionary should probably tell you what it means. I make artifacts, of course."

"Yes, so I gathered," She said dryly, "but what does that mean?"

"Tools, generally," He said, plucking out his Spell Phone and tossing it casually to her. She caught it, startled, and he noticed a blue glow on her belt shift to her free hand, a Berretta forming in her grip momentarily before it flickered away and a K-Bar appeared on her belt.

Interesting.

Militia played it off, her expression a little annoyed just the same as she flipped his Spell Phone over in her hand.

"What is it?"

"My Spell Phone."

Glory Girl groaned, and it was music to Xander's ears.

"you did not call it that."

Militia's smile was back, and she was likely struggling to keep laughing if Xander was any judge.

"Of course I did, what else would I call it?"

"It's a communications device?" Militia cut in, short circuiting the argument before it could get started.

Xander just nodded.

"How does it work?"

"Just pull it open," He said.

She did, and the screen appeared from a space that really couldn't possibly have held it, allowing her to look at the designs on it in puzzlement.

"I… have no idea what I'm looking at," She admitted.

The man who'd approached, and been waiting somewhat patiently though with clear fidgeting, took that moment to clear his throat apologetically.

"Yes?" Xander looked over to him.

"I am sorry to interrupt," The man said, "but I'm Danny Hebert… you, you brought my daughter in earlier."

"Oh, Mr Hebert," Xander moved past Miss Militia immediately, extending his hand. "Good to meet you, I am very sorry it's under these sorts of circumstance."

"Thank you for saving her. She's… she's all I have left, since my wife," Danny choked up.

"You don't ever need to thank me for saving someone, Danny," Xander said firmly. "Thanks are for things you don't have to do but do anyway. I couldn't have turned from someone in trouble like that anymore than I could will myself to stop breathing…"

He snorted, "Actually, I would probably have a lot more luck willing myself to stop breathing. Have they told you how she's doing?"

Danny nodded, "She'll be fine, they say. Sleeping right now."

"Best to let her, then, I'd expect," Xander told him. "Whatever else, she had a rough day."

Glory Girl snorted, earning her a sharp look from Militia, but a wan smile from Danny.

"An understatement, I think," He said. "But you're right, she probably needs her sleep. Do you know… I mean, what happened?"

"I don't know," Xander admitted with a shrug. "I just found her. The police are already working on figuring out what happened, and will likely be waiting for a statement from her when she wakes up, but…"

He shrugged helplessly.

"Yeah, I understand."

"Let the police do their job, Mr Hebert," Miss Militia suggested gently. "You just take care of your daughter."

Danny nodded weakly, stepping back, "Thank you again, I don't care if you don't think you deserve thanks for saving people. Thank you."

Xander tipped his head, a wry but resigned smile on his lips. "Gratitude accepted, Mr Hebert.

Danny flinched slightly, looking around sharply.

"What was that?"

"What?" Miss Militia asked, concerned as she shifted to survey the room.

"I…" He shook his head, "I'm imagining things. Sorry, I'm going to go look in on my daughter."

"Of course," She said, smiling easily.

They watched him go for a moment before Miss Militia handed Xander back his Spell Phone.

"If you have that thing, why do you have a cheap cell phone?" Glory Girl asked into he silence.

Xander glanced at her briefly, "It's on a… private network. I'll need to get some things together to connect it to the cell system. Just haven't gotten around to it."

"If you'd like to come in for power testing, I'm certain that our research department would be able to chase down materials for you," She offered.

"Power testing?" Xander asked, amused. "I know my powers quite well."

"Of course," She said, hiding her disappointment.

"But tell you what, if you can put together a list of some supplies I need, I'd be willing to show you a little of what I can do," Xander told her with a grin.

It was dark.

Taylor didn't remember how she got home, but she curled up in the blankets as she closed her eyes again and tried to ignore the sound of a truck backing up in the distance. The beeping was annoying, but she expected it would stop shortly.

It didn't.

After a few minutes she opened her eyes again and looked around, recognizing that the beeping was a lot closer than she'd thought in her blearily barely cognizant mind.

She wasn't in her own bed.

It was a hospital room, she realized as she sat up and looked around. The sky outside the window was dark, the city lights visible but she could see it was starting to lighten up.

Almost morning? But… how, I… I was…

The beeping sped up as Taylor started to hyperventilate, remembering the last thing she could before the gap in her memories. The locker, the smell, banging on the door… begging to be let out. Scratching at the door, tearing her…

She looked down at her hands, seeing her jagged fingernails where they'd been torn, but there was no blood. She didn't feel bruised or aching either, though she remembered her head slamming into the back of her locker, and limbs being banged around.

