It started to rain lightly as they stepped off the bus in front of the security gate.
"Hello, Charles. How are you this afternoon?" Taylor said to the guard as they walked up. "This is Amy Dallon."
"Miss Dallon. Always a fan of the work you do at the hospital," Charles White said as he tipped his guard hat at her.
Amy smile and it only looked a little forced. "Thank you."
"Bleh. I hate winter rain," Taylor said in complaint.
"It can be more dangerous, too. Hypothermia," Amy noted absently as she looked around the nice neighborhood. She narrowed her eyes at a steeple with a cross on it. "Oh, that's funny. My house is right over there." She pointing just to the left of the church.
"Really?" Taylor looked around. "That's not even that long of a walk. Have to go all the way back to the gate and to the next road. What, twenty minutes walking up the hill?"
"Maybe a little longer. Dad takes a little longer going to BrockC Store on the corner."
Taylor opened the door to her house and nodded her head to get Amy inside so she could close the door. She then trotted over to a picture frame to do something to the edge of the frame to open it as a cover panel. She then quickly typed in a ten digit number while looking into an eye scanner.
Amy blinked at that. "What?"
"The PRT installed a really high tech security alarm. It's a pain to disarm, the doors relock when we are inside and... it's just a pain in the butt," she groused as she slid her backpack back onto her shoulder. "My bedroom's this way."
The visitor followed her upstairs to a mostly set up bedroom with a few boxes at the end of the bed. Taylor pulled out her notebook and set it on the desk.
"So, um..." Taylor's brain stalled as she tried to think of something to talk about.
"Little Women?" Amy asked as she studied the bookshelf full of novels.
"I like to read. Mom was an English professor and made sure I appreciated the classics." Taylor sounded wistful at the end there.
"I think I heard that you lost your mother. That must be tough," Amy said as she tried to show empathy.
"It still hurts, but I'm getting on," she replied.
Amy nodded, then blinked as she saw something on Taylor's notebook. Her eyes widened as she saw bugs working together to pull a power cord to plug in the notebook. "Are you doing that? I mean, you have to be doing that, but you aren't even looking at it!"
"I'm just having them plug it in while I'm talking to you. Takes too many bugs to actually open the lid," Taylor complained.
Her friend just blink-blinked as she processed that. "I- That shouldn't even be possible. Except you do it. How do you coordinate all of them?"
"I just control them all to do what I want. Getting the leverage with spider silk and bugs pulling is a little hard to figure out at times. If I could get some really large beetles or spiders, I bet I could type, too." Taylor bounced on her bed for a second.
"Can I see one of the insect you are controlling?" Amy asked intently as she sounded more animated than Taylor ever remembered.
"Sure." She landed a fly on the hand.
"Hmm. That is odd what your power is doing with its nervous system. Or what passes for it in a bug that's that limited," Amy said as she carefully played with her power.
Taylor's hand went up to her head. "Ouch. Whatever you are doing is, um, echoing? Feedback? Ow, oh thank you."
"Sorry. You have full feedback through the connection. That's amazing. And you can do that with thousands of insects?"
"And crabs and worms. But, eh, what am I going to do with worms?" Taylor chuckled, but it felt flat and forced.
"Topple tall buildings after the worms dig out the foundation?" Amy said with a bit of snark in her tone of voice and a smirk on her lips.
The other girl's eyes lost focus for a second. "Huh, I might be able to do that. It'd take a lot of worms though."
"That was a joke. Besides what building would you want to topple?"
"Oh, point. It's just so hard figuring out how to do anything useful with insects and arachnids. The only useful thing I've started is my spider-silk. Do you want to see?" Taylor hopped to her feet.
"Sure!"
Amy let the other girl lead her down the stairs, then into the kitchen and then to a door that led down another set of stairs into the basement. Most of it lay empty, but in one section lay a long folding table with boxes, two aquariums and hanging lights.
Taylor turn on the light and showed that spiders sat in numerous jars. "I need to feed them." She pulled off bricks and boards used as 'caps' for the bottles and guided the spiders out while flies and gnats moved to let the spiders eat them.
