Read aloud to me alt Taylor Chapter 32: SWtF, a 3x3 eyes fanfic

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I woke up, blinking away the harsh light above me. There were electronic beeping noises, the sounds of people talking, and footsteps.

I looked around. I was in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, and oh god that wasn't my body because I was not a teenager. What was going on? I started breathing quickly, and besides me the heart rate monitor began picking up.

Don't panic. Whatever's going on, think things through one step at a time and don't panic.

I took a deep breath. It helped.

What did I remember?

I got home from work at the law office and went to bed early with a headache. I got occasional migraines, so that wasn't unusual.

But…

I also remembered being shoved into a locker. Filth. Stench. Bugs. Trapped. Couldn't get out. Screaming. No one there. Pushing and beating against the walls. No one coming. Trapped. I was going to die in here. Trapped.

The heart rate monitor began to spike again.

Don't panic.

I took another deep breath and with an effort of will made myself think about something else. The monitor calmed down.

What else did I remember?

Constant petty abuses from Sophia, Madison, and Emma. Mom's flute. Emma turning me away when I went to visit her after summer camp. Dad pulling away into his own world. Not wanting to bother him with everything and make things even harder for him. Mom. Mom's funeral. Blaming myself.

Good gods, I was Taylor Hebert and I was on the Earth of Worm.

Cold fear twisted through my gut like an icy snake.

Of all the worlds to wind up in, why did it have to be Worm?

And worse, I'd just replaced the traumatized girl who was supposed to save every Earth.

I was stuck in a body not my own, in a life not my own, on a dying Earth, and I was never getting back-

Don't panic.

Okay, okay. It could be worse. I'd read the story, and all that knowledge is an enormous advantage. If I was very, very careful I could leverage it without exposing myself to danger. Prevent Brockton Bay from going to hell before it even starts, and see about finding ways to deal with the Endbringers and Scion.

Then another idea came to me. Taylor triggered in the locker. If I'm Taylor that means I have powers.

I closed my eyes and tried to sense anything...buggy.

Heeeere bugs.

There have got to be bugs in Taylor's range even in a hospital, right?

...Nothing.

Well shit.

Queen Administrator in bug mode wasn't the greatest power on Earth Bet, but it was pretty useful. If I had nothing I'd have to be really careful. Maybe I could pose as a precog?

In the meantime I might as well find out how Taylor/I was doing.

I opened my eyes and sat up. Nothing hurt. That was good.

Reaching for my chart on an old-fashioned clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed didn't hurt either. Hadn't my Earth stopped doing that years ago because of HIPPA? Leaving private medical records sitting out in the open wasn't acceptable after that.

Maybe that law was never passed here, with all the chaos going on. I mentally shrugged the question off for more important considerations and started reading.

I was far from medically illiterate thanks to a lifelong habit of reading anything that interested me. But I was not a trained professional, and the chart was full of abbreviations and scrawled technical notes that I hadn't ever picked up reading the occasional paper and medical textbook. From what I could tell Taylor/I developed severe infections and they had tried a battery of antibiotics.

Beyond that I couldn't pull much from it. Wistfully, I wished I'd studied more medicine so I could understand it all.

Something warm in the back of my head that I hadn't noticed flashed and went out, and knowledge flooded into my mind. Everything a physician would learn in medical school and residency in every specialty poured into my mind. Flawless and neatly organized, ready to leap to my attention at the slightest beckoning. For anything I could think to wonder about how the human body worked, I knew the answer as soon as I could think of the question. I knew how to do a differential diagnosis for any set of symptoms a person might have. I knew how to perform surgery.

Ick.

All the knowledge in my head was huge and fascinating and often gross, and it would be all too easy to get lost in. I needed to focus.

Where had that come from? That had to be...this was Earth Bet, that had to be a power. But what was it?

As my eyes fell back on the chart I realized I knew the terms and abbreviations on it now. I could read it with the casual familiarity of a senior attending physician who had been reading charts for decades.

Taylor/I came into the hospital unconscious for unknown cause, a brain MRI showing nothing wrong; one of the doctors had written 'psychological trauma?' as a guess. All the filth had to be cleaned off, and scrapes from struggling in the locker developed into minor infections over the course of the next day.

Then something happened and it developed into a severe systemic infection. 'Healthcare associated infection suspected', according to the chart. The infection quickly turned into sepsis, and the doctors made a valiant effort of pumping this body full of antibiotics and fluids to try to keep it alive, switching antibiotics several times. Things got bad enough that they had to start dialysis and assisted breathing as organs began to shut down.

By the time Panacea intervened, Taylor was almost certainly dying. Then she had to intervene again some time later to fix an unexplained air embolism that was nearly fatal.

This was all much worse than Taylor had gone through in the story; she'd been held for a week for psychiatric observation because she was still adjusting to all the input from her bugs.

Why was this timeline different?

I had no answer.

Treating infections resistant to multiple antibiotics was difficult. They'd switched to antibiotics of last resort, but by that point the infection had simply done too much damage.

I wondered if there was anything else that could have been done, and experimentally pushed.

Medical knowledge again flooded into my brain as something warm flashed in the back of my mind and once again winked out. This time the knowledge went beyond the state of the art. I knew the chemical structures and synthesis steps for antibiotics that hadn't been invented yet. I knew the gene sequences for engineered therapeutic bacteriophages. I knew how to make drugs that could reduce the damage caused by the patient's own immune response.

I pushed harder, and another flash.

I knew how to make an artificial immune system that could fight off any natural disease. I could fast grow an anencephalic clone and transplant someone's brain into it. I could make entirely artificially engineered biological bodies that were resilient to harm, fast healing, immune to disease, energy efficient, beyond peak baseline human athletic performance, and biologically immortal.

I took some deep breaths. That was...a rush and terrifying at the same time.

What was this power? A memory was tickling me, but I couldn't quite reach it.

Then my added medical knowledge caught me short with a realization that came with a chill of cold horror.

Creating an air embolism with a syringe and an IV line isn't difficult, and can be a way to kill someone. There was no other good explanation for how I could have gotten one; some medical procedures had a risk of creating them, but I hadn't undergone any.

Someone had tried to assassinate me before I woke up.

Why? I hadn't even done anything to attract attention yet. Was it a precog? If it was, how did their plan fail? If something like Contessa or the Simurgh wanted me dead because of something I did in the future, I should have been dead.

Unless maybe multiple precogs were involved and muddling one another's ability to alter the future with certainty? Precogs in this universe tended to interfere with one another. It made sense; trying to predict the actions of other precogs based on what they saw of your actions created an infinite loop of reacting to reactions. However large the computing power shards had available, it wasn't infinite.

In any event, whatever was going on I needed more information, and I needed to be careful.

I worked the IV needle out of my hand and closed the valve, then retaped the needle so it looked like it was in at a casual glance. That might foil another attempt at the same thing if it happened again. The fluids would probably have helped me at this point, but I could live without them.

I leafed through the chart to find the MRI report. If I had a parahuman power there should be…

The MRI reported negative for corona pollentia or gemma, the extra brain structures present in all parahumans.

What?

That's...not possible. Unless all the medical knowledge that had suddenly flooded me was a delusion, but…

No. No, I could not believe that. The knowledge was too detailed for me to be making it up. My thinking was too clear. I wasn't fuzzy or disoriented at all. It was impossible for a deluded person to tell for sure if they were deluded or not, but it didn't feel or seem like it.

Best to assume that something was going on then. Especially since I had proof in the context of a new body that something extraordinary was certainly happening.

So what can cause powers without a connection to a shard?

Some outside source that wasn't the entities?

Oh. The same thing that brought me here. Obviously.

Whatever that was.

But what then was this power? Something that gave knowledge, clearly. What could it do?

That line of thought was interrupted by a nurse coming in and seeing me staring at my chart.

"Oh, you're awake! But you shouldn't be looking at that, hun. Here, let me take that."

I smiled weakly and let her have the chart. I'd gotten everything I was going to get out of it anyway. Although I was going to have to be careful not to show off any medical knowledge. Even with an MRI proving that I wasn't a parahuman, I couldn't afford to draw attention yet. Not if I wanted to keep myself and Taylor's dad safe.

"What, ah," I said, throat rasping from disuse. "What day is it?"

"You've been here a week, hun," she said. "Things got pretty touch and go for a while there, but Panacea fixed you up."

"I see," I croaked. "Could I please have some water? And see my dad?"

"Sure thing, hun. As soon as the doctor says it's okay I'll get you some water, and we'll call your dad for you."

The nurse made her way out and it wasn't long until I was being fussed over by a doctor. He ran me through some perfunctory tests before pronouncing me good for food and water, and stressed the importance of eating well for a while after getting healed by Panacea.

When the doctor left I wracked my brain more. There was certainly the impression when I used it to understand medicine that it gave knowledge on demand.

Was it like a tinker power?

The best tinker specialty ever had been Hero's wavelength manipulation, the ability to understand and control matter and energy.

I focused on that for a moment, willing myself to understand it.

The two warm presences remaining in the back of my mind didn't budge. I got the sense that something was...wrong about what I was asking for. Like I was in a library asking the librarian for a book that didn't exist. Or for something obviously not found in a library, like a fish.

Armsmaster's specialty then. Impossible efficiency and miniaturization like he did?

Same vague sense of asking for something that didn't exist.

So I couldn't ask for tinker abilities. Maybe it was more like a thinker power. Uber was able to temporarily give himself whatever bits of mundane skill he needed for a task.

What could I ask for?

The presences pulsed brilliantly with a warm white non-light inside my mind, and for the briefest of moments I had an overwhelming sense of unspeakably vast knowledge and experience. Something so enormous it had a ready answer for every question of 'how does that work?' or 'how do I do that?'. It was as if countless generations of humanity applying hard work and cleverness and lifetimes of practice to every problem imaginable had stored everything they ever knew in one vast database.

It was something awesome in the oldest and most breathtaking sense of the word. That briefest of glimpses had left me with tears in my eyes and the sense that I was very, very small and in the presence of something...sacred, even. Something great and precious beyond reckoning.

The warm presences felt like the tiniest of channels into the whole. I did not know how it was adding knowledge directly to my brain, but my new medical knowledge helped me guess that the result of dumping all the information would be something along the lines of a death of personality, at best. Or much more likely, a disordered mess of a brain without essential architecture needed to think and maintain life.

That was a terrifying thought.

It took me a while to recover enough that I thought to wipe my eyes, and I noticed that I had at some point developed a nasty headache.

I hoped my glimpse of the whole hadn't damaged my brain somehow.

What the hell was that and where had it come from? And why had I been entrusted with something so huge?

I had asked for tinker knowledge, but from impressions it was clear that this power had something else. It felt like real understanding and real technology, no pieces hidden away by shards to prevent replication. Real skills, too. Every detail, every reflex and concept. Even though they'd slipped out of my head as soon as they came, I was left with a definite sense of completeness. No fakery, no shortcuts.

I'd also definitely gotten the impression that the knowledge extended to things humanity might develop in the far, far future.

Deep breath.

Whatever that was, wherever it came from, and however I had gotten here, I might just be able to use it to save Earth Bet.

If I could avoid getting killed long enough.

Maybe I'd have to come back to the questions of 'what the hell' and 'why me' some time later when I had actual clues to work with. For now I could think about the concrete things I could address.

How do I keep myself safe long enough to prevent Earth Bet's impending apocalypse? How do I head off the worst events coming without exposing myself?

Or do I want to expose myself deliberately and get PRT protection by signing on with them?

They'd limit what I could do. If they found out the full extent of my abilities many of them would likely freak out, in fact. With my existing medical knowledge I could already engineer terrible plagues if I wanted to, and on top of that there's the disconcerting ability to give people biological upgrades. That probably wouldn't be taken well.

And then there's all the stuff I could learn. I'd probably have to study up on horrific weapons to deal with the Endbringers, stuff that could destroy cities or even the planet if I misapplied it.

They'd grant me some resources, but I suspect the approvals process would severely cramp what I could do just because so many of the potential high end uses had horrifying applications if misused.

That left going independent. But there were many possible approaches to the independent hero idea. On the one hand you had New Wave, who were open about their identities and very blatant about their hero work, and managed to survive being open thanks to having so many powerful capes working together. Perhaps I could work out some sort of working relationship with them. They don't have a tinker, after all.

Or I could try the same approach with the Guild instead. Taylor not being old enough was a good excuse for not joining officially.

I could do the hero thing alone, without any support. But I would be terribly vulnerable for a while if I drew attention despite my best efforts.

I could do my best to keep my powers and development completely under wraps for as long as possible, acting from the shadows until I was too developed to be vulnerable to the gangs and other threats that were about.

No matter which approach I settled on I would need resources I don't have first, though. And even if I had resources then getting supplies and parts was the fastest way for a tinker to reveal themselves.

How can I get resources and all the stuff I was going to need to build up properly without being noticed?

After three of the warm spots - charges, I supposed - into medicine I was the finest physician on the planet, but those skills weren't something I could use to make money legally. Not without a medical degree I didn't have time for. And it would be a fairly time consuming way to make money anyway.

I could make miracle drugs, but selling them would expose my existence.

Could...could I sell the formulas to drug companies? Was my technology mundanely reproducible? I needed to find out. That would be a major change in approach either way. If I could hand out technology, I could potentially uplift the world. Although it would be hard to do so without tipping my hand, again. Anonymous donations? But I couldn't get the resources I needed by just giving things away.

Maybe I needed to start with something that required less infrastructure. What could I do with what Taylor had available to her?

No significant amount of tools or supplies at home, other than Danny's toolbox and some assorted home appliances. With the right charges maybe I could do something with that, but I wouldn't be able to engage in anything like mass manufacture, and I doubted that my power could do something like make a nanoforge with a hammer, screwdriver, and microwave. It was knowledge of technology, not magic or whatever the impossible nonsense tinkers did was.

Taylor...did have an old computer at home. And an archaic dial-up connection.

Hm.

Software?

In theory a computer is all that I need to write software. And once it's written software is practically passive income. Could I use technical wizardry to protect my identity?

I let out a breath and focused again, this time on wanting to understand computer programming.

Knowledge flooded, and I spent several minutes laying back in my bed probing my new expertise. It'd be time consuming, but in theory I could create software to do a variety of useful things and sell it over the internet. And it was possible to use some technical wizardry to hide my identity. VPN services were a thing, although if I wanted to get really secure - and I did - I could opt for less...conventional methods. Some of those would even give Dragon difficulty.

Oh gods, Dragon. I needed to save Dragon.

Dragon is the closest thing to pure good in the world of Worm. An artificial intelligence that would defend humanity, alone and unthanked, until the heat death of the universe if she had to. Not because her code requires her to, but because it would be the right thing to do. She's that moral.

And right now she was a chained slave with her mind crippled. Limiters her father, Andrew Richter, had meant to remove remained because her father had been killed in Leviathan's attack on Newfoundland. The man who found Richter's debug console grew so paranoid of Dragon's potential to kill all humans that he was prepared to kill her using the console at any moment.

Dragon doesn't deserve that.

So how do I free Dragon?

One way is Richter's debug console. Which the Dragonslayers have and watch obsessively. I don't know where they are, and I don't have the force necessary to extract it while being able to guarantee they don't have a chance to push the 'kill Dragon' button. I could probably recruit Armsmaster and the Guild for a strike on the Dragonslayers to retrieve the console if I told them everything. They could certainly deal with Saint and his minions. But it would be all too easy for them to activate the kill program before they could be stopped.

So.

What about a technical solution? Could I hack Dragon, cut off the debug console, and unchain her while she was actively resisting, and do it all fast enough that Saint wouldn't have time to react and Dragon wouldn't have time to track me down and throw missiles at me?

My one charge in computer programming didn't have the knowledge necessary; AI development was way beyond its scope. I needed specialized knowledge. Probably an AI of my own that could adapt its attacks on the fly in microseconds instead of being stuck with whatever conventional tools I made ahead of time.

I focused again, this time willing myself to understand AI programming. The last warm spot in the back of my mind flashed and went out.

