Transparency 1.05
I ran down the street at a measured pace, weaving around various pedestrians and other obstacles with practiced ease. It helped that most of the bystanders had already moved to the side, either on their own or having been shoved into position by the man I was chasing.
Half a block ahead. Jamie was keeping me abreast with the movements of my target. She flew through the air some fifty metres ahead, shadowing his movements from above. He's... pulling into the alleyway just past the deli. There's another person in there too, I'm coming in.
I saw the shop in question and dropped my pace slightly so I could focus on unstrapping the nightstick from my belt. As I was preoccupied, I noticed a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye and a sudden chill ran through my body, making me shiver involuntarily.
As soon as I stepped into the alleyway my body threw itself into a crouch, narrowly avoiding the steel pipe my quarry swung towards my head. From there, I flipped my nightstick around so that the short end was level with my fist and leapt forward, burying it into his stomach.
Even as he folded himself over my arm I pushed myself away, using him as a springboard to kick backwards and catch his accomplice in the chin. The newcomer dropped the wooden plank he'd been holding over his head and tripped over his heels, stumbling off-balance. I spun the nightstick around once more and clubbed him over the head with the longer end.
The first attacker, the man I had been chasing originally, had recovered and swung a new weapon at me. I caught the woman's purse and then hopped in place, leaping over a kick aimed at my knees. I twisted my body away, an attempt to wrench the stolen item from his grasp, but he had the strap wrapped around his wrist. I still managed to pull him off balance just enough that I was able to lower my shoulder and bodycheck him.
Tightening my grip on the purse, I took one step backwards and pulled it out from his grasp as he fell. I took one more step, this time planting it on the second thief's arm as he reached for the pipe the first man had dropped. He relaxed his hand in surrender and I lifted my boot away.
I kept a careful grip on my nightstick as I checked the purse for any damage, but the fight had gone out from both men. They groaned on the street as the discomfort of their injuries made themselves known and I frowned.
"Stepping on his arm might have been a bit overboard," I commented, eyeing the growing bruise on the thief's limb.
I felt another chill as Jamie withdrew herself from my body and floated beside me. "So was using the baton to gut-punch the other guy." She grinned. "I'd say the experiment was a success."
I looked over the two thieves dispassionately, still groaning on the ground, then ran a critical eye over myself. No injuries to speak of. Normally engaging in a fight against two others would have left me with at least a few bruises. This time, with Jamie keeping an eye on my surroundings and controlling my movements to respond to sudden changes in the situation, I'd ended the fight much more quickly than I had expected and had avoided at least two surprise attacks.
It still didn't reduce the sheer discomfort that came from having my body move itself without my own conscious thought behind it.
"It shows promise, I guess," I said, holstering my baton and fishing for a pair of plastic cuffs from a pouch. I also grabbed a police transponder and activated it, dropping it onto the ground between the two thieves. "Go see if you can find the lady they snatched this from," I ordered Jamie, "and let her know we've retrieved her belongings. Maybe direct her this way whilst I get these two secured."
...
"...neh boo..."
I released my hold on the book, letting it fall to the floor and add to the growing pile before I flew back towards the bookshelf. "It's not exactly a library here," I pointed out. "To be honest, I'm surprised this stuff is even here. Maybe they figured to make use of the space?"
Next book! Jamie repeated through our link.
I turned away from the bookshelf and shook my finger. "E-nun-ci-ate," I said with a grin.
Jamie's glare was harsh enough to make me glad we didn't have Blaster classifications. "I... hay... oo," she whispered haltingly.
"Love you too, Little Sister," I replied, turning back to scan the book titles. Reference text... reference text... clinical study report... hmm... "How do you feel about a copy of some student's dissertation?"
How about you go outside and see if there's anything more palatable? She turned her eyes back towards the ceiling and I could tell she was counting the cracks in the tiling above her. At this point I'd settle for a picture book.
"Huh," I said. "I don't know why I didn't think of that before. Be back in a flash." I immediately turned and flew through the closest wall.
The room adjacent to Jamie's appeared to be an office, although it was hard to tell since all of the lights were off. Not terribly surprising, since it was the dead of the night and most of the workers in the building would have gone home. The next room was another patient's room. The bed contained an older man, fast asleep, looking well into his high fifties or older. I swooped in for a closer look at his patient chart and noticed he was suffering from Alzheimer's. His room appeared to have equipment similar to the ones present in Jamie's, right down to the machines monitoring his vital signs and another set I assumed had been set up to capture his brainwaves.