"That doesn't upset you? The bugs dying?" Amy asked as the spiders finished their meals quickly.
The other girl shrugged. "Not really? Bugs are killing each other all the time if I'm not exerting control over them. Dad suggested a couple of things to play around with weaving. This roller lets the black widows work in making the strip of cloth that hangs down."
Dozens of the deadly arachnids danced a dizzying pattern creating centimeters of cloth at a time. Beatles pulled more silk threads to turn roller, pulling the new spider-silk up.
"That looks pretty consistent and almost machine made," Amy noted curiously. She poked a finger down to brush a black widow. "That's... odd. It's biochemistry is a little off and this girl is getting ready to lay eggs."
Taylor nodded happily. "Yeah, I ordered them to do that so-"
"I'm sorry, what? You controlled its biology to a degree?" Amy started touching different insects and spiders. "Wow, now that I'm looking at it you are doing it to others. Like these little beetles, you've done something to make them strong enough to spin the roll."
"I- didn't do it on purpose? I just told them to pull harder or make the best, most even silk with their spinnerets. Is that bad?" she asked.
"It's not normal, but not bad either. You are making them super bugs, but they are only better bugs. They aren't engineered or tinkered or anything," the bio-striker explained.
"That's useful to know. I can pretty much force them to do anything that a bug can do with perfect control." Taylor sighed. "I wish I had some Darwin Bark spiders. They're more deadly, but their silk is the strongest in the world. It's a little bit hard to work around how stretchy spider silk is, which is why I'm having the spiders pre-stretch it."
"Hmm." Amy touched another black widow for a second. "You are doing something to make the silk it produces be less stretchy and tougher, too. That's really interesting, it's like a minor version of my power as part of your master ability."
Taylor frowned as she thought and realized that she did not heal, not in any meaningful ways. "So you use your power to heal, but it can do more?"
The other girl paled as she realized her glibness. "Um, yes. Sorta. I mean, I kind of manually put everything back together and remove scarring."
"You can make changes, too? That's really neat?" Taylor said as pieces of a puzzle snapped together.
"Neat?" Amy squeaked out.
Taylor nodded and then grinned. "I bet you could do cosmetic surgery, too."
"Well, yeah. I help keep my family as fit as possible, too." She had to keep Vicky's skin soft and smooth, with no blemishes. And help keep her from getting a potbelly.
Taylor's cell phone buzzed. She pulled it out and frowned. "Dad's going to be late, so he said to make something to eat for myself." She tried to hide how unhappy that made her. At least he texted her this time.
Amy studied her for a moment. "Would you like to come over to our house and eat?"
She blinked at that and then nodded slowly. "Let me tell Dad." Her fingers started to type the text message to her father.
"It's nice to see you again," Mark said as everyone finished sitting down at the dinner table an hour later.
"So you started at Arcadia?" Carol asked in curiosity.
"Yeah, it's very nice," Taylor replied politely as she scooped up some corn to put on her plate.
Amy just sat quietly as she filled her plate. Without Vicky here, she really did not push to be part of any conversation.
Buzz-buzzing sounded.
"Odd, Jeff knows better to interrupt me during supper time," Carol said as she grabbed her cell phone to answer it. Her eyebrows shot up. "Mark, can you turn on the TV?"
Amy blinked at Carol's unexpected request. It was almost holy dictate that the TV stayed off during suppertime, barring the Olympics.
"-charges being brought to the board of directors for three hospitals and the parent company, Medhall. The Mayor's office and the Governor's office both had no comment and stated they were not aware of any criminal charges. In related news, the law firm of Edward, Dallon and Rosenberg have filed a class action lawsuit against Medhall and their affiliated hospitals on behalf of the patients that they assert were illegally charged for healthcare they did not receive," the anchor said. A graphic of Medhall's corporate logo over a photo of Brockton Bay General Hospital filled the screen behind the talking head.
The male co-anchor picked up at this point. "Calls to Medhall's CEO and owner, Maxwell Anders have not been returned. We will be watching this developing story as it continues," he explained.
"In other news-"
Mark hit the mute button with a smile on his face.
Taylor blinked as Carol Dallon did a fist pump in her seat.
"Yes!"