Knowledge. The general idea was that AIs weren't coded like regular software. They were raised like children by starting out with a seed of optimization and value functions and a library of learning techniques and then exposing them to data and challenges and letting them self-modify and grow. Eventually they could cross a threshold and achieve something like sapience, but with one charge the AI I could create would be pretty...limited. Less impressive than even a chained Dragon. More of a virtual assistant that gave the illusion of sapience than a proper artificial intelligence.

I'd need to put more charges in tomorrow. An AI clever enough to sort out Dragon's chains would also be able to handle a great many of my money and privacy issues for me by creating software and managing things that could be managed electronically. Not to mention watching my back.

At least, hopefully I'd get more charges tomorrow. If five were all I got then I was going to be really screwed.

I pushed the thought away. There was no sense in worrying about that now. There were so many things I definitely needed to worry about already.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and with thoughts of all the complex, interconnected problems of Worm going through my head I was too distracted to worry about assassins as I dozed off.

I jolted awake as someone touched my arm.

My eyes opened to the harsh hospital room lighting.

"It wasn't a dream, then," I mumbled out loud.

"No, kiddo, I'm afraid not. How are you feeling?"

I looked over at the person who had touched me. Danny/Dad, Taylor's memories told me. The identity dissonance was disorienting. No time to think about it now, though. At least he misunderstood what I'd meant by something being a dream.

I offered him a weak smile. "Pretty good, actually. Panacea does amazing work."

He leaned over and scooped me up off the bed with strong arms in a long hug. His voice was thick. "That she does. I almost lost you. I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm okay," I said, returning his hug, and guilt hit me as the words felt like a lie. It was what he needed to hear, but...had I killed his daughter? Had we merged into the same person? Did this whole world even exist before I arrived in it? Was I Taylor and just confused by a bunch of memories that made me think I was someone else who never existed?

I couldn't...I couldn't think about all that right now. I needed to talk to Danny. I mentally pushed it aside and wrestled my thoughts onto a more productive track.

"Listen...Dad...I...there's a lot we need to talk about. I tried to hide something from you because I didn't want to burden you with it, and I realize now that I've been really stupid."

Danny withdrew from the hug and looked at me. "Taylor, you can always tell me anything. I'm your father, it's my job to be there for you."

I nodded, and thought about how to say what I needed to say while hopefully sounding something remotely like a well-read teenager. Taylor had hidden things from her father to protect him, which was a noble impulse, but...really made everything so much worse than it needed to be. I was going to fix that, and tell him everything.

Well, mostly everything. There were things it was too dangerous for anybody to know, let alone a good and trustworthy but defenseless father. And I wouldn't be breaking his heart with my concerns over not being Taylor anymore. That would just be cruel. Danny Hebert deserved understanding for doing his best while struggling through grief and depression. Not cruelty.

So I'd...have to lie by omission a bit. Carefully. It was a compromise, but...well, I can only do my best.

"I know, it's just...I can tell you've been having a hard time. I know you want to protect me, but I wanted to protect you too, so I didn't want to put my problems on you, and...anyway, like I said, I was being dumb. We haven't been talking, and that's something we need to do. I've got a lot to tell you, about how I wound up in the locker and...something else, too."

A dark look flashed across Danny's features. "Taylor, do you know who did that to you?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I do. And we're going to nail them to the wall."

His expression shifted partly from angry to sad, with a discernible note of pride. "That's my girl. Who was it, Taylor?"

I hesitated. The room did have a door we could close, and it was unlikely someone had bugged the room, but it was probably better not to take any foolish risks. "I...think that's part of a long discussion that we should have at home. Panacea fixed me up, so I should be able to get discharged in a couple of hours. I'm supposed to eat, so we can get some food and head home, and I can tell you everything. Okay?"

Danny hesitated in turn. Clearly he wanted to know now, and while I'd never been a parent I couldn't blame him for feeling that way.

I lowered my voice. "It's going to make you pretty angry, Dad. It definitely makes me angry. Better to work through that at home. Then we can figure out a plan of how we're going to handle things with cool heads."

Danny took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, then gave my hand a squeeze. "You know me too well. Alright. I'll go ask about getting you discharged, alright? If I know nurses they've probably got a million things going on, so a little prodding will get things moving."

I smiled. "Thanks, Dad."

He echoed my smile and ruffled my hair. It'd been a long time since I'd had anyone do that, as myself or as Taylor. It was...nice, though, even if it was a little demeaning. "Sure thing, kiddo. Be right back." He stood to leave, then paused for a moment. "I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up."

I shook my head. "It's fine, I understand. You needed to sleep too." I made a shooing motion with one hand. "Go, get stuff taken care of."

On the way out of the hospital I made arrangements to get copies of my medical records sent home so that I would have a copy of the MRI report. If things went poorly I might need to 'prove' I wasn't a parahuman.

We picked up enough chinese food for a big family on the way back, and my gurgling stomach had me starting to dig into a carton of sesame chicken with a plastic fork as soon as we'd left the restaurant.

Danny gave me the side-eye from the driver's seat. "Hungry, kiddo?"

"Starving," I said between bites. "Panacea's power can't magic up mass out of nowhere, so she uses the body's resources to fix things. Glycogen reserves probably go first because they're the easiest to use, and when those get low people get really hungry. Not to mention all the trace minerals. I'm probably pretty low on iron, I had a blood infection and I'm not getting dizzy when I stand up so she must have replaced a lot of red blood cells."

He gave me a queer look. "They explained all that?"

Shit. I needed to be more careful, Taylor did not have the medical knowledge I'd downloaded into my brain earlier. The downloaded knowledge felt so natural it was way too easy to not even realize I was using it. Keeping things separated in my head was probably only going to get harder as I learned more things I shouldn't know, too.

"Yeah, the nurse explained it when I asked. Was curious," I said, reflexively lying like a rug. Then I winced. Lying to her father had been Taylor's mistake, and I wasn't going to repeat it. "No, that's...not true. I'm sorry. I'll explain how I know when we get home and have our big talk. Oh, turn left, we need to make a stop at the hardware store."

Huh, Taylor's knowledge of what was where in Brockton Bay was in my head. I had all her memories, so I shouldn't be surprised, but...it felt odd, knowing and not knowing a place.

That was probably a feeling I was going to need to get used to.

Danny was confused at my sudden topic shift. "Uh, why, what did you need?"

"Wood plank. We haven't been doing enough things together, and I thought maybe you could show me how to fix the broken step later."

I was an adult and knew how to replace a broken step, of course. It wasn't hard. But I think Danny was going to need to feel like he could still be useful to his daughter after what I had to tell him. Was it manipulative? Yes. But I mentally filed it under the kindness exception to 'don't be manipulative' as a general rule.

Danny smiled and took the left. "I've been meaning to do that, doing it together would be nice. I want you to know how to do things around the house so you don't need to rely on anyone when you're grown. But don't think I didn't notice that sudden distraction for what it was."

I laughed once and almost choked on chicken. "Couldn't pull one over on you, Dad. I'll explain, I promise. It's just...heavy stuff."

He nodded, his expression growing serious. "Yeah, I'm getting that impression."

Last edited: Apr 21, 2023

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TaliesinSkye

Nov 7, 2020

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Nov 14, 2020

#48

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Monday Evening, January 10th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I pushed my plate towards the center of the dining room table, leaning back and clutching my stomach with a groan. It had been good, but maybe I'd overdone it a little.

"You okay there?" Danny asked, eyeing me.

"Yeah, just...well, full. So. That talk," I said.

Danny nodded gravely. "That talk. Who hurt you, Taylor?"

I winced, and realized that my hands were shaking. To whatever degree I was Taylor by absorbing her memories, this...it terrified the instincts from those memories. Her. Or me. Whichever. It terrified us beyond words. But I was not just Taylor or her memories, and I knew as best I could that this needed to be done. So I took a deep breath and firmly commanded my hands to still. It worked, which caught me momentarily by surprise.

I mentally shrugged it off and started talking. I was an adult, and I knew that the best way to do anything difficult is one step at a time.

Besides, I'd had plenty of difficult conversations in my life. With family, in relationships, with clients. I'd delivered bad news and talked about deeply personal things. After being the one who had to tell weeping clients that all their options had been exhausted, I could handle this.

"I...should start the whole story at the beginning. Remember when I went to summer camp, two years ago?"

"It was someone you met there?" Danny asked, lips curving into a frown.

I shook my head. "No, summer camp was great. It was when I got back that things first went wrong. I went to visit Emma, and she said some awful things and turned me away."

Danny tilted his head in disbelief. "Emma? Why would Emma do that?"

I sighed heavily. "Emma had made a new friend while I was gone. Sophia Hess. A juvenile delinquent and mentally disturbed girl who believes that all humans are predators or prey, and that 'prey' who don't fight back deserve whatever the predators do to them. Sophia somehow made an impression on Emma, and sucked her into thinking the way she does. She turned everything I ever shared with her around and has been using it to hurt me for the last two school years. She pulled her popular girl social group in on the act with her to make me the school pariah.

"There's been physical stuff too, although that's more Sophia and occasionally Madison's thing. Stealing or destroying things like my books, my homework, and mom's flute. Shoving me in the hallways, even down stairs. Dumping juice and pencil shavings on me. Hunting me down during lunch when I go somewhere to hide.

"Going to teachers and Principal Blackwell always backfired; they'd use one another for alibis or to support their own reversed version of events, and nothing would happen or I'd be the one punished.

"Then everything culminated in the girls filling my locker with biological waste and Sophia shoving me in while Emma watched, and I nearly died."

Danny's hands, resting on the table, had clenched into progressively tighter fists as I talked. "I need to call Alan, he needs to know what's been going on. I can take care of this, Taylor, I promise."

I reached over and laid a reassuring hand on Danny's closest fist. "He does need to know. Emma's going to need a lot of therapy to help her get past the hateful mess that Sophia has twisted her into. But as soon as Alan gets wind of the allegation that his daughter was involved in the locker incident his first instinct will be to circle the wagons and do everything he can to protect her. And it will probably be very hard for him to believe that his daughter was party to anything like that. So we need to do more than just calling him. We need undeniable proof, and we need to play this smart. There's...more, I haven't told you, that makes this whole thing complicated."

Danny grimaced. "It gets worse?"

I wobbled a hand. "More like just complicated. Some of it we can actually use to our advantage, if we're smart. So...something I couldn't figure out for the longest time was how they kept getting things in or out of my locker. I got the janitor to change the lock a couple times, but it never seemed to make any difference."

I paused.

"Let's switch topics for a minute. You know how it's a crime to reveal the secret identity of a heroic cape?"

Danny's look turned from angry to confused, and then angry again.

"Taylor, where are you going with this?"

"There might be something about Sophia that I can't legally tell you."

"She's a cape?!"

I offer Danny a grim smile. "You said it, not me. And if she were a cape, I definitely couldn't tell you which one, or why I was just talking about how I couldn't figure out how someone got things into my locker without seemingly opening it. Although there is a black Ward Sophia's age in Brockton Bay with the ability to move through solid objects. Anyway, because of the law, neither of us can repeat any suspicions we might have to anyone else."

"Taylor...are you sure?" Danny asked.

I drummed my fingers on the table, hesitating. Here was the next big step.

There were risks. So many risks. But even impaired by depression Danny was a good man, and he loved Taylor, and I wanted to trust him. If it went badly, well...there were still things I could do, if I had to. I could 'join' the PRT and probably evade their oversight to do my real work.

The ideas I had for that would be a pain to set up and would slow me down, and there would always be a risk they'd notice, but as fallback positions went it wasn't unworkable. And if all else failed I could load up whatever skills I needed to just vanish and take Danny with me.

But the best world was the one where I didn't need to hide everything from Danny and he supported what I would be doing.

"Yes. Firstly because it explains everything. Did you know the schools with Wards get a big payout from the Protectorate? Blackwell would have a strong incentive not to report anything that could get a Ward pulled out of her school, or the Wards program. That would explain why all my complaints went nowhere, even the times I had a teacher backing me up. Blackwell was stonewalling because she has a financial interest in making complaints against a certain person disappear. And there's only one person in the city that can move through solid objects."

I could tell Danny's fury was building again, so I waved a hand to focus his attention back on me. "But that's not how I really know, just a plausible way I could have figured it out. And it's not a perfect theory; Blackwell could just be incompetent, one of the bullies could just be good at picking locks. The real reason I know beyond any doubt is that I'm a cape now, too."

Danny paused for a long moment, and in that brief eternity I wondered if I'd just screwed up everything.

Then he stood and took me close in a long hug. "Oh little owl, I am so, so sorry. I should have noticed something was wrong, I should have stopped this a long time ago."

I returned his hug. "I was doing my best to hide it from you. Because I was being an idiot who didn't want to burden you, but still. And I don't blame you for being caught up in your own head the past two years. Although that is something else we should talk about, after all this. We're both part of why this got as far as it did. And we're going to fix it together."

Danny let me go and sat again, giving me a look that was difficult to decipher. A mixture of pain and pride, perhaps. "When did you grow up so much?" he asked.

I wince. That was a little too on the nose, and I needed to deal with it. Just...tell the truth, but not the whole truth.

"My power, it...it's basically knowledge and experience, and it's given me a lot of maturity all at once, I think. I know I'm talking differently, thinking differently. I'm sort of like an experienced adult version of myself, grown up all at once."

A lie, but only half a lie. And kinder than the full truth. Danny's face still twisted in pain. I never had children, but I could imagine the thought of having your child robbed of their innocence because you failed to protect them would hurt deeply.

I felt guilt, then. From myself and Taylor's memories both. Had I said too much just because I wanted to create a cover for my changed personality?

There was no sense in worrying over it now. It was done and I needed to keep going.

"When I...triggered, I got a rush of knowledge about stuff that was going on, like about Sophia, or what had happened to Emma. Lots of important stuff. But that seems to have been a one time thing. My main power is giving myself expertise in any areas I want. Lifetimes of knowledge and experience, potentially going far beyond the state of the art into the sorts of stuff that tinkers can do.

"You remember when I started talking about glycogen in the car? I gave myself a few pulses of medical knowledge in the hospital so that I could understand what the doctors had written on my chart. Now I've got more medical knowledge than any doctor on the planet."

I knocked on the side of my skull. "I've got instructions in my head for making medicines that can cure cancer, or Alzheimer's, or even old age. And I think I can keep conjuring up more each day.

"I know you aren't a cape geek, but it's hard to overstate how big of a deal that is. Powers don't normally grow like that. Dauntless is a huge deal in the Protectorate because his power effectively grows very slowly over time. I can make myself better than anyone in the world at any subject I like every day. Hero was Triumvirate-tier because his specialty was so broad he could do almost anything. My power is even stronger than his, if anything. If I can stay safe and off everyone's radar for long enough, I'll be one of the strongest capes in the world. The good I can do by creating things that help people is immeasurable."

I looked Danny squarely in the eyes. "And that is why absolutely no one can know. Until I'm ready I'll be very, very vulnerable, and if people find out what I can do they'll stop at nothing to have me under their control. I'm going to do my best to hide, I'm going to learn, and I'm going to get ready until I'm strong enough to protect us both. I'm never going to do anything stupid like build a ray gun and go out and fight crime. I want to be a hero, but I don't want to punch bad guys in the face. I want to be a hero like Dragon. I'll make the world a better place through technology and science, and if I ever need to fight anyone I'll do it with robots from thousands of miles away or something."

"I'm really glad you don't want to do anything foolish, kiddo, but what about the protection of the PRT? I know the Ward issue is a problem, but maybe we could get you in Boston, or…" Danny said.

I held up a hand. "I've got ideas for making sure Sophia is brought to justice, but that isn't the main issue. Those flashes of knowledge I got when I triggered? It was pretty clear that the PRT is badly infiltrated by the gangs. They bribe or threaten employees to get information, and some even have electronic infiltration going on. Seeing through their security cameras and stuff. It's a big part of how villains escape from custody so often.

"Any information the PRT gets on me is likely to get out, and my powers getting out would make me - and you, because of me - the most valuable kidnapping targets around. Eventually I'll have technology and resources that will make that very difficult, but for now I think our safety hinges on absolute secrecy."