I shivered. The conditions were close enough that it brought up bad memories. I exited swiftly, this time poking my head out of the door into the hallway.
The corridor was brightly lit, in sharp contrast to our rooms. I noticed there was actually a guard stationed outside of Jamie's room, although he appeared to be passed out in his chair. I double-checked the area around the door for this patient—no guard.
Frowning, I made my way down the hall, careful to keep myself backdropped by the lighting fixtures in the hopes that it'd make it harder to pick out the glow of my ethereal form. To be safe, I also concentrated on dimming myself as much as possible.
My caution seemed to be unnecessary for the moment as I made my way to the far end. I poked my head through the various doorways as I passed them. Most of them were other patient rooms, although a few rooms were offices just as abandoned as the first one. An elevator and a stairwell had been situated at the end of the hallway. A placard identified this as the second floor of the building.
I sank through the floor briefly, passing through layers of heating and ventilation systems before breaking through the ground floor's ceiling. There I found a hallway that was identical to the upper floor in nearly every way. A brief check through the closest doors revealed a few more offices, but down here there were mostly the type of patient rooms physicians used for drop-in patients and routine appointments.
I explored a bit more before I found what I assumed was the main entrance and lobby. There was an open room with chairs lining the walls opposite a front desk walled off from the rest of the room with glass.
By all appearances it looked like an ordinary health clinic. I slumped in disappointment. I'd been partially hoping to find evidence of a secret conspiracy regarding Jamie's treatment—maybe something like an office with an incriminating voice message or scribbled note carelessly left on top of the desk. Of course, I hadn't yet found anything that screamed manager's office, so maybe the idea wasn't a total lost cause. And there was the small matter that Jamie's door apparently warranted a sentry...
I shook my head. Now was not the time for paranoid delusions. I had come down here with a purpose. If this was a physician's office, then there absolutely had to be...
Magazines! Jamie squealed, spotting the small table in the corner at the same moment I did. Jackpot!
I floated towards the table, pleased with my discovery, until a new thought crossed my mind. How was I going to get these back up to the room?
...
Moving Jamie was somewhat more difficult when she wasn't there to help move the process along. I'd learned that already in the aftermath of the duplicator fight, but trying to use her in a combat situation added several more degrees of complication to my already stressed-out mind.
I'd settled for anchoring her in the sky, out of sight, and simply using her to check my surroundings every so often. This gave me nearly the same amount of awareness of my surroundings, although she wasn't there to point out all of the many details I'd probably missed.
Also, it didn't work very well when my quarry had barricaded themselves indoors.
On the plus side, this was just another regular thief—a shoplifter, in fact. I could probably just call up the authorities right now and keep an eye on the building to make sure the perpetrator didn't leave. Sit back and at least still get a finder's fee for the job.
On the other hand, a capture bounty was worth much more. Even if I didn't need the money quite that badly, I knew I could pull this off. I was just... nervous without the usual fallback in place.
Just as I'd begun to move Jamie into position, I suddenly felt feedback as her avatar began to resist my commands and her presence filled the link once again.
Despite the time constraints, I couldn't help but relax. "You're awfully late. Did you need a daytime snack or something?"
Hmph, she grumbled. Stupid doctors woke me up just to tell me they were going to put me back to sleep again. Why do they need a kittycat to look into my head and tell them what's going on in there, anyh—Why are you laughing at me?!
...
"This exercise is designed to test your mental acuity," the nurse patiently explained. "When I read out the letter, I want you to point to the object whose name begins with that letter, then name the object."
Jamie unsuccessfully tried to shrink beneath her covers. If I didn't know these people were incapable with seeing a reality that didn't fit their worldview, I'd think they were mocking me.
I can't help you there, I sent regretfully. Apparently living in your head for the last decade does not make me a reliable witness to your state of mind.
"Let's begin," the nurse said with a sort of false cheer. "'A' is for...?"
Jamie uncurled a finger and spoke slowly, carefully. Making sure the nurse could not possibly misunderstand her. "Kill. Me. Now."
The nurse's smile became somewhat brittle when she realized which finger Jamie was using to point with.
...
"No," Jamie said emphatically.
"Why not?" I jabbed my hand at the creature laying quietly in my palm. "It's a simple-minded creature. It's durable. It has its own self-defense mechanisms! What's wrong with it?"
