Faultline winced as their car jerked to a stop at the red light, having braked a bit too hard. She lightly touched her side. Most of the bleeding had stopped but she could already feel an impressive bruise forming.
"Boss, you sure you're ok to drive?" asked Newter from the back seat, worry coloring his voice despite the light-hearted tone.
It was her, Newter, Labyrinth and Pyroclast in the car. The other two were tailing them in the other vehicle, at least until the safehouse. There was still work to be done on tracking down Shamrock, work that couldn't be put off while the three of them recovered. It wasn't even about the possibility of losing their lead. She just wanted her crew out of this city as quickly as possible.
"It's nothing," she snapped back, letting out a short grunt as a loose rib got jostled. Her nerves were already frayed from what had gone down at the terminal, and the pain was just making it worse.
She continued, forcing herself to calm down, "I'll take care of it at the house. How's the kid?"
Newter stared at her for a second through the rear-view mirror. She looked away when the traffic light turned green, putting the car to drive and accelerating through the intersection, down the empty street. She heard Newter shift behind her.
"Eerie, it's like I'm sitting next to a corpse. Are you sure her not breathing is normal?"
No change then. And it really was unsettling, seeing her completely motionless in the seat, head leaned back and tilted towards the window. Unlike with someone sleeping, there was an unnatural stillness – an absence of something fundamentally human.
Her body had remained as it was when she'd been knocked out. Face smooth and featureless, right arm still missing, other limbs emaciated, fingers and toes replaced with chipped and cracked crystalline talons at the second knuckle. They weren't glowing anymore, nor could they cut anything as easily as they had during that mess earlier.
It was definitely odd, as if she were a doll with her strings cut. Any semblance of life had gone when she was knocked out back at the terminal. Even for Case 53s with bodies similar to hers, that wasn't typical, as far as she knew. Their only reason for not thinking Taylor really was dead, was that her body was still holding itself together.
Even in this 'low power mode', or whatever it was, as long as her power was still active, they could be sure that Taylor was still in there somewhere.
Hopefully she'd wake up soon. Preferably before they returned home, else Faultline would have some serious explaining to do to a couple of very angry guardians. Not that she was likely to avoid that anyway, what with the kid missing a whole damned arm, and no signs of regrowing it any time soon.
An angry honk brought her back to the present, as someone sped past them.
"There's not much we can do about it, beyond keeping her safe. I'm sure she'll be alright with some rest," she tried to reassure both of them, though it sounded weak even to her.
What if she wasn't? What if whatever damage was done to her by Animos and Butcher never healed on its own? Could they hire a Parahuman healer for help? Would that even work?
The handheld radio crackled to life before she could go down that trail of thought or the other two could comment further.
"Squad two to squad one, do you read? Over," Spitfire's voice came through.
Faultline grabbed it from its place in the cup holder and tossed it back to Newter.
"Squad one to squad two, loud and clear. The boss is listening. What do you have? Over."
"Nothing good. Faultline, the number you gave me goes straight to voicemail. Also, you might wanna tune in to 107.7, it's the local news radio. Broadcast's just started and they're talking about the terminal. I think this is bigger than us getting double-crossed or the client ghosting us. Over."
Labyrinth reached over to the car radio, turning it on and tuning to the frequency Spitfire mentioned. The static cleared into the voice of a news anchor in the middle of a broadcast.
"...USDT accountant and now fugitive Mel Schultz, wanted in connection with the arson reported earlier today at Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal and the cold-blooded murder of the two New York City police officers that attempted to apprehend him. The department urges members of the public to keep their distance and report any sightings of the armed and highly dangerous fugitive. We now go live with the coworker, and longtime friend of Schultz, David Matthews."
Faultline's mind ground to a halt. Mel Schultz. That wasn't their contact, but he had been a middleman of sorts. He'd had no details to give about the job itself beyond some general information, instead being the one to advertise the assignment and decide which mercenary team to hire.
"I am devastated to learn of the crimes committed by a person I've considered to be my brother. In all the years I have known him, never could I have imagined he would be capable of such heinous acts. My heart goes out to the families of the two officers that fell in their efforts to bring him to justice."
David Matthews. That sounded familiar too, though she couldn't quite place it. Faultline was sure she hadn't talked to him directly, but she knew that name. What the hell was going on?
"Boss, isn't that the dude that the feds tried last year for embezzlement and gang activity? The suspected Elite member?"