Amy chuckled at her adoptive mother's antics. She rarely showed this side of herself.
Carol turned to the two girls. "And it's because of both of you talking that we got this. So very good work, girls."
They both blushed in turn and went back to eating. The rest of the supper stayed quiet, with only polite conversation about safe topics.
"So, I guess we can go up to my room?" Amy asked in an uncomfortable looking way.
"Um, sure." Taylor followed her up the stairs and into a fairly typical girl's room. She looked at some shelves to look at the titles of the books. "You really do like to read."
Amy nodded as she sat down on her bed. "I try to always have a book, even when I was going to the hospital. Sometimes it isn't too busy. Carol gets annoyed if I pull it out in public when I'm in costume." Amy made an annoyed face. "Even just sitting around waiting for New Wave picture shoots."
"Oh, that's right. You guys even have your own merchandise and everything. Is that something I'll need to look at doing?" Taylor asked. She looked moderately curious.
"Yeah. Not many people want Panacea stuff though. It's all Laserdream and Glory Girl for most girls and Shielder for the boys. You should have your dad talk to Auntie about how to manage a celebrity hero," she explained as she nodded her head to a song she had stuck in her head.
"I'm not a hero yet. I've got to finish my costume first, then look to go patrol or something. I should get you and Vicky to go with me for the first few times," Taylor said as she started to think her heroic life-choice through. Panacea needed a costume change if she wanted to be popular, she realized.
"I guess. Vicky will be all over that and make sure we're in an area that's mostly safe." Amy kicked her legs to burn off a little bit of energy. "No cape fights, if we can help it."
"I've been running in the mornings, just up and down the gated area, to get into shape. I figure being able to, eh, run away is important." Taylor gave her a sheepish grin and shrug as she sat on the bed next to Amy.
Amy opened her mouth to agree, then stopped. "I should do that, too. It's not like I can just fix my body up."
Taylor nodded as that confirmed her thought. "I was pretty sure when you gave me a feedback headache through a spider."
"It's just easier to say it is and less threatening. I put Shadow Stalker to sleep," the bio-striker said as she rubbed her mostly healed jaw.
"Well, I appreciate you can make improvements." Taylor blinked. "Oh, you offered to fix my eyes, didn't you?"
Amy nodded. "I did."
The other girl smiled. "You always have my permission to heal me, you know."
The healer nodded as she reached over and put her hand on top of Taylor's. Everything went a bit fuzzy in Taylor's vision until she pulled off her glasses.
"There you go." Amy frowned suddenly. "What did you mean about improvements?"
"Well, my skin at least. Maybe my hair? I think you, um, might have helped my bust a little bit? My bras have started to to be too tight-"
"What?" Amy turned her vision in to study her genetics. There, small changes that she didn't remember doing. "Oh, god. Oh, god."
"Amy! Calm down! It was improvements and I don't mind," Taylor said as she put her other hand on top of Amy's hand on top of hers.
"But I didn't mean to-"
"That means it was a nice accident. Having powers doesn't make you perfect in using them." Taylor snorted at that. "I could only wish, otherwise I wouldn't have to redo making my outfit for the third time already. Or lose half my black widows when they started eating each other."
"I mutilated you!" Amy said even as she started to hyperventilate.
"Amy! AMY! Stop! You did not hurt me."
"I could have," she replied in a soft, hurt tone.
"It's superpowers. You could probably turn me into a puddle. But you are a good person and wouldn't do that. I don't know why you change me so my hair started coming in platinum blonde-"
"I shouldn't have healed you while I was on pain medication," Amy choked out. "I ruined everything." She should give herself up to the PRT and let them put her away where she couldn't hurt anyone. Or maybe run away-
"And if you hadn't accidentally done that, I wouldn't have learned that my mother wanted to try this. So you didn't hurt me. You made a mistake, now you know what to not do. And if you really wanted to, I bet you could undo the changes to my hair in moments."
"Well, yes. I still shouldn't have lost control," she replied in a stubborn tone.
"Amy, why do you think that you can't make any mistakes?" Taylor asked.
"Because a mistake could have ruined your life. I mean, what if I had done this to someone at the hospital?"