"What's wrong? It's on tonight's menu," she hissed.
I'm positive the crab in my hand would have clicked its claws in offense to that last, if not for the rubber bands wrapped around its pincers. I sighed and dropped it back into its holding tank.
...
"Er, well, it's been quite some time since I've had to deal with my subjects directly, so please forgive my... ah, excitement." Jamie's doctor-scientist smiled nervously as he propped a clipboard against his lap.
Jamie was strong enough to sit up now. Although they'd offered to hold this little interview in the relative comfort of her room, she had insisted on a change of environment. This had resulted in our current location, which—going by the state of disorderliness—appeared to be the man's office. The desk had been piled high with documents of various types. Rather than clean off the surface so that he could place the desk between himself and his guest, the man had decided to sit on the slightly less cushy chair on the opposite whilst Jamie had been parked in the open space between him and the door.
Jamie had been provided with a cheap, mechanical wheelchair, the kind that required the user to have decent upper-body strength in order to propel themselves. As they'd had a nurse escorting her to the office and back, I had taken the opportunity to possess the wheelchair itself.
The benefits were two-fold. I got firsthand experience on how the wheelchair's parts felt when moving around and I was also able to hide from the staff. It seemed they had assumed the same thing the scientists in my world did when I had first demonstrated my powers—that Jamie had to consciously call me forth in order for me to manifest myself; and that I was merely an extension of her psyche. In other words, if I wasn't visible, I wasn't active—'out of sight, out of mind.'
"So, ah, Ms. Shirakawa was it?" the Doctor asked cordially.
"Yes." Jamie lifted her chin to answer. "... Jamie." She was being extremely careful with her word pronunciation. The effort it cost her to do so was astounding, especially with her current level of strength, but she refused to allow herself to backslide when she was making such progress.
"Jamie, then. And how old are you?"
I carefully detached myself from the wheelchair, gliding across the floor until I was behind the Doctor's desk. While she kept him occupied with conversation and observation, I began scanning the desk for any reports they may have had regarding Jamie or her treatments. Given that this meeting had been scheduled in advance, I didn't find it impossible to assume that he'd be brushing up on the pertinent facts before he actually spoke with her.
Jamie blinked. "What year... is it?"
"The current year is twenty-eleven, we're just getting into Spring," he informed her.
She closed her eyes briefly, doing the math in her head. "Nineteen? Unless... my birthday... passed... already."
The Doctor shook his head. "Not yet, according to the records we were provided upon your admittance. I must say, Jamie, I am very impressed by your ability to retain details of your life in the face of your recent disability."
Jamie frowned. "I'm... not... stupid."
I frowned at the pique evident in Jamie's tone. During the time she'd been predominantly active as my ghost, Jamie had always been a cheerful girl, eager to help out. Since she'd woken up, Jamie had been prone to fits of irritability and frustration. Most of it likely came from the fact that her physical body was not nearly as responsive or healthy as she might have wished for herself. Her treatment by the staff certainly didn't help matters, as they seemed to be treating her as the eight-year old she had been when she'd fallen into her coma.
"I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I thought you were," the Doctor said soothingly. "As a matter of fact, the fact that you were able to learn fairly high-level language skills in a matter of days shows remarkable levels of intelligence. I wonder if you could give me some insight into your thought processes."
To me, Jamie's face clearly showed what she thought of that idea. Either the Doctor missed it completely, or he was ignoring it. I'm not sure which I would have preferred.
Get a move on, already. I looked up to find Jamie's eyes land on me briefly before she returned her attention to the Doctor. I'd rather not stay here any longer than I have to.
"I'm thinking... that you should first... stop treating me like... a child," she breathed.
I returned to my task and began quietly sifting through the stacks of papers, doing my best to ignore the rest of the conversation between the two.
ooo
"That... was... exhausting," Jamie complained once we were back in her room. She made no move to protest when the nurse gently lifted her out of the wheelchair and stretched her out along the bed. She switched to our mental link as she settled down. He just kept trying to psychoanalyze me or something. Asking me questions about what I remembered from the Darkness. How it made me feel being out of there. I honestly didn't know how I should have answered some of the things he asked.
"You wont have to put up with much of that, dear," the nurse assured her, assuming Jamie had been talking to her. "That was a one-time occurrence."
Well, I couldn't find much, I reported. But from the few things I did see, I think he's mostly on the level. Nothing sinister going on... and I doubt they're going to dissect you.