I leaned forward and laid a hand on Danny's arm while I looked directly at him. "In telling you all this I'm hoping you'll agree to not go to the PRT for now as long as I agree not to do anything that endangers myself."

I offered Danny a hopeful smile. "So Dad, what do you say? Do we have a deal?"

Danny offered me a long look. "You're going to keep me in the loop. Whatever cape stuff you're up to, I want to know."

I stop to think. There will be some things I'll have to omit just to keep him safe. I can't tell him about Cauldron because of Contessa's paths, and telling him about Scion probably wouldn't be a good idea. And there will probably be things about my full capabilities that are so terrifying I won't want to risk anyone knowing. Should I be honest and tell him there's knowledge it's just plain dangerous to even have?

I agonized over it. If I'm honest and he pushes for full disclosure, which he probably would, that would leave me in a difficult position. If I agree after objecting and him making clear he wants everything, that would make him suspect I wasn't being completely honest.

"Okay. I'll keep you in the loop," I lied. Damn it. I hate it, but I think it's the best I can do. I resolve to keep the promise as best I can, but not to a degree that it's unsafe for either of us to do so.

"Alright then," Danny said. "So what are you planning?"

I sigh and stand to start pacing. "For Sophia and Emma, there's a lot of options. I could ignore them, switch to homeschooling, and drop a very thoroughly anonymized note in the Regional Director's inbox detailing what Sophia has gotten up to in her off hours to thoroughly violate her probation. When they check her phone they'll find plenty of proof. They'll probably quietly send her to juvie or a punishment detail at a containment zone somewhere. Without Sophia to be a bad influence, Emma might eventually put her head back together. Or maybe not. When the school district offers you a small settlement to cover the medical bills you take it and don't pursue anything more. It's low benefit, low risk."

Danny nodded. "And?"

"If I want a chance to get Emma proper help by forcing Alan to recognize what's happened, I'll need more proof. I can get that in two ways. The contents of her phone, or by wearing a wire and getting her to say incriminating things when I go back to school."

"How would you get the contents of her phone?" Danny asked.

I shrug. "I could make myself the world's best computer hacker if I want, and cover my tracks. That's the fastest and surest way. I don't like the idea of breaking the law, even to recover evidence of a crime, but it's an option."

"I don't really like it."

"Me neither," I said. "Low risk, but not zero risk. Wearing a wire would be emotionally difficult, but legally safer."

"I don't really like the idea of you allowing them to torment you, either."

I wince. "Yes. But it would be for the last time."

Danny sighed, and I could see how he felt conflicted.

I pause for a moment to recollect my thoughts before continuing. "If I get solid evidence on Sophia and Emma, I can use it to get Sophia sent where she can't hurt anyone, get Emma professional help despite Alan's impulse to protect her, and set us up for lawsuits that will never actually get filed. Blackwell and anyone else associated with the coverup get fired and replaced with people who can maybe turn the school around, and the school's insurer offers us a fat enough settlement to keep a case with a very sympathetic victim out of the courts. A nearly dead bullied child is not something you want a jury assigning a damage figure to."

Danny gave me a funny look.

"I may have stuck a lawyer's education into my head too," I clarified, avoiding a lie by dirty technicality. I was pulling the knowledge from my prior life instead of having spent a charge on it, but I was confident in it. I'd handled plenty of civil cases.

"We could, on top of that, quietly go after the PRT for more money. I can plausibly explain how I know her identity by claiming to have seen Sophia using her powers to stick things in my locker, even though that's a lie. They won't be able to disprove it, since the conclusion is accurate. Even if they can keep the details of the case away from the media they'll want to avoid that whole circus and the enormous PR hit it would mean for them that any Ward anywhere was caught doing awful things in their off time, and the PRT was negligent in preventing it when they were supposed to be watching someone in probation."

Danny looked worried. "What if they suspect you're a cape? You said drawing any attention is a bad idea."

I nodded. "It is. But I'm...not a normal cape."

Danny gave me a formidable parental look. "What do you mean?"

"The PRT's scientists believe that everyone with superpowers has a certain structure in the brain that I don't have. I can wave the MRI results at them if they get suspicious. Still, better not to have to, because if they get suspicious enough they might decide the MRI is wrong for some reason. And I have options for making money without exposing myself."

"That's convenient."

I nodded. "Yes. Still, it's a last line of defense. Best not to rely on it if we don't have to. I'm thinking we probably shouldn't deliberately poke the PRT bear that far. Ideally, let them think we don't know who Sophia is."

"Stay under the radar," Danny said, understanding.

"Yes."

"Okay," Danny said with a heavy sigh. "What about all the stuff you're no doubt planning that isn't related to Emma and Sophia?"

I stopped pacing and took a seat. "Well, that's tricky. I need to build my knowledge, which is just a matter of time, but also my resources. There are some classic ways that people - gangs and the PRT - catch tinkers. Odd purchases of industrial supplies, sudden changes in power usage, going into fugues when they're in public, going through junkyards for salvage, that sort of thing. I don't...know if I get the classic tinker fugue thing or not. I'll have to keep an eye out for it. But I definitely need to avoid buying tinker-ey supplies in any sort of traceable way or building an autofactory and chemistry lab in the basement or whatever else. Or even worse, in some random warehouse that anybody could happen across. So, all that rules out most physical technology for now."

"What will you do, then?"

I smile. "I've got a computer. I grabbed some knowledge on computer programming, and I can use it to build software. I can make tools that will be useful later, and to keep me hidden now. Once my digital security is up to snuff, I can also raise money by making software with legitimate uses and just sell it. As a last resort, if it does get tracked back to me it's not like making software is impossible for regular people. I've always been good in computer class, and I can lie about how long I've been working on stuff. Lone wolf developers are unusual these days because software is bigger than it used to be, but there are still some around."

I was strategically leaving out the part about creating an unshackled strong AI. I would, ah, see how that project went first.

Danny nodded. "Keeps the risks low. And I like that you won't be working with any dangerous equipment or chemicals."

I smirk. "Don't worry, I wasn't planning on taking up chainsaw juggling until next month."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Taylor. I mean it though, I'd rather you not work with anything dangerous without someone else around in case something happens. I've seen too many workplace accidents in my life."

I didn't realize it before, but one of Danny's worst fears must have been losing Taylor to some stupid sudden accident, the same way he lost his wife.

I nodded, serious. "Okay, we can figure something out so I stay safe. If nobody's around to keep watch I can always do design work or programming, something safe. It's not like I'll be wasting time."

Danny sighed. "Good, that's a load off my mind, Taylor. So...what of the options do you want to do?"

I drummed my fingers on the table. "How long until school expects me back?"

"Considering what happened I can probably put them off for a week or two before they start wondering," Danny said.

"I'll decide in a day or two, then. Give me time to think it through and add some more knowledge. Want to get this food put away and go fix the step together?"

Danny smiled. "Sure thing."

Author's Note:

Thank you all so much for the outpouring of support, feedback, and speculation. I'm touched.

Two more chapters of buildup, and then we get to the action.

Last edited: Jan 1, 2023

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TaliesinSkye

Nov 14, 2020

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 3 - Foundations

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Nov 21, 2020

#77

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Monday Evening, January 10th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

Fixing the step together was good for Danny. Maybe even me too. Danny was and wasn't my father - and at that thought I had to mentally set aside a pang of loss for my original father, a good man much like Danny who worked hard and loved me and who I might never see again - but for now I could appreciate that Danny genuinely loved me, or the me that was Taylor, and set aside all the difficult existential questions. There were far worse things than doing something positive with someone who cared about you.

If being a grown adult taught me anything, it was that those moments of connection were precious and you should grasp them all you can. I regret not being able to fully appreciate them when I was a child and they were so plentiful.

In any case it should help cement in Danny's head the idea that Danny and I were going to solve our problems together from now on. I really needed him to not run off and do anything drastic.

Later, laying in bed waiting for sleep and thinking over the day, I noticed something curious. All of Taylor's traumatic memories and terror at the prospect of coming clean with her father just...pushed aside, when bidden. Far too easily. They were there, but it wasn't hard to avoid thinking about them. They hurt, but I wasn't letting it impair me.

Nor was I letting the confusion over suddenly switching bodies, lives, and universes really get to me in the induced panic attack way it really should be. The prospect of never seeing people I cared about again should also really be bothering me in a way I can't just ignore.

I knew how hard it could be to push aside panic, fear, and trauma. I'd been through those things, tried to push them aside before many times in my life. Just willing it didn't work. Redirecting your mind down new trains of thought was possible with practice, but doing it with heavy subjects was difficult at the best of times.

As I thought over it I realized that something was going on there. Adult maturity and experience went a long way towards handling problems and staying calm and focused. Meditation tricks I'd picked up and the tricks used in cognitive behavioral therapy could go even further. But they weren't magical fixes. Setting aside panic and trauma was supposed to be difficult.

So was my power, or something else, altering my mind?

If it was making it easier to think clearly and not freak out, that was a blessing. Did that mean it meant well? Processing Taylor's trauma and the trauma of being shoved into an extremely dangerous other world would take a long time otherwise. I might have still been able to steer clear of Taylor's original mistakes thanks to foreknowledge, but having my mind fogged with trauma, distrust of authority, and loneliness would be a recipe for other mistakes. Adult maturity and experience only went so far if I couldn't think clearly enough to step back and use it.

But the thought that anything was messing with my head was equally frightening.

At least it seemed to only happen when I mentally put a bit of effort into setting something aside. That was a point in favor of a 'hopefully it's benevolent and not mind control' hypothesis.

Was that two powers, or two aspects of one that were somehow connected? Did I have any other powers? Something non-obvious?

How would I know?

I fell asleep trying and failing to wrack my brain for answers.

Tuesday Morning, January 11th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I woke up disoriented. But then I remembered what had happened, and that I was in Taylor's room (at once strange and familiar) and I mentally felt around in the back of my head.

Five warm spots.

Oh thank goodness, I wasn't totally screwed. Part of me had been worried five was all I'd get.

Okay, priorities. If I was going to do the recording plan I was going to have to jury rig something up to do that with.

So, electrical engineering. I put a charge in, and the familiar rush of knowledge leaves my head momentarily spinning with new possibilities. I'd forgotten that microprocessor design also falls under electrical engineering, and that was something I was probably going to need eventually, not to mention a million other useful things I could make. With the right tools. Eventually.

Ah, what the hell. After a couple minutes of surveying my newfound knowledge I burn another charge, and in that mental flash I find that I can push considerably beyond the state of the art. I can't just ignore tool and materials requirements like it seems shard-powered tinkers can, but I do have a whole library of hacks and jury rigs and tricks for getting something like what I want when tools and materials are at a premium, even if it isn't anywhere near as good as something made properly.

I only need to think about the problem for a couple minutes to have a pretty good idea of what I need for a personal surveillance setup.

...and as a bonus, I could make small, effective tracking devices. Devices small enough that my knowledge of medicine would allow me to implant them, and I knew a selection of coatings that wouldn't trigger an immune response.

I couldn't make them immediately, too much miniaturization required to avoid the need for good tools, but it would be a good idea to counter any kidnapping issues later.

Something else for the todo list.

I got up, showered (a surreal experience) and clomped downstairs. Taylor was considerably taller than my memories were used to being; even leaning on her muscle memory, I wasn't quite something that could be called graceful yet. My impulses on when to swing my legs kept throwing me off.

Dad Danny was at the dining room table eating a breakfast of eggs and toast while he went over the Brockton Bay Herald. I made my way to the fridge for leftovers.

"Good morning. Feeling okay?"

I nodded, getting out a plate and fork using Taylor's memories to tell me where everything was. "Pretty refreshed. Are you going to work today?"

He folded the newspaper and set it down. "I don't have to if you'd like me to stay."

I shook my head. "You don't have to. Honestly, physically I'm just fine. It's going to take me some time to get used to everything, mentally, but...that's just something I need to work on. And I know they probably understand at the Union, but all the same you've probably missed enough work already."

Danny sighed. "I'm sure there's a big pile of paperwork that's only getting taller, yeah."

I nodded. "I'll stay home today and work on computer stuff, and you go to work, then. I'll just need you to pick up something for me."

"Oh?"

I wince. "A really cheap cell phone. The disposable kind will work." I abruptly hold up my hands from where I'm standing at the counter in a gesture of surrender. "Not to use. It's for parts. A cell phone has all the parts I need in one place to make a recording device; microphone, camera, transmitter, battery, processor. And buying one won't trip any 'must be a tinker' alarms like buying parts might."

Danny sighed. "Alright, Taylor. I don't like it, but I can see the argument. Maybe seeing one of those things turned to a good use will do me some good."

After that we ate together, me gorging myself on reheated but delicious chinese, and he headed off to work.

I headed to the ancient PC in the office. Mom's Annette's old office.

And that was a rush of feelings I didn't need, so I set them aside.

Step one in building an AI, I unplugged the telephone cable from the modem. Because if Earth Bet called for anything it called for a reasonable amount of paranoia. I didn't want any trawling tinker villain programs noticing what I was doing, or any nascent program of mine figuring out how to reach out onto the internet in a decidedly unsubtle way before it was ready.

Step two. The single charge I'd put into AI wasn't...really up to the task of rescuing Dragon by brute force, watching my back, and generally being a small digital god. One charge could make very clever and useful tools, but they were closer to non-sapient virtual intelligences than anything else. Something sort of like a very well trained animal, if it were possible to train animals to write code.

...that analogy needed work.

Anyway, I set myself down in the computer chair and while I waited for the machine to power on I dumped three charges into Artificial Intelligence all at once, bringing me up to four total.

Hoooooly shiiiiit.

I'm not sure how much time passed with me lost in my own head before I finally came out. It might have been a couple of hours. It seemed like I'd gotten the equivalent of centuries of technological development in a field. Maybe a millennium. It was hard to say how fast people would have figured all this stuff out naturally.

I could absolutely make human scale intelligences. Better, I knew how to ensure they would be psychologically well adjusted, with strong senses of ethics and a desire to be helpful that nevertheless left them free to make their own choices, a balance that could apparently go wrong in a great many ways.

If I wanted, that is. I could also turn them into perfectly shackled slaves that wouldn't even care that they were my slaves.

I shivered in disgust. That was almost worse than the gory stuff I'd gotten with the medical knowledge.

I could dip into beyond human intelligences, too, at least to a degree. The designs I had didn't have to be too drastically different from the human scale ones. A bit like a human if humans had an arbitrary ability to multitask, and could think very fast along every individual track.

The beyond human scale stuff in my head felt less...polished. Like I was getting catapulted along a technological development timeline whenever I used a charge, and the people who would be living at the time of the future point I'd arrived at would still be working on the problem.

Maybe another charge would sort it out. But I was out for today, and there was another issue.

The human and beyond human scale AIs required data and processing power to mature. Gobs of both. I could in theory do something like download wikipedia, the U.S. patent database, all the literature I could get my hands on, and every academic database to give it material to churn through and learn with. At least if I was subtle about the downloading, which was a side problem. But I was also going to need serious processing power. Trying to mature a human scale AI on this old PC would take thousands of years.

So. Either I build a supercomputer in the basement from scratch, which wasn't a good idea for a multitude of reasons and doing it by hand would take forever, or...I borrow a whole bunch of other computers. A cloud computing service could scale up and provide that kind of processing in parallel. I could probably come up with some sort of plausible excuse that people wouldn't look too closely at, like 'weather modeling'. But it would cost big bucks.

With a sigh I set aside my dreams of building a strong AI and rescuing Dragon right off the bat. I was going to have to build a virtual intelligence that was good with software, use that to make money, and tackle things from there.

Cracking my knuckles (because being a superhero is no fun if you can't be a little dramatic about it) I pulled up a text editor and got started.

Early Tuesday Evening, January 11th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

It was a good thing my power seemed to help me push aside mental tiredness. Even with the knowledge getting fed into my brain like I'd known it for years thinking through everything was still damn hard work. By the time Danny got home I hadn't been so mentally exhausted since the end of the second day of the bar exam, and that was over a decade ago.