"After you saved their life? You might have had to go back and change it back. No one is perfect, Amy. Not you, not me and certainly not any other hero." Taylor snorted in laughter. "Didn't your sister accidentally hit a large traffic light during that car chase a month ago?"
"Carol was so mad at that. But all it takes is a momentary lapse and suddenly I've given you cancer instead of blonde hair. Or worse."
"And you just showed you are a good person because you are worried about it, but people make mistakes. You just need to make sure that you own up to it and fix it, right? Isn't that what New Wave is about?" Taylor asked her friend.
Amy opened her mouth, then closed it as she thought about it. "It can't be that easy."
"It sounds really hard." Taylor leaned over as she freed her hand and gave her a tight side hug. "You are the nicest person I know. You didn't think of anything but helping the poor girl that got knocked down in front of you guys. So that makes you my hero."
Amy blinked and then blushed. "But-" Tears started to stream down her cheeks.
"But nothing."
They stayed like that for fifteen minutes.
"Thank you, Taylor. I- I need to think about this."
"See you at school tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I think we have PE together." Amy shuddered a little bit.
Max Anders sat behind his imposing, solid oak desk with the computer sitting ready as email after email kept arriving with annoying regularity. The sky lay behind him from the ceiling to floor window, almost fully dark. At a knock on his door, he called out, "Who is it?"
Jessica opened the door. "James is here, Max."
"Let him in. Bring your sister and let's try to see what we have to do to fix this," Max ordered.
James Fleischer walked in and nodded to his boss. "Maxwell." He flopped onto his favorite of the two leather chairs in front of the desk. "God, what I wouldn't wish for the day to be over already."
"You are not the only one," Max said as Jessica and Nessa walked in, locking the door behind them. "How did this happen? And how the hell did we not get warning?"
"This has Brandish's fingerprint all over it. She's been a high profile lawyer long enough to have her own, trusted contacts at the District Attorney's office. They were the ones that did the investigation and our friend Douglas Emmerson in the DA's office was not brought in until after the police started their raids at the hospitals. Right now, they don't have anything solid, but it looks like they will get it." James sighed as he ran his hands through his brown hair. "No one had changed the way we marked things since we decided to use Panacea for profit."
Max stood up and went over to the hidden wet bar and poured two bourbons. He jerked his head to Jessica to let her get her and her sister a drink. "So that story about Amy Dallon being grounded from healing was a lie. I thought there was something fishy, but I figured Carol was just pissed at her getting in the middle of that Shadow Stalker thing." Oh, how he wished he could punish that monkey. But they had to play the part of civilized criminals.
"That might have been our bad luck, as the Hebert girl probably talked to the Dallons about the medical costs that the school ended up paying for," the other man said.
"So how bad is it going to be, Max?" Nessa asked as she took a glass of wine from her sister.
He spun his chair around to look out the window. "Dara Hamil is our cut out here. James, I want you to visit her and make sure she's aware that talking will have certain consequences. Keep her family someplace safe and out of the public eyes. Perhaps up at the Lodge." He spun back around and smiled. "Treat them with all courtesy and be a little generous. Carrot, not the stick. If she's convicted, we'll take care of her family and get her the most lenient prison sentence we can swing."
James frowned. "This is going to impact our tithe."
"We have always paid fairly and more than is owed. Any business enterprise has setbacks. We just have to overcome it or turn it to our advantage." Max took a long sip and savored the burn of the alcohol down his throat. "If Hebert was behind this, I want our people to be on the watch for her heroic debut." He smiled a very nasty smile indeed. "We won't kill the kike, of course. But that doesn't mean we can't hurt her. And it will hurt that bastard of a father of hers as well. The Dockworkers Union has been an annoying thorn since my father's day."
His subordinate nodded. "Well, I've got things to do before I can call family tonight."
"After this, you should take a few days off to spend with them," Max said. "Later, James."
James left the room, letting the door lock behind him.
Max turned to his two bodyguards. "How are you two up for a distraction tonight before we go to the rally?"
Both girls giggle as they finished up their drinks.
"At the same time?" Jessica asked.
"I feel the need to work off some frustration."