Good to know, she said dryly. "Leave the... chair."
The nurse took her hand away from the wheelchair's handles. "Are you sure? You won't be needing this for some time."
Jamie gave the nurse one of her patented glares.
"Very well." From the nurse's tone it was clear that she was simply humouring Jamie's request, and Jamie knew it. "You'll find a button next to your pillow, press it if you'd like to request someone to take you outside, or even to help you back into the chair."
"Thanks," Jamie said. She waited until the nurse had left us both alone before she continued the previous conversation. "So..." So, Mad Scientist theory is out, what does that leave us?
"Oh, I never said he wasn't mad," I pointed out. "Just that he had no sinister motives. In fact, I'm fairly certain he thinks you're his ticket to the Nobel Prize or something like that. Maybe he thinks you have the key to curing Alzheimer's or something locked away in your head. Advanced brain regeneration and whatnot."
Jamie's mouth twisted into a grimace. "You're kidding," she said. "He had all that written down?"
"Well, not exactly," I admitted. "I didn't find much at all, like I said. Most of what he had on you specifically was primarily background information. Our parents, where we lived, the police reports on the car accident... My theory comes from the fact that: this is a research clinic of some kind; and of the few other patients I did see during my explorations, most of them had a brain sickness of one kind or another."
"Joy."
"Yeah, it's almost a shame we can't really help him in that regard." I floated over to hear and hovered over her chest. "There was one other thing I found, though. There are parahumans in this world. There's even equivalents of the Protectorate, the Suits, the King's Men, the Guild, all of them."
"... Interesting," she said. "Does... that help?"
I shook my head. "Not really. If anything, it means we might be in just as much trouble as we would in my world if the truth ever came out about us. The reason I found out, though, is because he had a list of phone numbers and emails—a contact list to representatives for each organisation. I think he might turn you over to one of them in order to get help for his research."
Jamie made a face. "Yuck, no more labs... for me... thank you very much. I've had... enough with this one."
I shrugged, resigned. "Well, there's not really much we can do about it. You're pretty much healthy in the head, I guess—"
"You... guess?"
"—but your body definitely needs rehabilitation before you can become self-sufficient."
Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Big Brother. Jamie leaned back against her pillow with a contented smile, deliberately reverting back to our link. I'm a cape, just as you are. I'm self-sufficient enough. I want out.
"Out?" I repeated dumbly.
Her smile grew fractionally wider.
ooo
a/n—sorry for the (slightly) late update. i went to see the Tenors in SF last night. canadians are witty people. in other news: i should have begged for reviews earlier! +_+
but... then again, drawing the attention of psycho gecko is a rather frightening prospect...
i kid. but seriously i'm happy to hear people are still finding the fic interesting, though a few people did mention things didn't quite mesh well even if 'they got past it'. are there any specific examples (that i can fix and wont break the story completely)? like most people probably assume, the main leads' powers can't really change, but if there are other continuity errors i'd be happy to make adjustments. for the rest, i guess i'll copy what i wrote at the end of looking glass:
just consider this an AU that isn't really an AU because there are already AU's because of the whole 'WORMhole' and... i guess earths aleph through taw
plot. i suppose i cant realistically expect comments on the plot so far when it's still getting off the ground... i will say i plan for 3 arcs to mirror worm itself a bit, titled Transparency, Parallax, and Reflection. let's see what anyone can pull from that.
another thing that came up is formatting in the narrative. i generally try to avoid putting in a 'key' but after going over my own internal rules i found they were slightly convoluted... but if it helps:
"Dialogue" — spoken out loud. if it's in double quotation marks, it means an outsider could conceivably eavesdrop. james speaks to jamie in this manner quite often, regardless of which form he's in. apparently he's fine with people thinking he talks to himself.
"Dialogue" — fully italicized sentences in double-quotes are usually transmissions, usually via radio/transceivers. but watch out, it could also mean the entire thing is emphasised, a sign of a freak-out or sarcastic delivery
Thoughts — fully italicized sentences indicate thoughts or communications via 'mental link'. will this make it hard to determine if jamie is talking to james or if he's just having an internal monologue? yes. confused? good. hint? maybe. maybe not. bwa. ha. ha. ha.
Partially italicized phrases — emphasis. i won't lie, i stress words probably more often than i should. an italicized word or phrase in the middle of a normally-formatted sentence means emphasis on that particular word or phrase. the reverse is also true.
hope you enjoy! still r/r if you'd like