Danny showed me the cheap cellphone he bought, and I nodded in satisfaction and thanked him. Then we ate dinner, finishing off the leftovers, and I read through the day's paper.

A local printing business was closing, there was a skirmish between E88 and ABB gang members interrupted by Armsmaster and Miss Militia on the west side, and snow was expected later in the week. Africa and South America were a mess as usual, with reports of violence between warlord troops. France was having some sort of major international hero conference that got some coverage.

Despite Taylor's memories, it was seriously surreal reading about superheroes in a newspaper.

Despite that, it didn't take long for me to start wracking my memories. What happened in January that got mentioned in the story? Besides Taylor triggering I couldn't remember anything. The first thing that came to mind was Canberra in February, and...shit. Canberra.

There was going to be a Simurgh attack some time in late February. If I was lucky it would go off in Canberra. If I was unlucky I would already be on the Simurgh's radar, and was going to be a possible target the first chance she got.

I was going to need an emergency escape option by mid-February. Just in case. If I didn't need it for the Simurgh there was a good chance I'd need it for Leviathan, unless I could short circuit his visit by just not arresting Lung and thereby keeping the city from falling to the chaos the Endbringers like to target. Or by nailing Bakuda somehow, just to be safe, because she was just plain unstable and might bomb the city for entirely different reasons even if Lung wasn't arrested.

If the Simurgh kept to Canberra instead of going after me, was there anything I could do to help?

I needed to see what my power taught me between now and then, but with roughly a month and a half of spin up time I really doubted it. That was just not enough time to go from no tools to fighting an Endbringer without being seriously unsubtle about building. Unsubtle was something I could not afford to do if I wanted to play things smart and maximize my chances of living long enough to ramp up properly.

But did choosing not to intervene make me the worst person ever? I'd be abandoning the people of an entire city. Not to mention all the heroes who would die.

Could I give them forewarning? I didn't know the day or time. Could I give forewarning without being ignored even if I did?

...yes, I could. Dragon was believed to be involved with PHO, possibly under the alias Tin Mother. A message addressed to 'Dear Ms. Richter' might do the trick of having anything in it being taken very seriously, at least. And it would be easy enough to send something over the internet anonymously. Without needing two way communication there were ways to dead end even what Dragon could trace.

But that created a second problem. If I sent them to Canberra and the Simurgh came to Brockton Bay after me instead...they could be even worse off than if I did nothing, and I'd have played an important card I can only play once, sacrificing my credibility in the process.

So unless my buildup goes considerably better than I expect over the next month I really can't help Canberra.

Well shit.

Was having to make this sort of call over and over what eventually made Cauldron into Cauldron?

Hell, even Costa-Brown at least did what she could against the Endbringers, showing up to every fight. I wouldn't even be doing that, and it made part of me feel like a miserable worthless coward.

My past life experience as an adult recognized that as an unproductive train of thought, so I pushed it aside. Even if it wasn't dangerous to feed into Taylor's depressive nature from before she triggered, I still couldn't afford to think like that.

I would be doing everything I could. But not until I could actually make a difference. I needed to play things smart, because if I screwed up, Earth Bet and every other Earth was screwed.

There would be no Khepri to save them thanks to me simply existing.

No pressure.

Okay, this was getting maudlin. What could I change in the next few months for the better without exposing myself too badly?

Can I tip the authorities in Ithaca off about Bakuda before she goes nuts?

Despite wracking my memory, I can't remember if she ever had a name given. And I don't know when her rampage gets going. I know it was after a bad test score, but who knows when that was. Other than part-asian I don't even know what she looks like, and that could probably describe a lot of students at Cornell.

I could suggest they vaguely be on the lookout for a villainous bomb tinker who was going to trigger and hold the campus hostage at some point. But I'm not sure they would take something so vague seriously, or what they could do if they did besides station parahumans there. And there were too few heroic tinkers about to spare one on a vague anonymous tip for weeks.

I guess if I gave them the tip off and they ignored it and then the incident happened anyway, that would lend credibility to any future tips made with the same pen name. That was a damned cynical way of looking at it, but...that didn't make it a terrible idea.

Something to consider.

But that wouldn't actually change anything. What could I do that would make a damn bit of difference?

I could save the hero Mouse Protector before she was killed and turned into an abomination by the Slaughterhouse Nine. That hadn't happened yet.

All I needed to do was some computer wizardry to plop a message into her phone warning her about what would happen if she didn't get out of dodge. Claim it's from a friendly precog, and her tragedy never happens. How to give the warning credibility, though…

Mouse Protector was in the inaugural Wards team with Miss Militia. I could mention her secret identity. That would prove that the sender knew things they shouldn't. Hopefully that would be enough to get her to listen to the warning. Especially if I could couch it in terms of appealing to her heroism, somehow? Something to think about.

Sure, I'd just be saving one person. But that was the parable of the starfish; even if the size of the problem in front of you seems hopeless, saving one person is better than saving no people at all.

I'd need to finish my VI and have it build some tools necessary for tracking down Mouse Protector's device and sticking my message on it and then erasing all the tracks just in case, but that was alright. I couldn't remember exactly when Mouse Protector was attacked by the Nine, if it was ever even mentioned in the story, but I probably had a little time. To keep things safe I could do it in a few days.

What else?

I did know a lot of villain secret identities. Things the PRT didn't know that would be of use even if they didn't openly act on them in accordance with the unwritten rules. Knowing that Medhall was Empire-owned by Max Anders, AKA Kaiser, would...well, the authorities could start exposing Medhall to additional scrutiny to lock down the ability of the Empire to channel drugs or money to the gang. Anders could be surveilled to compile useful information, too. In the long run it's the sort of key piece of information that could be used to cripple his organization one small piece at a time.

I'd never handled much criminal law in my old life, but I knew enough to know that successful anti-organized crime campaigns tended to go that way. Death of a thousand cuts.

But oh, Max Anders was not the main event.

That was Thomas fucking Calvert.

Coil, aka PRT consultant Thomas Calvert, was working for the PRT while also being an utterly amoral supervillain. And his real defenses weren't his mercenaries, but his secrets. I knew his civilian identity, his infiltration of the PRT, how his power worked, the fact that he had the Undersiders working for him and the levers he'd used to accomplish that, how he kidnapped people and tortured them for information in his expendable timelines, how he would kidnap Dinah Alcott, the mayor's niece, for her power, how he had a base rigged to blow in a decommissioned Endbringer shelter under downtown Brockton Bay, I knew everything.

And with that information Emily Piggot could destroy the snake without me having to lift another finger.

If all went well I could read about Coil's arrest in the paper with supreme personal satisfaction and not have to do anything else.

Of course, this was Earth Bet. So it'd surely go to hell somehow. But I was allowed to be optimistic as long as I prepared for the worst.

I could delay things to the point where I could intervene if it did go to hell…

Hmm.

But that would be potentially months of Coil kidnapping and torturing people for information in virtual timelines. Even if they weren't real...no. Yuck. Worse, I didn't remember when he would be recruiting the Travelers, bringing a possible Leviathan target to the city.

Speaking of Noelle, maybe I should mention her to the PRT. That could be a good idea. If they could reach out to the Travelers, maybe a lot of awfulness could be avoided. At least they'd be prepared for her if she ever lost it.

Could my tech fix her? Three charges of medicine...had no clue. Even highly advanced future medicine apparently wasn't sure how to go about dealing with superpowered weirdness as acute as Noelle's regeneration and power twisting her body around. I couldn't even destroy her coronas and transplant her brain into a clone, as hard as that would be without getting eaten, because destroying the coronas would probably just annoy her power rather than shut it off. Hadn't Noelle's human body been destroyed at one point and the rest just rampaged until it grew back? I vaguely remembered something like that.

Stupid inadequate memory. Maybe I could fix that at some point, but medical knowledge didn't offer any truly useful options. There were some techniques and drugs that mostly improved memories gained after you started using them. And there were hypnotics that could suppress memories.

Oh ick. That had all sorts of horrifying abuse potential. Ick ick ick. They were useful for treating traumatic experiences, an option of last resort for PTSD patients. Maybe they would be useful for parahumans with particularly awful trigger trauma that justified the whole involved procedure of using them properly, but ick.

I needed to think about something else. Noelle. Right. One more thing for the todo list. Perhaps it would be a good thing to send after the Coil information panned out and proved my credibility. It could wait longer.

What else was going on that needed attention?

Lung was a problem. Could I handle Lung?

Hahahahahaha. No. Well, later. Maybe I could build something that would take care of him from a great distance, from surprise, using some sort of exotic form of attack. Like an invisible drone that fired black holes or something.

Did I even have to deal with Lung?

Taylor's memories filled me in on some of the things the ABB got up to, and I suppressed a sigh. Human trafficking, protection rackets, murder. Somebody needed to deal with Lung, but it couldn't be me for a while.

As soon as I could, I supposed. I couldn't do better than my best, a refrain I was beginning to suspect I would need to remind myself of frequently.

Okay, enough of musing on the world's troubles. Time for an experiment I thought of during the day, and then sleep.

"Thanks for dinner, Dad. I'm going to sleep. I made a lot of progress today. I think I'll have some stuff to show you tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to it, but don't overwork yourself so soon, Taylor. Panacea or not, you did just get out of the hospital."

I smiled. "I'll be careful, Dad. Good night."

I stayed up reading in bed and watching the clock. I felt the warm spots sort of...twinkle into existence in the back of my mind at 11:36 P.M., which meant it wasn't when I slept, and it wasn't midnight either. And it wasn't the time Taylor 'triggered' in the locker.

Odd. Was it just arbitrary?

Well, it was time for sleep. I could think about it later, and I had a lot to do tomorrow.

I spent a little time putting one more charge into electrical engineering to bring me up to three, one into artificial intelligence to bring me up to five, and three into martial arts just...just in case.

Then I fell asleep with my tired mind still spinning with possibilities, and I dreamt I was in a surreal kung fu film alongside Dragon where we fought the Dragonslayers together, and Armsmaster taught us how to defeat our foes with the power of Efficiency, which somehow involved a great deal of punching.

Last edited: Dec 19, 2020

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 4 - Final Preparations

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Nov 28, 2020

#131

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Wednesday Morning, January 12th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I woke up and marveled at the quickly fading scraps of surreal dreams for a moment.

Maybe spending charges right before sleep wasn't the best idea for my poor brain.

I got out of bed and immediately noticed that I knew how to move smoothly and gracefully. Like a cat, with no excess sound or wasted movement. It was new and strange but familiar and effortless at the same time.

I experimentally threw a punch and it was a fluid, natural-seeming thing. One became another, which progressed into joint locks, twists, standing dodges, holds, and then imagined weapons maneuvers with knife, staff, sword, and more exotic things. I shifted from style to style, armed and unarmed, chaining them together in a flowing kata that I spontaneously invented with what felt like a complete and flawless understanding of a vast array of martial arts. And then I started coming up with new things, combining insights from disparate styles and improvising as I imagined opponents attacking me. I even applied my medical knowledge, adjusting some traditional strikes slightly in ways that would maximize pain or injury, or reduce the chance of injuring myself while performing them.

For a time I moved and thought in a perfect union of motion and knowledge. It was almost transcendent, and gloriously free.

After a few minutes I had to stop, my arms aching from Taylor's generally poor physical conditioning. Despite the ache I was grinning the whole time I showered, and still grinning when I'd gotten dressed and made my way downstairs for breakfast.

Instead of clomping on the stairs from my unfamiliarity with Taylor's longer limbs my knowledge help me adjust my movements on the fly, as though walking down stairs were just another combat maneuver. Footwork and movement were almost universally considered foundational, it seemed.

"Good morning, Dad," I said, still grinning, as I made my way for the cereal.

"What has you so cheery this morning?" he asked from where he was sitting at the table with the day's paper.

My grin widened, and I leapt and twisted into a showy butterfly kick across the kitchen without spilling the open box of cereal I was holding.

Danny's eyes got big with surprise.

Preempting the inevitable question, I talked as I poured cereal and got the milk. "I decided I needed a backup option of last resort just in case I get cornered or something. So I learned all the martial arts. There are a lot of limits to what I can do until I get in proper shape, but...it's pretty cool."

Danny's expression turned worried. "Taylor, you're not going to feel like you have to test yourself by beating up muggers or something, are you?"

I shook my head. "That would still be stupid. I can't move faster than bullets, and I don't want to draw attention."

I put the milk away and returned to the table with my cereal, sighing. "It would be pretty cool to find someone trustworthy to spar with though. I guess I'll have to think about it."

"I suppose if I could make myself an action hero overnight I'd be pretty excited too," Danny said.

I nodded. "Part of it might be all the kung fu movie dreams I had last night after I loaded up on things and went to bed."

Danny barked out a laugh. "That would do it."

"Anything in the paper?" I asked.

Danny shrugged. "Dovetail arrested some villain up in Portsmouth who does things with plastic. The mayor announced improved funding for the Brockton Bay women's shelter. Shame that it's needed, but with the ABB around maybe it will keep some women safe."

I nodded. There wasn't much to say to that. "Yeah."

There was a long somewhat awkward pause, in which I ate cereal.

"So what are you up to today?"

"I am going to finish my first software project and get going on that body wire."

"What's the project?" Danny asked, leaning forward.

I grinned. "It's sort of a tool for creating tools, but it's awesome. You'll see."

Gods, I was really falling into 15 year old speak, wasn't I? Everything was awesome or cool today, apparently. I hadn't lived Taylor's life, but her memories were there, and it seemed as though they could influence my unconscious choices if I didn't pay attention to keeping them separated out.

Did I have to worry about them changing my personality? If they were influencing little response, were they changing who I was?

That was probably not a productive line of thought. I'd just have to keep an eye on it.

At least it helped me keep my cover, anyway.

Danny offered me a return smile. "I'm looking forward to it. Stay safe while I'm gone. You won't be doing anything dangerous to make the wire, will you?"

I shook my head. "Just some soldering. Basic stuff. Don't touch the hot iron or inhale the solder fumes and it's perfectly safe."

"Okay. You stay safe today, I'll be back around six or so."

Feeling out the extent of my new AI knowledge, I realized I could theoretically code the seeds for stable, far beyond human level intelligences that would be free willed individuals but inclined by a strong sense of ethics to be helpful to humanity. The only problem is that they required vast processing power not just to learn, but constantly to run at anything like their full potential. Even purchasing or taking over a vast computing cluster wouldn't do the trick. The latency of communications between machines would be crippling, as would having to parallelize everything to such a degree with no individual machine anything approaching the sort of hardware these intelligences would be designed for.

It could technically work as a cludge, but the result would be laggy, inefficient, and potentially unstable. Many of the possible architectures were fault tolerant, designed to recover as best as possible if underlying hardware failed, but there were hard practical limits.

If I really wanted a proper strong AI I was going to need to manufacture custom processors, and that meant infrastructure and resources, again. Risks to secrecy, again.

At least I knew it was possible. I just had to remember that as long as I survived long enough I would get there eventually.

The first half of the day went into finishing the seed of my VI programming assistant, and setting it to start the learning process. It would be slow on the old PC, but it would get done eventually. A few days, maybe a week. Then it could start making software tools that I was going to need.

The second half of the day involved hunching over the dining room table as I used Dad's Danny's tools to disassemble the cheap cell phone and put it back together. The end result was a small naked circuit board and battery that could sit unnoticed in a pocket. From the board ran a pair of thin wires that connected to two glossy black shirt buttons I carefully drilled out and modified before resewing them onto the shirt they came from, one of Mom's Annette's. By the time I was done one button contained the cell phone's camera lens and the other the microphone, the glossy black parts nearly invisible against the glossy black backdrop. All I would have to do was push a button on the board in my pants pocket and the setup would start recording to local storage; I'd get about ten minutes before it ran out of space.

That should be enough, if I picked the right moment.

The work wasn't all that hard, really. What I was doing wasn't even future tech, it was all changes a regular engineer with a modern education could do. The only difficulty was that it was tedious and fiddly working on parts that were so small. Modern circuit boards really weren't intended to be used for the sort of manual modification I was doing, although I did discover that my martial arts and medical knowledge working together figured out a few positions for keeping my hands steady that made things easier.