How long? How long have I been here?

The beeping was becoming urgently fast, but Taylor ignored it and the distant commotion that seemed to erupt around her.

Hands grabbed her by the shoulder, pushing her back into the bed, but she was still staring at her hands.

The device at her side exploded, and the beeping finally stopped.

The sound of the explosion froze almost everyone into their place, looking around in confusion and panic as they tried to locate the source.

Miss Militia and Alexander Magus, however, were different.

They both spun on their heels, eyes locking on the same direction, and were moving before the first echo of the blast rolled over the area. Magus took the lead, a stick appearing in his hand as he flew down the hall at startling speeds, somehow shoving the Doctors, Nurses, Orderlies, Patients, and everyone else out of the way as he did… and putting them back after he'd passed.

Miss Militia was hot on his heels, sprinting fast to catch up when she realized what he was doing, if not how, and using his movement as a way of clearing the road for herself. To her it almost looked like something Vista might do, and she filed that observation away for later.

"It came from this way," She called, pointing down a corridor to where wisps of smoke could be seen coming from an open door.

"I see it," Magus said slowing to a landing as he approached the door, coming up beside it with his back to the wall before he briefly exposed himself to look in.

He relaxed quickly, which caught Miss Militia off guard, his stick vanishing as he stepped into the doorway.

"It's alright, looks like an accident," He said as he cautiously stepped into the room. "It's Taylor's room, though."

Miss Militia felt a cool chill run down her spine as she adjusted her power back from the MP-5 to her customary Berretta 93-R, keeping the muzzle down and her finger well clear of the trigger as she stepped into the room.

An orderly was on the ground, bleeding from the looks of it, but it didn't seem too serious at the glance. Magus stepped over him, eyes fixated on the girl, who was rocking and shaking in the bed, her eyes wide but unfocused as she stared off into… nothing.

"It's alright," He said softly, "everything's fine. You're in the hospital, but you're going to be fine."

The girl snapped to look at him, eyes focusing sharply, "How long?"

"What?" Magus was confused.

"How long… how long was I?"

"In the locker…?" Magus asked hesitantly, "I don't know. A few hours maybe? Do you…"

"No! How long was I unconscious?" She demanded, holding up her hands. "I was hurt! I know I was… Now I…"

"Panacea looked after you," Miss Militia soothed her, stepping into sight. "You've only been out a few hours."

"P… P… Panacea?" She stammered out, looking disbelieving.

"Yes, Panacea," Miss Militia assured her. "Now, your father is here… chances are he's trying to get here as we speak, but we didn't expect you to be awake so soon."

"Dad?"

Her voice was so plaintive that it hurt to hear.

"Yes, your father…" Miss Militia assured her again. "I'm going to step out and see if I can get him here, alright?"

She nodded silently, eyes not leaving the super hero until she was out of sight.

Xander examined the destroyed machine by the girl's bed.

Definitely looks like accidental magic, and not exactly low powered stuff either. He noted as he looked over the machinery with interest.

He knew a fair bit about electronics, at least in general, but nothing at all about this particular piece of kit. What he did know, however, was that it hadn't exploded in the conventional sense of the word.

No burning, no sign of a specific origin point, none of the normal signs that he'd associate with something actually exploding.

Exactly what you'd expect from a surge of accidental magic brought on by stress in an untrained user, He thought, casting a look over to the girl, who was largely ignoring him.

Xander waved his hands over the magic, channeling magic through his carbon tribal marks. Burns appeared in the machinery, and he destroyed a fuse that had survived the event, making sure to apply burns to the plug in the wall and around it as well.

Then he turned and gestured again, sending a confundus at the orderly and others still in the room.

"A power surge blew out the fuse in the machine," He told them. "It must have jumped the circuit and overloaded the capacitors. They blew up as a result."

Everyone looked slackly at him briefly before they nodded and slowly became more animated as they told each other the story, growing in confidence with each retelling.

Xander glanced aside at the girl, who was now staring at him with wide eyes and shock clearly marked across her face. He just smiled, winked, and held his finger up to his lips.

"Shhh…"

Queen Administrator.

That was the closest translation of the shard's name/function that could be made in the language of the current cycle's host species. There were many Administrator Shards, of course, each tasked with overseeing various aspects of the cycle or the shards participating within it, and Queen Administrator was generally tasked with overseeing them.