She nodded. Newter was right. There hadn't been enough evidence back then to get a conviction. Matthews had disappeared quickly from the spotlight after, and the case was largely forgotten about. In a world of daily violence, some missing money really didn't hold people's attention for long.
Ok, so they were running a job for the Elite. Faultline knew there was a cell operating out of New York, so it wasn't much of a surprise. That still didn't answer any of her other questions. Chief of which being, why. Maybe it was the blood loss and the adrenaline crash, but something just wasn't clicking in her mind.
"Framed," Labyrinth spoke up softly. Faultline looked at her from the corner of her eye, inclining her head in acknowledgement.
That...was looking like a certainty. After all, they were the ones that trashed the terminal, not Schultz. It would have been easy to call out the parahuman mercenaries as the ones responsible and leave things at that. But no, someone wanted Schultz to take the fall. Matthews? Very likely. Why though?
Was this just two Elite low ranks fighting over a valuable package or something more sinister? That this story had come out so quickly after their fight against Butcher made the whole thing seem premeditated, rather than a spur of the moment betrayal.
For that matter, what kind of package would get Butcher interested enough to plan an ambush for it? The only thing she could think of was some kind of powerful tinkertech, but if that's all the Teeth were after, Toybox's doors were open even to them, and that bunch could make pretty much everything.
Too many questions, too many variables. The whole situation just stank to high heaven. In hindsight, she should have seen some of this coming. Perhaps not the exact series of events, or even Butcher's involvement, but looking back it all seemed too good – too easy – to be true.
Well, whatever was about to go down, Faultline knew she didn't want her crew anywhere near this incoming shitstorm. She couldn't be sure whether they'd been meant to survive that ambush, or if someone might come after them to deal with a loose end. That was discounting the possibility of Butcher herself holding enough of a grudge to prepare something for them despite her injuries.
Staying any more than an extra day was out of the question. Screw the money and screw her curiosity. They were going to get in touch with Shamrock and then hightail it back to Brockton.
It was almost funny that their death-trap of a hometown was actually the better place to be in this time around.
It came to in complete darkness, the kind of nothingness that's almost impossible to even imagine. Its limbs refused to obey, and only an eternity second after it realized they just weren't there. It tried to turn its head but there was no head to turn. It tried to blink but there were no eyes to blink.
It tried to scream but there was no mouth to scream.
Its mind dredged up memories of another time, eons months ago. Of being shoved into a metal coffin filled with festering refuse, struggling to move within the confines of its prison, every panicked breath tainted by the stench, the very taste of filth settling in the back of its mouth. Overwhelming disgust and terror leaving space for nothing else.
Then shouting from outside. Its progenitor dad, returning from Blackwell's(?) office, practically tearing the lock open to get it out.
She came back to herself, the memory slipping away like sand between her fingers. Yet a feeling of freedom and identity lingered. She clung to it like a lifeline, drifting in this ocean of oblivion.
Connection reestablished.
Vertigo, unlike anything she had experienced before. It swept her away and suddenly she could feel. Coming out of complete sensory deprivation, the hyperawareness was disorienting. Her limbs still refused to obey but she could sense every single particle of ash that made them up. That faded in the next few seconds, before she could drown in the sensations.
"She's breathing again." The voice was distant, but familiar. More memories rushed back. A budding friendship. Camaraderie.
"Ok Newter, keep monitoring her. We're almost at the safehouse." Her mind was clearing up faster and faster. Faultline? What happened?
Wait, what was wrong with her eyes? She couldn't see anything.
Taylor – that's who she was – tried to reach up to her head but her right arm still wasn't responding. She panicked, smacking herself in the face with her left instead. Someone grabbed her shoulder.
"Easy there, you're ok. You're safe." She stopped herself from lashing out. That was Newter. He was a friend.
She turned her head towards his voice, a brief spike of pain rising from the side of her neck.
Foreign object critically close to core 02. Excise.
Her fingers twitched and she had a very strong desire to dig into her neck to tear something out. Taylor did her best to ignore it.
Error: Unauthorized.
What? Who said that? Where did that voice come from?
She was distracted momentarily by her sight finally returning, fuzzy at first and in shades of gray, with color filling in gradually.
Taylor blinked, looking first at her taloned hand, then her missing right arm. She remembered the terminal and the fight against Butcher. An odd feeling rose within her, a swelling accompanied by familiar heat.
Core 03 not responding. Presumed destroyed. Regenerate.
Her eyes widened as the swelling reached a crescendo. She felt her power trying to activate independent of her control and clamped down, hard.
Error: Unauthorized.