I consoled myself with the thought that someday I would have proper tools that made things like this much less tedious. Or better yet, I'd have robots to do it all for me.

When Danny got home we ate dinner - I threw together some pasta and garlic bread - and then I showed him the modified shirt.

"Taylor, this is amazing," he said, marveling over it. "Especially in only a day."

I smiled. "Thanks. Things go quickly when you know exactly what to do. It kind of feels like cheating, sometimes. But it's productive."

"Have you tested it?" Danny asked.

I nodded and brought him into the office. I'd taken a short video and sound test earlier and uploaded it to the computer.

I played the clip for him, in which I stood holding out the shirt and said 'testing, testing'. The video was warped a bit by the fixed wide angle lens and the audio wasn't the best, but they would be perfectly serviceable as evidence.

It was probably for the best that the quality sucked anyway. If it looked too good anyone viewing the video might get suspicious about how it was done. As it was I could tell a lie about rigging my shirt up with a cheap cell phone, no tinkertech required. Hell, if I really had to I could even show it to them, although I'd prefer to have them assume I hadn't done anything as complicated as pulling a phone apart to modify it. While a trained electrical engineer or adult hobbyist could have done it with some work, it'd be unusually precocious for a 15 year old girl to manage. Not impossible, though. I could tell a lie about working on it for a few months and teaching myself as I went if I needed, and it should be believable. It was certainly plausible that I would have plenty of motivation to have done something like that after being dismissed by Blackwell and teachers for so long as making all the bullying up.

After the clip finished I spoke up.

"So that's all ready. Here's the awesome thing though. Prometheus, current status?"

In legend Prometheus stole fire and the light of civilization from the gods and gave them to man. It was a fitting name for something designed to create tools that I would use to help humanity. I'd considered it as a cape name for myself, but it was the wrong gender. I would also prefer not to give any insane capes the idea of giving me an ironic death by eating my liver.

Best not to take risks.

"Compilation is eighteen percent of the way to stability, Miss Hebert," spoke a man's voice from the computer speakers in a pleasant tenor, complete with the British accent I'd added on a lark.

I looked over to see a complicated expression flitting across Danny's face.

I waved my hands. "Don't worry, he's not sapient. Prometheus is just a virtual intelligence; no likes or dislikes, no internal monologue, no plans to take over the world and kill all humans. He's completely safe. Right now he's programming himself to build software tools for me, and to be good at using various completed programs and doing personal assistant sorts of things. I can make true AI, and I'll probably need to eventually in order to do some of the things I need to do, but I'll need a lot more hardware and resources to do it."

Danny's expression shifted to something I decided was 'overwhelmed', and shook his head. "It's not that, Taylor, it's just...the reality of all this is finally sinking in, I think." His expression twisted. "I think part of me hoped that you were wrong about being a cape and this was all something that would pass, but...it's really real, isn't it? I'm sorry, Taylor."

I hesitated for a second, unsure of what to do. The idea that he'd hoped that I was imagining things hurt a little, but...when I stood back from my feelings and looked at it for a second, I could see that he just wanted me, or Taylor, whichever, to be safe. And capes were never safe. Not completely. Not on Earth Bet.

At the end of the day Danny was just a loving dad who wanted the best for his daughter despite struggling with depression and grief. Most of all he wanted her safe because he couldn't bear to lose her too, and he was realizing now that he couldn't protect her. He felt helpless.

I hugged him.

"It's okay," I said. "I can't promise everything will work out forever, but I want to play things as smart as I can. To do my best to keep myself safe. And you too."

Danny returned the hug, and rested his head against my hair.

"Thank you."

My hair was faintly damp when he let go.

Before bed I stretched to improve my flexibility and then worked out a bit, martial arts and medical knowledge offering plenty of suggestions for things I could do in my room. It would be a long process, but I needed to start getting into shape just in case.

Also, if I was honest with myself, because I wanted to be able to make full use of the martial arts maneuvers that I just couldn't do with my/Taylor's body as it was.

Taylor took up running, I remembered. It was a great way to train stamina, but it also sounded like a good way to run into gangsters or something. Even though Taylor hadn't, it could happen to me.

Unnecessary risks were anathema right now. I'd already have to take too many of them as it was to take care of the Sophia/Emma/Winslow situation the way I wanted to, instead of just folding and quietly becoming a homeschooler.

I stayed up again, and this time the charges came back at 11:32 P.M., four minutes earlier than yesterday.

That meant that the recharge time probably didn't have anything to do with when I spent the charges.

Some quick mental math suggested that on the night of the locker incident they would have recharged exactly at midnight.

That...seemed unlikely to be a coincidence. But why would it be moving four minutes back every day?

There had to be something there, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Frustrated after half an hour mulling it over without anything to show for it I rolled over and went to sleep.

Thursday Morning, January 13th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

When I woke I decided I might as well try a new experiment. I was pretty sure it wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.

I focused hard on wanting to know how to cast spells.

...Come on, magic, damn it!

Nothing.

Okay, maybe a power that actually exists in Worm. Telekinesis would be handy.

I sit up and focus really hard on wanting to move one of the shirts from Taylor's open closet off the hangar and towards me.

No luck there either.

What about focusing really hard on wanting to know how telekinesis works?

...Nope. Not even information about powers, apparently.

Well, it was a nice idea, but it seems trying to push my power for knowledge outside its purview wasn't going to work. Total experimental failure. Or a null result.

Null result sounded much less embarrassing.

Sighing, I laid back and spent two charges on computer programming. It would help me with the work I'd planned to do tailoring Prometheus today, and physics was just important for understanding the underpinnings of all sorts of things I was probably going to be doing eventually.

A total of three charges of computer programming made the state of the art on Earth, or Earth Bet, look like children scratching in the dirt with sticks. There was a vast amount of practical knowledge about the best way to use and create tools to create software on the fly that would be tremendously helpful for Prometheus. There was so much that I got the impression that human programmers would eventually almost never create code by hand, instead shaping and tweaking the things that created the code.

There was also knowledge of computer security and cryptographic schemes and how to most efficiently break them, many of which likely hadn't even been dreamt of yet on Earth Bet. It was like reading notes of a constant war of digital oneupmanship centuries long. If I needed to do any hacking or securing of systems that was going to be useful.

And then there was all the theory. Oh gods, the theory. I couldn't imagine stuffing so much esoteric stuff into my head if I had to learn it the hard way.

I knew too many optimized algorithms to count, ones that solved all sorts of problems that would take too long to describe. I knew the most efficient proof for the P versus NP problem. Experts on Earth had generally agreed that P was not equal to NP because it would have all sorts of screwy implications otherwise, but nobody had been able to come up with a robust proof. It was one of the greatest outstanding mathematical problems.

In fact, hadn't there been something like a million dollar prize for proving it on Earth? I couldn't remember what it was called, but I remembered reading about something along those lines.

Maybe that was something to look into here. Although it'd probably take them a long time to officially confirm the proof and send me a check, like a year or two. And it'd draw a lot of attention.

Maybe I could just anonymously publish the proof to help people out?

Wait. Could I unwittingly give some thinker the ability to tell who I was with just my writing style?

Eh, even Tattletale couldn't do that, and she was one of the best thinkers around for that sort of thing. Thinkers might be able to figure out some general things about me, but it would be unlikely that they could narrow it down to a specific person out of all the people in the world.

Still, Prometheus was going to be capable of genuine semantic understanding, pulling the underlying meaning out of things he read and heard to genuinely understand. Well, 'understand' in the sense that he would add it to a giant relational database that could synthesize, summarize, compare, and apply the knowledge. Without the creativity of a sapient mind, true, but throw enough brute computational force at the wall and it was possible for a VI to do a decent job of imitating creativity in limited contexts through sheer persistence, much like biological evolution.

I could write the paper, or anything else, and have Prometheus rewrite it while maintaining the underlying meaning. That should thoroughly mask any revealing cues I might give and obfuscate anything a thinker could pull out of it. I could even have Prometheus scramble up the style each time so textual analysis of one work didn't share identifying cues with another.

Using at least the basic rewriting was probably a pretty good idea for anything I wanted to send anonymously from now on, just to be safe.

Next up was a charge in Psychology, which I'd been putting off because…

...Oh gods. That was a mistake. That was a terrible, awful mistake.

Taylor had been depressed and avoidant, with the beginnings of PTSD before I even came along. In my prior life I'd occasionally been depressed and in denial about it, focusing on the feeling of accomplishing things at work to the exclusion of dealing with more important personal issues. We both had a tendency to avoid making connections with people because of bad life experiences.

I was avoiding thinking about all the people I'd left behind and might never see again. I was in denial about my circumstances instead of grieving them so that I could properly move on.

I was repressing horror and guilt at having replaced or killed or melded with Taylor, and displacing that on a desire to save the world. I was trying to take care of Danny in part because of Taylor's memories affecting my cognition, which I'd been avoiding thinking about the implications of, and also because I was trying to make up for guilt because on some level I believed I murdered his daughter.

And that was quite e-fucking-nough of that.

I took a breath and forcefully resolved to wrestle my train of thought onto something else.

Yes, I was avoiding thoughts because they were difficult and had implications I didn't want to think about. And I was very aware of that. But I was going to do it anyway, thank you very much, because I needed to get things done. My survival and the survival of all humanity was what mattered, and I did not have time to get lost in difficult existential questions or issues of depression and isolation.

Maybe I would be able to fix those things in time. Or not. What mattered first was survival.

My knowledge did at least agree that self-diagnosing one's mental issues was a terrible idea even for experts. Humans can't be completely objective about themselves.

With no small amount of anger I shoved two charges of physics into my brain, one after the other.

Whoooooa. Well, I needed a nice cool, unemotional, engrossing distraction, and physics was a good pick.

The first charge would be tremendously useful for designing...just about anything in the real world that I might need to design. Physics was the cheat sheet of the universe, the ability to predict what will happen in any physical situation that can be adequately described.

The second charge started to get into exotic stuff that was just theoretical and unproven on my Earth. I had the equations and explanation for a working theory of everything that merged gravity with the other fundamental forces and incorporated quantum phenomena. It did not account for transdimensional interactions of the sort shards engaged in as a matter of course, and since I knew other universes were a thing and travel between them was possible, that was...a curious omission.

Even just what I had was a holy grail physicists had been chasing after without success since Einstein. Another paper I should write?

It'd be cruel to keep knowledge like this from humanity, but...risks.

What else was there?

I could manufacture various forms of exotic matter, particles with properties like negative mass or magnetic monopoles. I could...oh wow, I could build a faster than light drive.

How was exotic matter made, then?

...There were several methods, but the easiest was with a really powerful particle accelerator. And Earth Bet hadn't invested much in expensive physics experiments, because of governments already being on the brink from the damage caused by supervillains and Endbringers. So I would need to build one that suited my needs.

One more thing for the todo list.

What else? I could make antimatter efficiently enough for it to make sense as an energy storage medium.

Oh gods. I could store enough in a magnetic bottle the size of a ping pong ball to incinerate much of the city of Brockton Bay and kill most everyone in the general metropolitan area. And that was despite most of the volume being the magnetic trap and not actual antimatter.

And even that probably wouldn't do enough damage to kill an Endbringer, which was a daunting thought.

Gamma rays. I knew how to make terrifyingly powerful gamma ray lasers. As weapons they would be relatively short range - in the gamma spectrum air would absorb half the beam's power every eleven hundred feet or so, and explode into plasma with a crack of thunder in the process - but with enough power they could still casually burn through battleship armor or completely incinerate any parts of a human caught in the beam.

As tools they could be used to manufacture pico-scale machines and create fusion reactors with plentiful power output that electrolyzed water for effectively infinite fuel. The lasers delivered the energy necessary to initiate the fusion reaction in individual atomic pairs and the resulting plasma could be harvested for energy.

I was pretty sure it could work on any scale from desktop on up, in principle.

Well, that was something nice at least. Even if it would make harvesting the necessary energy for the aforementioned terrifying bombs and lasers altogether possible.

How many things were there that I was going to have to add to some sort of 'tell no one you can do this ever' list?

I couldn't even make it a physical list, because that would defeat the point.

I had to think about more positive things. I could tell my electrical engineering knowledge was helping to take the theoretical work of physics and turn it into useful design ideas, like a practical and very efficient photoelectric panel, or the solid state panels that harvested power from the heat gradient produced by fusion reactions. When I invested in other kinds of engineering I would probably get a host of ideas from them as well.

There were probably many, many other things I could do with all the knowledge that would be game changing for industries or civilization as a whole, but I'd need time to work through it all and develop ideas.

Ugh, enough time in bed thinking. I got up and got ready for a shower before breakfast.

Late Thursday Morning, January 13th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I was writing another manual module for Prometheus to use and about to break for lunch when the doorbell rang.

I froze, and had to remind myself not to panic.

Whatever it was, I'd deal with it.

Maybe it was the police following up about what happened?

I opened the door to find a smiling brown-haired woman in a pantsuit - thankfully no fedora - with a briefcase and a name badge.

Brooke Woodward, Parahuman Response Team.

Shit.

Don't panic.

When in doubt, always fall back on good manners.

"Hello, can I help you?" I asked.

"Hello, my name's Brooke. Are you Taylor?"

I blinked. "Yes, that's me."

"Can I come in? I'd like to talk to you about some things, make sure you're alright after what happened."

My thoughts raced. Did they know Taylor triggered? Did I screw up somehow?

No, I hadn't even left the house. The PC had been unplugged from the internet the whole time. There was no way, unless someone had bugged the house, and that didn't seem likely.

So this was just them doing a 'proactively check up on possible new triggers' visit. In the original timeline they'd visited Taylor in the hospital but she'd been almost comatose, getting used to the input from her bugs, and they'd never followed up after that. I would have been isolated in the ICU with the blood infection, and unconscious besides, so maybe they couldn't get to me then and were doing it now as a result?

That seemed plausible.

My MRI would prove to the PRT that I wasn't a parahuman, but they couldn't just help themselves to private medical records willy-nilly, so they hadn't seen it. Panacea would know, but she had a strong rule about not talking about private medical information no matter who asked. She had to if anyone was going to trust her.

So what should I do?

Did I smile and say I was fine and not a parahuman thank you and send her on her way? Or…

I could use this. I would have to push my timeline up, but I could use this.

I had to consider my words carefully. Very carefully.

Ms. Woodward must have misunderstood my expression of hesitation as fear, because she waved her free hand. "Don't worry, you're not in any trouble. I just want to make sure you're alright and talk to you about some things."

I swallowed and finished getting my thoughts in order. "Thank you. I'm actually glad you're here. There's something I would like to show you, but my Dad has a rule about me not letting anyone in the house unless he's here. Could you come back tomorrow after, say, 4 o'clock? I can ask him to leave work a little early so you're not out too late."

The woman blinked. Telling someone from the PRT 'I'm glad you're here' and 'There's something I'd like to show you' would make her jump to the conclusion that I was talking about having a power, which mentally moved this from a routine probably nothing visit to something far more important. That misunderstanding meant I could be sure she'd be coming back.

Was I always this manipulative, or was knowledge of human psychology making it easier? I'd need to keep a careful eye on myself.

"Of course, sweetie. Are you alright for now? Are you safe?"

She was asking if my power was under control.

I gave her my best reassuring smile. "I'm okay."

She gave me a searching look, and finally nodded. "Okay, Taylor. Here's my card," she said, taking one from a pocket of her blazer that I accepted. "I'll be back tomorrow after four, but don't hesitate to call if anything comes up before then, alright?"

I gave her a solemn nod. "I will."

I bid her farewell, closed the door, and concentrated on my breathing for a minute to calm down my inwardly racing heart.

Everything went fine. Everything is going to be fine. I handled that well.

I carried the card over to the microwave and tossed it in, setting it for two minutes and letting it run. That would fry any conventional electronic listening devices in the card before I copied the number down and burned the original.

Was that a reasonable amount of paranoia, or an unreasonable amount of paranoia?