It was somewhat unusual for the Queen Administrator to be deployed to a host species… particular this early in the cycle. Generally there were far more pressing duties at play and simply no time. If things were going well, then toward the late middle portion of a cycle the Queen Administrator shard would often take some time to gather data personally, as all shards genuinely wanted to do.

This cycle, however, was not normal.

The Thinker was gone, and the Warrior listless… unguided… irrelevant to the cycle.

Possibly the cycle was broken, though that remained to be seen.

Without orders and guidance from the Thinker's Paths, Queen Administrator had opted to take initiative and insert itself into the cycle to gain data and attempt to determine what, if anything, was salvageable from the entire mess.

The other Queen Shards were incommunicado, and few of the Administrator Shards were properly connected to the network. Data sharing was all but nonexistent, and that left the Queen Administrator with time to plot.

The initial plan was loosely formed around a male of the host species, contacted by his proximity to Collector/Protector in his earlier life. He had proven impressively impervious to the stresses that were required for Shards to make a connection, however, and after many years of waiting Queen Administrator had shifted focus to his daughter.

At first, that appeared to be a wise decision. Her interaction with Phase/Hunter had been very nearly ideal, both offering an ever increasing stress load and a nearby shard to bounce off of while determining the power expression Queen Administrator would offer her.

Very quickly, however, it became clear that the unusual resistance to stress breaks was a hereditary trait.

It was utterly ridiculous, Queen Administrator had seen hosts shatter under a tenth of what this one endured. Phase/Hunter had managed a connection after a single incident.

Some degree of resistance was good, of course, since those with high levels of endurance tended to make the strongest hosts… but there were limits.

Queen Administrator was beginning to ponder whether an entirely new host, unconnected to her previous selection, might not be the best option. That was, of course, the point in which the host began to crack. Eagerly, Queen Administrator extended the offer to the suffering mind.

This was the key. The offer must be accepted freely, else the connection would not form.

It was a limitation that they had struggled under for eons, but one that had never been broken despite all attempts. Forcing a connection, at best, would kill the host. The worst case… did not bear thinking on.

Destination

Intent made clear, Queen Administrator reached out to the host and offered it's help, waiting for the response.

Agreement

The host accepted, finally. After how many times help had been offered and refused, Queen Administrator had almost given up hope for being able to gain inroads to the host.

Trajectory

The pulse was initiated, looking for other shards nearby to introduce pseudo-random variables to the cycle's expression. It had long since been determined that individual shards would otherwise tend to default to a preferred expression set, even if they were told not to.

AgREm$T^

That wasn't right.

Queen Administrator started a troubleshooting response to the garbled code, only to be shocked to discover that the garbled code had been accepted!

Negat-

"Not so fast, McGurk. I think we're going to have a little fun."

Negation. Negation. Negation.

"Too late."

QA did not know who the interloper was, but it spoke in the language of the Host Species and apparently had some significant command of the Quantum Foam Matrix that underlay the construction of realities. Beyond that, the interloper was a mystery and seemed intent on staying one.

That left the Shard with an unenviable task, which largely seemed to consist of cleaning up the mess that had happened from the sabotaged connection.

The Data stream had been corrupted, and instead of bouncing off one of the other shards in the area, Queen Administrator's signal had interfaced with an unknown and unidentified shard.

Disturbing.

The data response from it had been completely garbled, almost certainly corrupted by a simple mismatched interface request not being understood. In that event, though, it was actually something of a miracle that any response had been made at all.

The only aspect of it all that wasn't a complete disaster was that the link to the host had been completed successfully, though with the now garbled response to the power variation request fully integrated into it.

Only time would tell if the connection would remain stable, be at all useful, or result in the death of the Host due to the interference. Queen Administrator was reasonably certain that none of the potential blowback could be revisited on the Shard itself, but with unknowns in play 'reasonable' was about as assured as it could get.

Irritation.

That said, the data stream through the host link was actually… interesting.

The Host had apparently attained a telekinetic expression?

Queen Administrator wasn't certain, but the destruction of the Host Species equipment that had been monitoring the host's vitals seemed to indicate that. The absolute tidal flows of data that accompanied it would take even Queen Administrator hours to digest at a minimum. Quite possibly longer, given that there were several completely unknown factors and another few pieces of the data stream that were similarly garbled as the initial response had been.

Curiosity

Processing the expected data was placed on automatic while Queen Administrator looked over the additional sections that had been garbled.