This wasn't normal. Not at all. What was happening to her?
"Faultline?" She choked out, "Something is wrong with my power."
Her boss sped up, "Do you still have it under control?"
She shook her head slowly, mindful of whatever was lodged in her neck, "I don't know. It just tried to activate on its own, but I stopped it, and..." She hesitated. Hearing weird voices wasn't something she wanted to admit, especially considering who they'd gone against earlier.
Faultline stared at her through the mirror for a second, then turned her eyes back on the road.
"Whatever it is, we'll help you figure it out back at the safehouse, alright?"
Taylor gave a hesitant nod, pushing the unease, anxiousness, and fear down. Unexpectedly, something else rose in their place, something that felt foreign. Curiosity. Like the voices she ignored it, and it slowly faded away.
The itching at her neck didn't.
Foreign object critically close to core 02.
Taylor tapped her hand against her knee, trying to pretend she couldn't hear anything and distract herself from the persistent impulse to dig her talons into her own throat. She stopped, looking at the digits again and really noticing for the first time that they didn't glow anymore. Very softly, she ran one across the fabric of the seat next to her.
Nothing, not even the slightest cut. They were almost completely blunt.
Crystalline structure imperfect due to insufficient mass. Decomposition beyond functional limit. Reconfigure.
When the swelling in the back of her mind appeared once more, she was better prepared, pushing her power down immediately instead of letting it build up to the breaking point.
Error: Unauthorized.
She stopped thinking about her power completely. Whatever this was, it seemed to react to her thoughts, and just because she had managed to suppress it so far, that didn't mean she'd be able to the next time.
A half-remembered vision from a bit less than a month ago flashed through her mind.
'A sphere of light, brighter than the sun.'
Taylor shuddered. No, that wasn't going to happen. She was in control. She could – would – handle this.
They arrived at their temporary headquarters before long, an old, empty home in a rural area far outside the city. The closest sign of civilization was a bit over a mile away. It gave them the privacy needed to come and go as they pleased without drawing unnecessary attention and being away from the city meant not getting dragged into any fights that didn't concern them.
Taylor stepped out of the car, somewhat unsteady at first, as if her legs didn't quite remember how to stand or walk properly. She steadied herself against the car. The talons on her toes didn't really help, throwing off the balance that had been second nature to her for as long as she could remember.
A second car pulled up, causing her to tense for a moment before realizing who was driving. Right, Gregor and Spitfire. Those two and Newter had come to their rescue.
She was startled by a cut-off groan from Faultline. She was holding her side, with some blood soaking through her gear. Taylor moved to her side, helping the mercenary steady herself, and both slowly headed inside, followed by the rest of the crew.
"Thanks, wound reopened," muttered Faultline. Taylor didn't say anything in response, just leading her boss towards the couch. There was no way she'd make it to a bed upstairs. The mercenary collapsed onto the soft cushions with a hiss of pain, grabbing her mask and throwing it aside.
Gregor brought over their first aid kit and Taylor stepped back. Newter pricked his thumb with a small kitchen knife, rolled up Faultline's sleeve and smeared some of the blood onto her arm, putting her under. Her breathing soon evened out and Gregor set about checking the wound for any fragments that might have been lodged inside, and then bandaging it properly.
Newter turned to Taylor while Gregor worked, "Faultline wanted team two to go back out and keep looking for Shamrock, so we can leave NYC as soon as possible. Will you three be alright here?"
Taylor looked at Faultline, laying completely knocked out on the couch, then at Labyrinth. Between the three of them, one was unconscious and injured, the other was having trouble controlling her power, and that just left the third able to really fight.
Labyrinth noticed her looking, shook her head in agreement and gave her a thumbs up. Right, as long as she stayed in one place, Labyrinth's power barely had any limits. Unlike with the ambush at the terminal, they could make full use of that here, making the house effectively unassailable. They'd be fine, for a few hours at least.
Taylor nodded, growing firm in her decision, "Yeah, we should be ok. Don't take too long though?"
Newter grinned, breaking the serious façade, "Aw, missing me already?"
She stared, though it might have been a bit hard to tell considering her mask was still up, "You know my first aid is shit, so I can't take care of our boss for long, and Butcher is probably going to be after all of us. Get the job done, come straight back here and then we can go home."
He met her eyes – or at least tried to since she currently had none – grin eventually morphing to simple smile, "Aye aye, miss deputy. We'll be back before you know it."
Taylor disregarded the comment, thinking it mostly a joke to break the tension, "I'll hold you to that."