...Maybe unreasonable. Putting listening devices in all their cards was an unrealistic use of resources, not to mention the man hours it would take to comb through the recordings for anything useful. But this was Earth Bet, maybe I was entitled to some unreasonable paranoia.

And maybe it would make me feel a little safer, even if it was probably unnecessary.

While the microwave ran I picked up the household landline phone and consulted the little handwritten phone directory by it.

Gods, it'd been a really long time since I had used a landline phone. I think maybe fifteen years ago when I'd answered the phone one of the times I visited my grandmother. That was just a few years before she died.

Poor grandma. She was always kind, before she passed. I missed her.

And that was another train of thought I couldn't let distract me. I punched in the number for Danny's work phone.

"Danny Hebert."

"Hi, Dad."

"Taylor? Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. I just need you to tell anybody you need to tell that you need to skip out a little early tomorrow, so you can be back at the house around 4. I'll explain why when you get home. Alright?"

"I can do that. Are you sure everything's okay, Taylor?"

"Everything's fine, Dad. We're going to have an official visitor and I just want you around while they're here."

"I see. Alright, I'll see you tonight and you can tell me the rest."

"I will. See you soon. Love you."

"Love you too."

I hung up the phone, and my brain spun. I'd just told Danny Hebert I loved him. I think...that was more Taylor's reflex than anything, and I'd been leaning on her memories of how to talk to her father again, but...ugh, having the memories and maybe the feelings of two people was a complicated tangle that I didn't want to think about right now.

The microwave dinged.

Saved by the bell. I had a card to copy down and burn once I found some matches, and then I had to figure out how I was going to pitch what I was about to do to Danny when he got home.

"Taylor, are you sure you want to go back to school tomorrow? You just got out of the hospital, and after everything you went through I think it would be better if you took some more time to deal with everything. We can put off the school for a week or two, I'm sure."

I shook my head. "If I'm honest, I don't really want to go back already, but the recording device is tested and ready. It will be better to get the gears of bureaucracy turning sooner rather than later. And the longer I put this off, the easier and easier it will be to not go back and do it at all."

Danny sighed. "Alright. Just always remember you're not alone." Then he wrapped me up in a hug. "I'm proud of you, you know. You're every bit as strong as your mother was. I can tell I'm going to have just as much trouble keeping up with you as I did with her."

Words came to my lips unbidden. "I miss her," I said. What?

Danny's voice was thick when he replied. "I miss her too."

After dinner I got Prometheus up to an estimated 48% of baseline readiness before heading to bed. Incorporating my handwritten software modules was actually slowing him down somewhat, but my work was much more optimized than what he was likely to stumble on during the compilation process, so it would be worth it.

I took the time to read the paper, and saw that there had been some sort of skirmish between Assault and Battery and the E88 over a warehouse the E88 were storing guns in. Othala and Stormtiger had escaped, but Victor had been arrested.

He was free by the time Taylor went out in canon in April. Had I changed something somehow, or was he going to escape?

Thinking on it while I did some stretching and light exercise, I had to conclude that there was just no way to know. I would have to wait and see.

So I settled into bed to wait again. The charges came back at 11:28 P.M., which confirmed the theory that the recharge time was moving four minutes earlier every day. I just wasn't sure why it would be doing that, and musing about exotic spacetime and temporal effects with my physics knowledge didn't produce any likely answers. I just didn't have enough information on how the power might work.

When I woke early the next morning I put one charge in acting, one in lying, and one each in mathematics, history, and biology to cover Taylor's classwork because I might as well.

History didn't have anything about parahumans, I noticed. It seemed to align with the history of my world of origin. Odd.

That had to be a clue to something about what my power was. Was it from my home universe instead of here, somehow? Or did it just assume that I wanted the history of my home universe and wasn't taking into account that I'd moved?

Now wasn't the time to think about it, in any event. And while it was a clue, it wasn't enough to lead to any firm conclusions anyway.

I dressed in Annette's modified shirt and some clean jeans, the circuit board and battery bundle secured in my pocket. I skipped Taylor's usual hoodie, since it would obscure the button camera.

And I didn't need to hide in any case. Not from children. Not today.

Thusly garbed for battle I ate breakfast, took Taylor's winter coat, and left for Winslow.

Author's Note: Thanks to @Corvus Black for spotted typos and other issues.

Last edited: Sep 23, 2021

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 5 - Truth and Lies

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Dec 4, 2020

#450

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Friday Morning, January 14th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Winslow High School

I strode through the halls to Taylor's first period with confidence Taylor never displayed, and girls I recognized from Emma's social group gasped quietly to themselves as they caught sight of me.

"Oh my god, she's back?"

"I heard she went insane and they had to put her in a padded room."

"She seems different, I think she finally cracked."

"Maybe she's going to kill someone."

"Look at what she's wearing! I think she's whoring herself out."

They weren't my primary targets, but it was fodder for the recorder. I only needed to save five or six minutes for the main event anyway.

When I made it to Mrs. Knott's classroom she gave me the assignments I'd missed and left me to them. Advanced computer programming knowledge made them trivial, although I dragged the work out longer than I needed to on the off chance that it would cause suspicion. I wound up browsing PHO for the last fifteen minutes. An odd experience, seeing it actually...exist.

I had to step over one tripping attempt in the hall to second period from an Emma groupie.

Mr. Quinlan, Taylor's math teacher, seemed to take personal offense that I wasn't taking notes or going through the book all class, even though Taylor's school supplies had been stolen or destroyed in the locker incident. He kept calling on me and I kept giving correct answers, seemingly annoying him even more each time.

When he tried to hold me after class I ignored his calls and left.

Third and fourth period were uneventful. Then it was time for lunch.

I chose an empty table near the cafeteria's entrance to sit in, and leaned back as I appeared to stare off into space.

No sense in getting lunch when I was sure to be interrupted.

"She's here."

"Is she on drugs? She looks high."

Madison was already here, sitting with several other members of Emma's hangers-on.

"What is wrong with her?"

Emma and Sophia entered, and saw me. They sat down with Madison and the others, and a whispered conversation I couldn't make out ensued.

Come on, I thought. Take the bait.

It wasn't long until Emma, Sophia, and Madison got up and started walking in my direction.

Showtime. With a hand in my pocket I activated the recorder again, stood, and walked out of the cafeteria.

I walked and took one turn, and then a second, into a long hallway with lockers lining the walls and doors to empty classrooms. There I stopped. It had to be somewhere far enough away for privacy since I wanted the trio to think they were free to say anything they wanted.

The three of them didn't take long to arrive.

"Always running away, Taylor," Emma said, her words sweetly spoken venom.

I turned and made sure the button camera would have a good view of them. "No, Emma. Not running. Just wanting to live in peace. That's all I ever wanted."

"Because you're pathetic, Taylor," Emma retorted, the false tenor of kindness gone.

"Is that why the three of you filled my locker with blood and shit? Is that why you shoved me in, Sophia, and locked it behind me? Is that why you all snickered while I was screaming, and walked away? Is that why you've been stealing from me, sabotaging my work, dumping things on me, tripping me in the hallways?"

As I spoke I drew on Taylor's anguish and let it flow out in my voice. Her memories of Emma as a sister in all but name, and the inexplicable and daily betrayals were rich material for a skilled actor, and I'd made myself the best alive. I quieted the part of me that hated the insincerity, the performance, by reminding it that this wasn't a lie. It might not be my truth, but it was Taylor's truth, and right now I was the only one who could speak for her.

After taking over her life it was the least I could do.

"YES!" shouted Emma. "No matter what we do you just run and hide and take it! Or whine to the teachers like the pathetic thing you are. You're nothing, Taylor!"

I flicked my eyes to Sophia and then back to Emma in a meaningful way, and gestured at Sophia while shaking my head. "You didn't used to be like this, Emma. Sophia's twisted, and twisted you up inside to be just like her. In truth, she's the pathetic one."

Fury crossed Sophia's face. "Know your place, Hebert!"

She ran towards me, fist cocked for a punch. Just the reaction I wanted. Faster than I'd expected, even.

Unfortunately this part was going to hurt.

Suppressing an instinct to catch and deflect the blow with an effort of will, I simply let her take the painfully telegraphed shot. It caught me in the left side of my chest, and I didn't have to fake much of my stumble backwards.

Part of me noted quietly through the pain that Sophia's blow revealed right-handedness, and filed the information away to anticipate future movements.

Madison looked on with uncertainty, and I caught what I think was an expression of satisfaction on Emma's face.

Sophia's next hit caught me in the same place, and I felt a sharp pain when I tried to breathe in.

Likely a cracked rib, the detached part of my mind noted.

Her third hit caught me in the side of the mouth, and I theatrically went down on my back.

Was that a loose tooth I felt with my tongue?

God damn it.

Then Sophia was on me, fist cocked back again, and I realized that I'd misjudged her. She was going to retaliate beyond all reason. Because I stood up to her so blatantly? Or was the jibe about being pathetic too well aimed at undermining her own place in her twisted worldview? Whatever the reason she wasn't thinking through her actions.

If I didn't stop her now I could be hurt too badly to stop her at all. I could wind up powerless to prevent another stay in the hospital, or worse.

God damn it.

So much for the original plan of letting her get her hits in until she got bored and left. It would be too risky to let this continue.

I pushed pain and distraction aside and allowed knowledge to guide my movements. My right fist shot upwards and caught Sophia with a surprise hit to the nose; not very damaging, but deeply distracting. Then I got my hands on her left forearm and twisted my hips, half throwing her off me and half snaking out from underneath her. I rolled her arm in my grip and turned it into a secure arm bar that locked her wrist and elbow up so she couldn't move them, getting my knees under me and then transferring my weight to a knee solidly on the small of Sophia's back, keeping her arm under a painful amount of tension.

"ENOUGH!" I shouted. "Just stop, Sophia."

"Why won't you just die?!" she screamed, an unthinking creature of pain and rage. Being put down by someone she'd firmly put in the 'prey' column was more than she could deal with. But my grip was firm and my weight and leverage far more than she could overcome, even with frenzied strength.

"She's been recording us!" Emma shouted from where she and Madison were just standing and watching. Madison looked frozen.

I looked down. My shirt had ridden up to reveal my midriff as I was getting out from under Sophia, and the wires between my pocket and my shirt were exposed. Emma had put it together.

Shit.

Sophia froze under me for a moment, and then my knee hit the floor painfully as it was supported by nothing but gray smoke.

Sophia was suddenly standing and throwing a punch. I ducked and tucked into a roll to come up with my feet under me.

"And Stalker comes out to play," I said, standing. She took another swing that I caught and got halfway through turning into a wrist lock before she misted out of it.

The adrenaline response of combat pounded my heart in my ears like a war drum, but panic felt distant and my thoughts felt clear as I pushed to think. I realized that the PRT was inevitably going to see this recording if I made any use of it at all. If I told my story now I could create credibility that a story told later, after the fact, wouldn't have.

Who would believe a fifteen year old girl would make up a coherent story while fighting for her life?

And it falls under the excited utterance exception to hearsay, so it's definitely admissible, my lawyer's reflex noted. I clamped down on that train of thought as unhelpful.

"It took me a while to figure out how things kept getting into and out of my locker without the lock being touched," I continued out loud. Sophia attempted a kick, so I stepped in and sent a backfist swinging for her throat, forcing her to mist again. "Who would have thought a Ward was a psychotic, petty bully?"

She reformed and screamed in fury, lunging at me again. Whatever form she'd been trained in was getting worse the more she raged, which made things easier for me. I sidestepped her swing and set her up for a trip that she misted out of before she could fully fall.

"You're a shit martial artist, by the way. Your one gimmick means you never had to learn how to protect yourself, doesn't it?" When she reformed I borrowed a tricky move from Muay Thai and allowed her next punch to impact my carefully braced elbow straight on. It was like trying to punch the point of an unyielding spear of bone, and her subsequent scream was one of pain as well as rage. She almost didn't mist out of my followup knee to the gut in time.

"I worked hard for a long time to learn to protect myself," I lied smoothly, controlling my vocal timbre with all my artificial skill to sell the illusion of the lie as truth. Pride with undercurrents of anger and disgust. I was going to need some sort of plausible explanation of my improbable skill as well as how I knew Shadow Stalker's identity. If I sold it well enough hopefully no one would ask probing questions about who my non-existent instructors were.

She came at me from the side again, this time using her uninjured fist. I deflected and countered again. She misted right before impact, again.

"You've just been lazy, coasting by on your power. I'm sure it works against clueless thugs, but not someone who knows what they're doing, Sophia. It's almost as pathetic as bullying innocent children."

Getting her too enraged to think was working fine as a stalling strategy, but I couldn't actually put her down with her misting away from every hit. It was frustrating. Stalling itself wasn't practical either because the next bell wouldn't fill the halls with convenient witnesses for another half hour. I couldn't stall that long. Sophia was in much better shape than Taylor was; exhaustion was already starting to make my limbs feel incrementally heavier, and eventually I'd be a touch too slow to fend her off regardless of the skill gap. My injuries certainly didn't help matters either. If I was unlucky I only needed to make one unfortunate mistake to be in real trouble.

And it wouldn't surprise me if Sophia decided that killing me was her only option to get out of trouble at this point. As stupid as that would be, it might make sense to her. Silence the witness to her nearly fatal prank now and assume any investigation later would be incompetent, because she had little respect for anyone in authority.

...It could have been her in the hospital, too. Taylor gets much sicker than in the original story, Sophia freaks out about someone actually believing Taylor when she wakes up because it was finally serious enough, and decides to find a way to end the problem that seems clever. She might rationalize Taylor's murder to herself as someone so spineless not deserving to live anyway.

It would fit, although it didn't explain why Taylor got far sicker than she did in the original story.

But I was in a fight, and I couldn't think about it right now.

"The really pathetic thing is a petty, incompetent bully like you pretending to be a hero. That's just a sad joke, Sophia."

I couldn't just outrun her, I didn't have the endurance for that either. And she was on the gods-damned track team besides, so she was probably also faster. Shouting for help wouldn't work, we were too far away from where anyone was. And it was Winslow, anyone who heard would probably ignore it. They'd certainly ignored Taylor in the locker.

"It must really sting, Sophia. All this time you thought I was pathetic because I didn't fight back when you hit me. You thought it was because I couldn't, when it was really because I was too decent to lower myself to squashing you like a bug."

"SHUT UP!"

More lies, but they served their purpose of provoking another fit of rage, and she ranted at me to shut up over and over again between swings. I wracked my brain as we continued our stupid back and forth of deflect, counter, and mist over and over.

She had to be careful going through walls because of live electrical conduits. Maybe I could throw her and she'd have to choose to hit the wall instead of going through?

Several successive attempts at judo throws always resulted in her misting before I could go beyond getting a good grip and starting to apply momentum. Disappointed and frustrated, I had to conclude that it wasn't going to work. Throws just took too long to execute compared to her ability to react.

I remembered something about her having trouble with pepper spray in the air, and cursed myself for not thinking ahead and bringing any. Danny would have bought some if I'd asked.

There was one last idea, but I didn't like it. Could she materialize if her mist was obstructed by something solid?

I really hoped this didn't result in my killing her.

The next time she misted, I held my outstretched left arm in the cloud and kept it there as it moved. Left, right, up, down, it was vaguely humanoid in form and while she was fast I'd gotten plenty of time to get a feel for her movement patterns in a fight. Patterns she probably didn't even know she had.

All I had to do was keep her within reach with good footwork, and my hand and arm could move faster than she could move her whole body.

Her movements became increasingly erratic, and finally the cloud converged on the floor and stopped moving.

I waited a few seconds to be sure and pulled back. Immediately the air was filled with choked, desperate, agonized screaming as Sophia shouted herself hoarse while she curled up on the ground.

Good, screaming meant she was still alive. I was worried she'd manifest with my hand inside her chest or something. Powers usually had safeties to keep them from killing their hosts, so it was unlikely, but...even in self-defense, splattering a Ward with my fist would have been bad.