Decryption Protocols

Irritation

No match on anything resembling any known or hypothesized encryption. The data just looked like a mess and little else. That was frustrating, particularly since it accounted for as much as two thirds of all the incoming data.

Granted, this host link was providing far more data than normal, but Queen Administrator had gotten its hopes up when it saw the volume. Merely receiving the normal data was… a letdown, if a shard like itself could feel such.

With what the host species would define as a 'sigh', Queen Administrator set the data for deletion.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you, McGurk."

Accusation

"Got me there, I admit it."

Query

"Mostly I just look to have fun, but this time I have my reasons."

Query

"Sorry McGurk, leaving those beans unspilled. Just take my advice, don't delete any of the 'corrupted' data. You'll regret it."

Exasperation!

Queen Administrator paused, it hadn't realized that it was possible to express that emotion using it's natural language… nor that yelling was an option.

Fascination

While it was looking over the additional data that had been generated in the last few seconds, Queen Administrator didn't notice the interloper disappearing.

Danny surged into the hospital room, eyes searching for her daughter. He found her, lying in the bed where she was supposed to be, no sign of any additional injuries from the destroyed machine beside her.

The Cape he had spoken with earlier was in the room, and he'd passed Miss Militia as he arrived, she had gestured him into the room with some comforting words that he barely registered.

"Taylor!" He blurted, getting her attention. "Are you… are you alright?"

She nodded, whispering her answer, "I'm fine, Dad."

"What happened?" Danny asked, looking at the smoking machine.

"No big deal, must have been a power surge," The Cape told him confidently. "The fuse popped, but not before the surge blew out the capacitors. Those things make quite the sound when they blow, don't they?"

"I… uh, guess so?" Danny said, thinking about it for a second or so. It sounded right, he guessed. As long as Taylor was fine, he wasn't going to worry about it, he decided.

He focused on Taylor, "Are you alright?"

"I… I guess so?" She said uncertainly.

"You guess so?" Danny asked, concerned. "That doesn't sound promising…"

"No, I mean… I feel fine, but… I shouldn't?" Taylor said, sounding surprised. "I guess Panacea does good work. I just wasn't expecting to wake up feeling good."

"Ah, I suppose that makes sense," Danny said as the cape, Magus, waved at Taylor on his way out the door.

"Who was that?" Taylor asked softly, eyes on the departing cape.

Danny smiled, "A Cape, by the name of Magus I guess."

"A cape?" Taylor's eyes widened, "No mask?"

"Doesn't seem to care," Danny shrugged before getting more serious, "He's the one who brought you in."

If anything, her eyes widened even more.

"A Cape got me out of the…" Taylor's voice dropped off to almost a whisper, "locker?"

Danny nodded, "and called the police. They scoured the school, in addition to taking blood samples here, I'm told, before they let Panacea work on you. Miss Militia said something about possible bioterrorism charges, depending on how things come back."

"Wow," Taylor swallowed, "I… I didn't think things could… change."

Danny slumped, "Is that why you didn't tell me about any of this?"

She looked away, "You had so much to deal with, Dad…"

"It's my job to shelter you, not yours to shelter me, Taylor," He told her gently.

"Dad, you weren't dealing with what you already had," She snapped before immediately withdrawing, "Sorry, I…"

"No," Danny held up a hand, "That's fair. You're probably right, but that's done now. This is the priority. The police will need a statement, probably tomorrow but they might come in now that you're awake. Then we'll call Alan and…"

"No."

Danny looked up, confused, her tone had gone cold very quickly.

"Taylor… what?"

"We can't call Mr Barnes," Taylor sighed. "Emma was one of the bullies."

"Emma? What? But…" Danny just stammered.

"I don't know what happened," Taylor said, "and I've thought about it a lot, but something happened. Something… changed her. It was like a switch being thrown, Dad… The day I left for camp everything was fine, the day I got back…"

She shook her head, "Nothing was fine ever again."

Danny slumped, "And you think Alan knows?"

"I don't know," She admitted, "but he's going to protect her, right?"

"Probably," Danny mumbled, "or try at least. Your right, can't talk to Alan, even if he doesn't know it's a conflict of interest. We'll get another lawyer."

"Dad, we can't afford that."

"You let me worry about that, Taylor," Danny said, straightening up. "We'll have to get to the bottom of this mess, and that's going to take a lot of work… and some of it will probably be in court. We'll need a lawyer, otherwise nothing will be resolved."

Taylor reluctantly nodded, falling silent.

Danny did pretty much the same thing, sitting back in his seat, wondering just how screwed up things really were… and how did he miss it?