She sat in one of the sofas and simply watched Gregor work in silence, while Spitfire and Newter went to check on the car. He finished up quickly, getting out three tiny metal fragments from Faultline's wound before wrapping it up.
The three left soon after. Taylor watched from the living room window as their car rolled out of the driveway and took off down the street. She drew the curtains closed and headed towards the back door.
"Going to test some stuff in the back yard so I don't wreck the place. Let me know if she wakes up?" She saw Labyrinth nod, though there was no verbal answer. The Shaker was already engrossed in her power.
Taylor left her to it and stepped outside.
The itching was getting very hard to ignore. She'd tried her best to put it out of her mind, so she wouldn't have to constantly watch her own body for signs of rebellion, but it had become almost unbearable. Ideally, Faultline would have been here to watch and offer advice. Then again, maybe it was for the better if she could start taking some steps on her own.
Foreign object critically close to core 02. Excise.
The voice repeated itself once more, and she could feel its influence spread over her head and arm. She struggled against it for a split second but calmed herself with a deep breath. Right, she could take back control at any time. It would all be ok. She needed to see what this was about.
She repeated that mantra over and over, as she saw her arm rise to the back of her head, clumsily at first, though whatever was controlling her limb was a quick learner. She felt the crystalline talons lightly touch and then dig down into her neck. It stopped as she winced, not out of pain but rather the expectation of it.
Taylor forced herself to relax yet kept herself mentally ready to shut this down at any moment. Her talons dug deeper, until finally they latched onto whatever it was that they were looking for and pulled in one straight, smooth motion. She blinked at the object she held.
Assessing core 02 integrity. Adequate for function.
A blade made out of concrete, or at least a part of it. She remembered now, Butcher stabbing a machete clean through her neck and it shattering from the force.
Was this some kind of self-repair ability that she hadn't noticed before, or had a part of her powers been altered somehow? Well, there was a simple way to find out.
A trickle of ash appeared as she began letting loose, and almost immediately she noticed something new. What she could only think of as energy welled up from five distinct spots in her body, with the majority coming through her left arm, near the shoulder joint.
She focused, prodding at this odd, new sense. There was something else there, deeper than she could clearly perceive, a sort of...transformation? The details of the fight at the terminal were muddled, but she could have sworn there was something missing. Some clearer picture she'd forgotten.
Relay stable. Material preset loaded. Create.
Construct structure compromised. Repair.
Ash rushed to her remaining limbs, undergoing some sort of change she couldn't fully understand. Bonds she couldn't quite visualize formed between the new material and what was already there. They were fragile, barely stable. More energy rushed to the new 'flesh', until an equilibrium was reached, and everything was homogenous.
Her power, holding her body together.
And there was that same voice, narrating in its own way what she was doing. Or rather...
A disturbing thought took root within her mind. Was this her power? No, that was ridiculous. Powers were just powers, nothing more. But before she could fully dismiss the idea, another vision she could barely recall clawed its way up to her conscious thought.
'She couldn't help but think that it could have been her there instead. Couldn't help but feel that it almost had been.'
Truly, she hadn't done any of that consciously. Beyond a very faint impression of the process, she didn't even know how to replicate it. All she had control over was that floodgate of energy, the rest of it was...
Her power, acting independently. Consciously. Describing its own actions.
The flow swelled even further, her control slipping as terror mounted, which only caused her to panic further. A feedback loop of action and emotion that fed on itself. Worse, the stream was beyond anything she had felt before. Every time she tried to grab hold of the reins, her 'fingers' kept slipping.
Core 03 not responding. Presumed destroyed. Regenerate.
'A shockwave, devastating everything the fire didn't reach.'
No!
Taylor exerted every ounce of her will, breaking through the downward spiral to slam the floodgate closed, and collapsing to the dry grass on her hand and knees as the mental backlash hit her like a freight train. She dry-heaved – though there was nothing to come up – then devolved to sobbing, curled up.
Host instance critical. Resolution by control preset impossible. Consult main consciousness.
Error: Unauthorized. Cause: Restriction set by host instance.
Through the haze cast by her fraying sanity, she barely noticed the voice's monologue. Pain assaulted her every sense, head throbbing in agony. She whimpered.
Host instance critical. Immediate resolution necessary. Terminate.
She stilled, both mind and body. For an infinitesimal moment in time, she ceased to exist.
Reset.
Awareness returned in a flash, though it didn't last. She fell fully to her side, breathing softly.
Taylor slept there until morning.