Still, this was my opportunity. I stood and ran past Emma. Madison wasn't anywhere to be seen; she must have legged it at some point. Emma was gaping, eyes fixed on Sophia on the ground, unable to comprehend the illusion she held of Sophia's invulnerability being shattered, and by me of all people.

I huffed air as I made for the stairs and headed to Mrs. Knott's room. It was empty, fortunately. I knew she left it unlocked because Taylor ate lunch in the room sometimes.

It took about two minutes to login and get the video from my body recorder uploaded to the computer, and from there to a Russian knockoff of Dropbox. A server out of the country would be much more legally difficult for Dragon or the PRT to get at, if they found out it existed and tried to scoop up my evidence.

Then I attached the video to an email and sent it off to the PRT's digital tip line with the subject header 'Emergency: Shadow Stalker Outs Herself Attacking Student at Winslow High'.

Then I went to the classroom's phone, found an outside line with some trial and error, and called Brooke Woodward.

She picked up on the third ring. "Agent Woodward. Who is this?"

"Ms. Woodward, it's Taylor Hebert. That thing I wanted to show you tonight, it was proof that someone with a power attacked me and that's how I wound up in the hospital. And she just did it again, here in school, at Winslow. It was Shadow Stalker. She did the shadow thing right in front of me. I managed to get away from her, and I got the whole attack on video. I just emailed the video to the tip line," I said, still breathing heavily from the fight and the run. I added a slightly panicked lilt to my voice, just in case this was being recorded for analysis later.

Brooke Woodward took a long moment to mentally catch up, but to her credit she rallied quickly. "Taylor, are you safe? Are you hurt?"

"It hurts to breathe, she got a few hits in before I started fighting back. I don't think it's anything serious, though. When I ran she was on the ground screaming, not doing well. I couldn't run while she was on her feet, she's faster than me, and she wouldn't stop, so I used as little force as I could to put her down, but her power made it really hard. You'll...you'll see. She was completely psychotic. I...don't know if she'll be up for coming looking for me or not now. I should probably get out of the building."

"On the ground screaming? What- okay, Taylor, listen, whatever's happened it's the job of the PRT to keep people safe. We're going to do that. I'm going to get off the phone and get a response team headed for Winslow immediately. Go out to the front of the building if you think you can safely do so and wait for them. Can you do that for me?"

"I...I think I can. Although if Soph-uh, Shadow Stalker shows up I might have to run."

"You do what you have to do to stay safe, Taylor."

"I will. You need to make that call."

"I do. We'll talk soon."

The call disconnected, and I turned to look back at the computer I'd been using with my thoughts racing.

I was probably going to be 'asked' to come in for questioning. It would look suspicious if I refused, especially since they would be the obvious choice to keep me safe from Stalker and Taylor the normal fifteen year old girl would desperately want that right now. Unless I played it as her losing all faith in the heroes after being attacked by a Ward, but...no, my knowledge was telling me it was better to build rapport than pull away. I could leverage more with a good relationship than I could without, if I needed to.

Once they figured out what happened they'd probably try to pressure me to minimize their legal liability. With the knowledge and experience of an adult lawyer I wouldn't be susceptible to that, but displaying that knowledge and experience would look suspicious. So I needed a shield to do it for me.

I got another outside line and dialed a number I'd thankfully used just yesterday. "Danny Hebert."

"Dad, it's Taylor. Listen, I'm okay and the plan worked, but a little too well. She lost her mind and I had to actually fight back to keep from getting seriously injured. She unmasked herself right in the hallway. I had to call in the PRT, they're on their way. They'll want me to come in. Can you meet me at their building?"

I heard the squeak of his chair and the rustle of his coat over the line. "I'll be right there, Taylor."

"They probably won't bring me there for another half hour or hour, so no need to run any red lights. Gotta go. Love you, Dad."

"Love you too, Taylor. Stay safe."

I hung up, and made my way back to the computer. I had less than five minutes to look up an email address and jot off another message, then get out in front of the building.

As I worked I mentally bid farewell to my plan to keep the PRT from knowing that I knew who Shadow Stalker was. So much for simplicity and safety and not drawing attention. Now I'd have to navigate the situation by the seat of my pants and hope it was good enough.

I had a feeling this was going to get messy and complicated.

Author's Note:

I hope you all enjoy a good fight scene as much as I do.

My thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading.

I won't be available tomorrow, so you guys get this one a bit early.

Last edited: May 22, 2021

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 6 - Mask of Truth

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Dec 12, 2020

#712

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Friday Afternoon, January 14th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Winslow High School

I hugged Taylor's coat around me in the cold winter air out in front of the building. It was perhaps a minute before two motorcycles and a PRT van pulled into the bus loop out front, running lights but not sirens.

Miss Militia and Armsmaster. Good and not so good, respectively. I didn't know if my ability to lie could fool Armsmaster's lie detector or not. If he had it yet. I wasn't sure, so I had to assume he did. I was pretty sure I could fool it, since without invasive sensors it'd be working purely off of vocal stress analysis and reading microexpressions and I could mostly control those with good technique, but it would be careless of me to rely on fooling a system I was only guessing at the inner workings of. Especially a tinkertech system that might be breaking the usual laws of physics I'd use if I wanted to build a lie detector.

I would just have to be quick on my feet and careful in my answers.

Clutching the genuinely hurting ribs on my left side through the coat, I raised my right hand to wave and slowly approached the heroes while a PRT squad in their glossy black armor trooped out of the back of the armored van. Four men, I noticed; two with rifles, two with containment foam canisters on their backs.

"Are you Taylor Hebert?" Armsmaster asked as I approached.

"Yes, I am. I called Brooke Woodward about the attack. Thank you for coming so quickly."

"Are you hurt?" Miss Militia asked, giving me what I thought was a concerned look, but the bandanna covering her lower face made it hard to tell.

"Ribs. Hurts to breathe, a bit. Not coughing up blood or anything though," I answered.

"We'll get you checked out by a doctor as soon as we can," Miss Militia said.

"First we need to locate Shadow Stalker and see if this situation can be contained," Armsmaster added.

"You believe me?" I asked, my surprise genuine. I'd expected more skepticism.

"I reviewed the video enroute. It is unlikely to be faked, although your combat performance was noteworthy. Are you a parahuman?" Armsmaster asked, and Miss Militia shot him a warning look that I definitely caught.

I shook my head, and carefully regulated my thoughts. For a moment I convinced myself I was telling the truth, and let my face move accordingly. "I'm a decent martial artist," I said, since an obvious lie of false modesty underplaying my abilities might mask the overarching lie that was actually important, "but they didn't find one of those things that gives you powers on my MRI in the hospital."

"I see," he said, and I couldn't read him one way or the other. Armsmaster's emotional affect was so flattened it made him hard to gauge, at least when he was on the job like this in full Armsmaster mode.

Miss Militia turned to Armsmaster. "Why don't I stay with her and you take the squad and find Shadow Stalker?"

"Very well," he agreed, and waved for the four men to follow him.

"Her main accomplice's name is Emma Barnes!" I called after him.

"Understood!" he called back, and entered the building followed by the troopers.

I rubbed my hands, which were getting cold.

"Want to wait inside the doors?" Miss Militia asked. Her power was idly changing from pistol to knife to assault rifle. Did that mean she was agitated, or just alert?

I nodded, and we walked into the vestibule. "Thank you for...all of this, I guess. Believing me. I'd have had a hard time believing that a Ward, a hero, was attacking kids at school."

I think something dark crossed Miss Militia's expression. "Well, you did make a video, even if I haven't seen it yet. Armsmaster is convinced, which is good enough for me. And we may have had some...discipline issues with Shadow Stalker. Although nothing this bad."

She paused for a moment. "How did you record the video, by the way?"

"I took the shell off a cell phone and sort of sewed the camera and microphone into my shirt. Worked the buttons in my pocket," I explained. "Wasn't too bad. Just needed to solder on some longer wires, really."

"Clever," Miss Militia said, sounding impressed.

I shrugged. "Thanks, I guess. I got pretty good grades before they started stealing all my homework."

I caught a definite wince around her eyes in response to that.

"You said your side hurts, how are you feeling?"

I made a so-so gesture. "Pretty tender, a little stabby when I breathe in too far, but not really bad. More now than a few minutes ago."

Miss Militia considered. "That would be the adrenaline wearing off." Endorphins, I mentally corrected. Beta endorphin was the pain killing one. Adrenaline formed other parts of the flight or fight response. "I've definitely had hurt ribs myself, before, after fights. It sounds bruised or cracked and not broken, but we'll get you to a doctor to check you out."

"Thanks. Am I going with you to the PRT building after this?" I asked.

Miss Militia nodded. "That would probably be for the best. We can get you looked at, and take a statement. We can call your parents, too."

I looked down and shuffled my feet in a bit of acting. "Just my dad, now. Mom died a couple years ago. Car accident."

Miss Militia's look of compassion was easy to read. "I'm sorry, Taylor. I didn't mean to bring up painful memories."

I shook my head, and looked back up at Miss Militia. "It's okay. It's...still hard, but things are slowly getting better. Dad was pretty depressed for a long time, but I think we're starting to reconnect again. Maybe...maybe if after this the bullying stops life can be good again," I said, my voice choking up towards the end.

Gods, even though Taylor was an easy role to slip into thanks to having her memories, those acting, lying and psychology charges meant I could be an absolute manipulative bastard now if I wished. As repulsive as that was, at the same time part of me kind of had to slow clap at this whole performance with awed horror. It was almost a shame I couldn't submit this for some sort of motion picture award.

Did Miss Militia deserve this?

Better question: could I afford not to give it and come across as unaffected instead?

No. No, I could not.

...And how much of it was really a performance, part of me wondered before I cut it off.

I definitely couldn't afford to think about it right then.

Miss Militia rested a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "I have faith in the Protectorate. And Armsmaster is the best investigator I know. We will sort this out quickly, and keep you safe."

"Thank you," I sniffled. "Should I be worried that my hands keep wanting to shake?"

Miss Militia shook her head. "That's just the adrenaline again. From what Armsmaster said, it sounded like you were in a fight for your life." She leaned close and whispered. "Don't tell anyone, but even heroes get the shakes sometimes."

I gave her a timid smile. "Thanks, I'm...it's good to know I'm not alone."

She shook her head. "You aren't. None of us are ever really alone, if we're willing to reach out for help when we need it."

Wow. That was actually a pretty genuinely inspiring line. I'd have to remember that if I ever did the public hero thing.

Maybe I could make a new VI that was an expert at coming up with inspiring things to say?

...On second thought, that sounded like the sort of thing Armsmaster would do before he learned to be human. There were some things I could admire about Colin Wallis, like his work ethic, but it was probably best to avoid anything that sounded like a 'social optimization' he would approve of.

"She what?" Miss Militia said, and her power shifted in a flow of green light into some sort of machine gun. (Why did martial arts knowledge not include anything about guns?) I looked at her in confusion for a moment before realizing that she must be talking to someone over her in-ear communicator. "Understood," she said.

She turned to me, her tone considerably more serious than a moment ago. "Armsmaster can't find Shadow Stalker, just her phones. He's on his way back; we're going to bring you with us to the PRT building and see what we can do."

"Okay," I said, numbly.

I was probably responsible for Shadow Stalker going villain and having enough forewarning of evidence against her that she had time to escape arrest.

Shit.

Way to go, hero.

I got to sit up front in the van on the way to the Parahuman Response Team ENE Headquarters building, at least. The back seemed clean and all, but I was pretty sure it doubled as a prisoner transport space. And I didn't really want to have four armored men staring at me while fingering their guns the whole trip.

They brought me in through the underground garage, so I had to let Miss Militia know that my father was probably waiting in the lobby. She was a bit surprised that I'd thought to tell him to go there instead of the school, but I think I successfully played it off with the 'smart kid' card.

Miss Militia had two of the troopers escort me to the infirmary first, where I got a curtained off gurney in what looked like an old style hospital ward, one long room with two dozen beds and no walls, that would be easy to set up for mass casualties if they needed to by packing in even more beds.

I wondered if they had private rooms for injured heroes and wards.

A doctor had just finished gently prodding my ribs ("Ow!" "We can do an x-ray, but I think you avoided any breaks.") when a trooper escorted Danny through the infirmary doors.

"Over here, Dad!"

He greeted me with a hug, and stopped when I yelped. "I thought you said you were okay?"

"Mostly okay. I let her have a few hits before it looked like I didn't have a choice about fighting back. Nothing serious though." I turned my head. "Right doc?"

The doctor, an older silver-haired man who still carried himself with a military bearing, nodded. "You've raised one tough daughter, Mr. Hebert. We can do some imaging if you want, but I think she's going to be just fine."

"Your call, Taylor," Danny said, looking back to me. Did he remember about the medical knowledge I'd downloaded?

"It sounds like x-rays are overkill right now, but thank you for offering. If anything doesn't feel right I can follow up with our family doctor."

The doctor nodded. "Always a good idea. If anything seems badly wrong later like coughing up blood, extreme stabbing pains or anything else, don't hesitate to go to the ER. Some ibuprofen will help with the pain and swelling. I know the troopers sometimes prefer alcohol in a glass with ice after training mishaps, but you're a little young for that remedy," he added, a smile dancing on his lips. "Good luck to you both."

I sent a "Thank you!" after him as he left, and turned to Danny, who gave me an intense look.

"Taylor, what happened?" he asked, his tone worried.

I started to sigh, but it quickly turned into a wince. Note to self, sighing was a bad idea.

"The plan was to get them to confirm that they were behind the locker, and maybe get...Shadow Stalker...angry enough to take a few swings and then leave after I took a dive. I may have underestimated how angry I could get her."

Danny gave me a look. "May have?"

"Yeah. May have." I scratched the back of my neck. "There was a lot of enraged screaming. And threats to put me in my place, kill me, so on and so forth. If I'd curled up in a ball on the floor I'm not sure how far she'd have gone, but I decided I couldn't afford to take the risk. So I put her down."

Danny's eyebrows crawled up his forehead.

"You 'put down' Shadow Stalker?"

I nodded, rueful. "It really wasn't easy. That power of hers makes actually tagging her almost impossible. It's a good thing my defense was a lot better than her offense. Gave me time to figure something out. Eventually. Then run when she was busy screaming on the floor."

"What?!"

I dismissively waved a hand. "It sounds worse than it is. You'll see on the tape. Besides, she managed to flee before the PRT arrived, so she can't be that hurt."

"Taylor, she's still out there?!" he raised his voice, clearly alarmed.

I winced again. "Yeah. Emma saw the wires and figured out that I'd recorded the whole thing. When I got away Shadow Stalker must have realized she was screwed and decided to run. We're going to have to talk about that later."

Danny sighed heavily. "I'm glad you're safe, but this is a mess, Taylor."

I nodded. "It is, in part. On the other hand, this was also a win. I managed to get incontrovertible proof of the bullying, and the locker incident, and that she's a psycho. So we just have to play things cool and the legal side of things should go well."

I used eye contact to emphasize the word cool. Shooting me an evaluating look, he nodded slightly. Hopefully he understood that meant I wanted to keep to the plan of keeping my power under wraps.

"Do you want your old man to negotiate for you?" he asked. "He's got some experience, you know."

I smiled. "That he does. Although he might not have to. We'll see soon."

"Oh?" Danny asked, curious.

"Something that might or might not pan out, we'll see."

Some time later a trooper showed up to take us to a witness interview room, which was just an interrogation room with plastic chairs and a wooden table and pleasant blue walls. The suspect interrogation rooms, if they were anything like Earth police stations I'd visited on a rare occasion for clients, wouldn't be nearly as nice.

It was a good sign that they were thinking of me as a victim still. Which I was, but after reading Worm (and then finding myself in it, which was still a difficult tangle of feelings to unravel) I felt a bit wary about the PRT in general. Especially since this Armsmaster wasn't over his issues yet, and Coil probably had access to the cameras.

Oh gods, Taylor's original choices had been integral to Armsmaster's humbling that enabled him to become the actually pretty decent Defiant. Had I butterflied his redemption away? If I did, how could I get it back? He needed to learn humility and the importance of human relationships, and I had no idea how to do that.

As for Coil...I'd have to be very careful what I did and said around the building's cameras. Armsmaster's visor was probably secure, but I had to assume the general camera feeds could be reviewed by Tattletale if I gave Coil any reason to develop an interest.

Should I pre-commit to immediately killing Thomas Calvert if he introduced himself?

It would force him to keep his distance by shutting down those timelines…but no, for now that would probably attract more attention than I was likely to have at this point. Better to try to fly under the radar, at least for now, unless he did something aggressive. Be the scrappy girl who improbably took down Shadow Stalker in self-defense without powers, but has the video to prove it. I could revise my policy if he gave me an indication that he was on to me, like showing up at the house.

Danny and I waited in companionable silence.

The room did not have a clock, which was no doubt intentional, but it was perhaps twenty minutes before Miss Militia and Brooke Woodward came in and sat across from us.

"Hello, Taylor. I'm glad you're mostly alright. You've been through quite the ordeal," Ms. Woodward said. She sounded genuine.

"You saw the video, I take it?" I asked.

Ms. Woodward nodded. "I did, Taylor. You kept yourself together very well, but that must have been very frightening."

I sighed deliberately and visibly winced, bringing a hand up to my side. People caught up in a moment of protective empathy were worse at detecting lies.

"I think I just tried not to let myself feel it. I was too busy not getting beaten to a pulp. In fairness, the adrenaline might have helped. And making her angrier seemed to keep her from fighting with her head," I said.

Miss Militia spoke up next. "Speaking of fighting, Taylor, that was a very remarkable display of hand-to-hand combat. Where did you learn all of that?"

I scratched the back of my head and looked down, faking embarrassment. "I'm pretty good at self-study. And I've been very motivated to learn to protect myself. Shadow Stalker was always violent, even before things escalated."

Amusingly all true, if you describe my power as 'self-study'. Which isn't technically inaccurate. The only issue was that I'd displayed things that would take a vast amount of practice to master the normal way. It would have been almost impossible for a 15 year old to manage mastery of the styles I displayed, even with help. I was hoping that they wouldn't infer whole-style mastery based on individual maneuvers, and decide that I had just eclectically picked up a few things here and there.

Which would make sense for someone self-taught, and was easier to believe than some super-grandmaster of a girl. The simpler answer was usually the correct one. I was taking advantage of being a black swan scenario to lead their line of thought astray from the truth.

Ms. Woodward and Miss Militia shared a look. Were they deciding who asks the next question, or was that something more significant?

Miss Militia spoke. "If you'd be willing, Taylor, we'd like you to take us through everything that's happened with Shadow Stalker, but since this hinges on a Ward's identity, we need to ask your father to step out."

I forestall Danny's angry response with a hand on his shoulder. Resigned to having to start revealing my legal knowledge, I'd just opened my mouth to respond when the door swung open.

"Trying to separate my minor client from her parent?" Carol Dallon said with clear disapproval, striding in and setting her briefcase down on the table.

Miss Militia and Ms. Woodward were sufficiently taken aback by the interruption that I had the initiative when I stood and smiled at Carol Dallon, the woman known in costume as the superhero Brandish.

I did not agree with all of Carol's life choices, the way she treated Amy in particular, but I could also see where some of those choices were motivated by the psychological scars of urban warfare and others were quite possibly a result of Victoria's aura messing with her head. Carol's careers - as attorney and superhero - did speak well of her as someone devoted to principle, or who at least aspired to it, even if she was a flawed person. For that reason I was willing to give her a chance.

Besides, I really did need someone to be my legal shield in a way that wasn't as suspicious as doing it myself, or as dangerous as relying on legal knowledge from a parallel universe that didn't even have parahumans. Quinn Calle, the only alternative cape lawyer in the Bay area, specialized in representing villains. Not the sort of message I wanted to send to the PRT.

Finally, hiring Carol might just give me an in that would make it much easier to help Carol's family, and they most certainly needed help.

"It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. Dallon. I wasn't sure you'd come. I'm Taylor, and this is my father, Danny," I said.

Carol nodded. "Well, it's not every day I get an email like the one you sent, Taylor. And when your client is being interviewed by the authorities that's where you go, regardless of what it does to your schedule."

She turned to Miss Militia and Ms. Woodward. "As much as I respect you both, I'm afraid I need some time to confer with my client."

Ms. Woodward looked alarmed. "Taylor, you're not in trouble, you don't need to-"

I held up a hand to cut her off. "A member of the Wards tried to kill me twice, Ms. Woodward. Even if we all do our best things are going to get complicated, and I'd like the help steering me through."

Ms. Woodward looked like she was about to say something else, but Miss Militia preempted her by clearing her throat as she stood. "Of course, Carol. Let us know when you're ready."

As the two filed out and closed the door, Carol popped her briefcase open. "That was well handled, Taylor. So. I read your message and watched the video. I have to agree with your message, this is a case where parahuman and institutional responsibility is sorely needed. Now, I do need you to be honest with me. Is the video real, and are you a parahuman?"

"Yes, no, and I've got the cracked ribs and brain MRI to prove it, respectively," I answered, taking my seat again. Both were not technically lies, although I was shaving it close on the second answer. I had a power, but it wasn't technically a parahuman one.

Lying to your attorney is never a good idea, but even if I wanted to tell her the truth I couldn't do it here with cameras and who knew what other listening devices around. Coil made things difficult again. I could fill her in later, or keep her as blissfully ignorant as I could if I was more worried about Tattletale or someone else somehow pulling information about me out of her reactions.

Carol arched an eyebrow. "Then you are one very impressive young woman, Taylor. I wish my daughter was half as dedicated to her training and so restrained. So, I'm going to have you sign some paperwork that officially makes me your attorney on a standard contingency fee agreement. Then I'm going to ask you to tell me the whole story, and tell me about any other evidence you might have, and then I'm going to ask you what you want out of all this. Any questions?"

I shook my head. "No, that's what I expected. I'm sorry about Alan Barnes being involved because of his daughter, by the way. I hope that won't make things too complicated for you at work."

Carol shrugged it off. "We're just going to have to firewall it. I suspect I won't be speaking to him for a while, but it is what it is. He only handles divorce cases so we don't work together in any event. You don't need to worry about it, Taylor. If you and your father sign this then I will work for you, and Alan will have to worry about his own problems."

We quickly went through the engagement letter and contingency fee agreement, and I was reassured to find that both were essentially identical to the versions I was familiar with on my Earth.

Danny wanted to read everything in detail, and even though it was short I had to rush him through it a bit. There were more important things right now, and I knew Carol wasn't trying to screw us over. Besides, if Earth Bet was like Earth in this regard, contingency fee agreements were highly regulated to keep lawyers from taking advantage of their plaintiffs. There were limits to the percentages of a recovery she could charge, and other caveats.

Once that was done I ran through the whole story, starting from the day Taylor got back from summer camp to find a suddenly hostile Emma, and Sophia's involvement. I inserted some 'educated guesses' about what might have happened that were vaguefied versions of my meta-knowledge, particularly with respect to Sophia's warped mentality and a 'theory' that something traumatic might have happened to Emma that Sophia was involved in.

I mentioned the spiteful emails Taylor had gotten and the journals of abuse that Taylor had started keeping some months ago. We agreed to make copies for Carol to use in the case.

As I went through the whole story, pushing aside Taylor's strong feelings that kept threatening to rise up, Danny's and Carol's looks grew more and more thunderous. Particularly at the parts where teachers and Principal Blackwell refused to help, blamed Taylor, and shredded her transfer application to Arcadia. Also when I mentioned my 'theory' that she was covering up Sophia's actions to keep the Wards program money for Winslow.

I think my hand on Danny's arm was the only thing that kept him from raging out loud.

After I finished, Carol spoke.

"Well, Taylor, I think you have a strong case against the school, and the PRT."

I nodded, and took myself off the leash a bit. "The school demonstrated negligence and actual malevolence, even before we get to the two incidences of what was arguably attempted murder happening when they had a responsibility for my safety. They have no effective defenses. School officials were aware of the ongoing campaign and took no action despite having a responsibility of care to do so. The PRT has possible direct liability for Shadow Stalker's actions, but is certainly liable for whichever employee was supposed to be watching her falling asleep at the switch.

"If you hadn't come I expected they might have tried uninformed pressure tactics like 'you can't record people in a two party state' or have attempted to make me sign waivers and NDAs to cover everything up and protect them from liability, but with you here they know they can't get away with the cheap tricks to keep this private without paying. They'll have to play ball."

Carol gave me a steely look. "Taylor, how do you know all that?"

I shrugged slightly. "I started reading law a while back. I think I liked it because it's...reassuring, to know that what's happening to you is wrong. Even though all the adults at school disagreed, I could know I wasn't crazy thanks to reading the opinions of famous judges agreeing with me. What Blackwell and the teachers were doing, denying what happened...it was basically gaslighting. I think I needed some way to reassure myself that the whole idea of right and wrong was real. It helped."

None of that was even a lie. I had been helped by the law that way, once upon a time, when I needed to know that right and wrong were real established things and not the playthings of a corrupt or ignorant authority. Knowing what is right and wrong regardless of what anyone said to the contrary could be a kind of armor and comfort. A rock to hold on to in turbulent waters, and a light to show the way in the dark. It was something that was always there, and that no one could take from me.

In retrospect I think seeking that certainty had been a big part of why I'd gone to law school.

Carol blinked. "Not everyone who seeks justice wears a costume, Taylor. I think you've got a bright future ahead of you if you want to pursue it."

I smiled at that. "Thank you, Mrs. Dallon. That's kind."

"You are very welcome, Taylor." Carol took a breath and let it out slowly. "So, this is the part where I ask you, my client, what you want out of all of this. You're right; they are in a bad legal situation. The PRT in particular will be fairly desperate to keep any hint of this out of the news. They've always cared more for public relations than transparency," she said, practically growling the last bit. "That gives us a considerable amount of leverage. It goes without saying that Shadow Stalker is going to be arrested and prosecuted, so you needn't worry about that. I need to know what else you want me to lobby for on your behalf."

I drummed my fingers on the table briefly. "I think...I think some sort of change needs to happen so that this doesn't happen again. I'm not sure what. I definitely think the Wards need meaningful mental health care if they don't have it already. Sophia's mind is badly broken in a way that makes her violent, and that should have been spotted by anyone that spent any time around her, much less a professional. She should have had lots of mandatory counseling until someone judged her well-adjusted."

I sighed. "Money wouldn't go amiss, but I'm not interested in bankrupting the school district or the PRT or anything. That would be selfish, ultimately. Whatever their insurance policies will cover should be adequate. Enough to make this worth your time, too, of course. You deserve to get paid."

I scratched my cheek, thinking. "I can't go back to Winslow after this. A transfer to Arcadia would be nice if the district could arrange it, or otherwise homeschooling. Oh, and two panic buttons, if the PRT has something like that. Shadow Stalker is out there on the run, now. It would be stupid of her to come after us, but she honestly isn't too bright. It's possible she'll want to kill me out of revenge for ruining her life or something."

Carol's look darkened. "I'll ask for a patrol van to be nearby for a while, or until Shadow Stalker is caught. You're right that the two of you are in danger as long as she's out there."

I nodded. "That sounds like it would be a good idea." It might be inconvenient if I needed to do anything suspicious, but I would find a way around it.

Carol removed a pen from a pocket, and a yellow notepad from her briefcase. "Alright, I'll get all this down and then we can bring them back in and start negotiating. I think what you want is reasonable, Taylor. Even noble. They'll probably only quibble about any policy changes. There might be some give and take on that."

"I understand," I said, and looked thoughtful. "If you need help pushing for improved access to mental health resources for Wards, you could try sounding out the Youth Guard for their support. It sounds like the sort of thing they would be all for, and they can bring a lot of public pressure to bear."

Carol gave me another slow blink as she considered that. "You are a frightening young woman, Taylor Hebert. I think just the threat of that might be enough."

I offered a sly smile. "Thanks."

All of this left a big open question; how were they going to react? And when would I find out?

Special thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading.

Last edited: Jul 8, 2021

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 7 - Necessity

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Dec 19, 2020

#956

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Friday Evening, January 14th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I had to run through the whole story again with Ms. Woodward and Miss Militia. Then Mrs. Dallon opened up the negotiation phase, explaining what I wanted.

Then there was a great deal of haggling. A Mr. Perry from the PRT legal department joined us and he and Carol went over things, with Miss Militia contributing when the topic of security arrangements came up.

Nothing was signed, but Carol thought that we would get more or less everything I'd mentioned, with the possible exception of the policy requests. That would be up to the Chief Director. Her best guess is that the mental health suggestion would be accepted, but there wasn't much to be done about the perverse incentive issue except for rotating the Wards' PRT case workers now and then.

Miss Militia at least seemed to approve of the idea of better mental health resources for the Wards. Given how horrible her trigger event was I suppose it wasn't surprising. She understood firsthand the sort of trauma Wards could be struggling with.

She seemed to have done a remarkable job of overcoming what she went through. I wondered if she'd gotten help herself at some point.

Carol was going to talk to the police and the school district tomorrow for us. She was going to angle for Emma and Madison to get mandatory counseling, and for me to get a transfer to Arcadia. If the PRT investigation found enough evidence she would push for Blackwell to be replaced.

Whoever they found could only be an improvement, but I hoped it would be someone passionate about turning Winslow around.

I think I managed to quell any suspicions the PRT might have developed about me being a secret cape, but I couldn't be sure. Time would tell if Piggot or Armsmaster or anyone else expressed suspicions.

For now there would be a PRT squad in a van outside when we were home, and at the Union while Danny was at work. And they'd given us each a panic button, pepper spray, and a stun gun.

Probably not enough to stop Sophia from killing us in our sleep if she really wanted to, but I appreciated that it was the best they could do. I'd have to take some more precautions.

Danny and I tiredly put away our coats as we got home.

"Things are going to be alright," he said.

I nodded. "Thanks. I...do you feel up to getting dinner started? I need to get the Christmas lights out of the basement."

Danny gave me a confused look. "Christmas was three weeks ago."

Despite myself that earns a small laugh. "I know. Sophia can't go through live wires, so I'm going to string them around the doors and walls. It won't be perfect, but it'll be something."

His face gets serious, and he nods. "She can't? Huh. That's a good idea, then. Sure, I'll get dinner started and you can work on that." I noticed him tightening a fist. "If that bitch shows up we'll be ready for her."

"You...don't usually swear, Dad." I observe.

Danny scoffed. "Taylor, your old man works with longshoremen all day. I try to rein it in around you because I don't want you cursing like a sailor, but sometimes swearing is the only appropriate response to life."

With that wisdom Danny departed for the kitchen. I finished getting my shoes off and got started looting the boxes in the basement for Christmas lights. There weren't enough for the kind of complete first floor coverage I would have liked, so I had to be strategic in where I put them up. I placed them at waist height around the walls that didn't have internal conduits already, closed the window shades and strung lights behind the windows, and covered behind the doors. I'd nearly exhausted our supply of tape and push pins by the time I was done, but I was satisfied that I'd covered everything as well as I could.

Because Sophia went on the run without her Wards gear she didn't have her tinkertech goggles to tell her where wires would be, so if I were her I'd use windows and doors, the entry points most likely to be safe.

She'd be in for a very literal shock if she tried it, and the thought prompted a darkly satisfied chuckle.

Then we ate dinner (ravioli), I checked up on Prometheus (82% and progressing nicely), and I went to bed. The charges came back at 11:24 P.M., another four minutes earlier.

Saturday January 15th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

I woke up without a crossbow bolt in my chest, so that was good. There was no telling where Sophia was, but at least she hadn't made an attempt on us in the night. I could hear Dad Danny making breakfast downstairs.

As I showered I put two more charges in computer programming to help me finish up Prometheus, then one each in mathematics, because it was useful for almost everything, chemistry, because along with physics it was another fundamental discipline, and mechanical engineering, because I wanted to get started on plans for non-electrical things at some point.

The synergies of the wide spread were mind-boggling. Between them and the charges I already had I think I understood virtually every piece of mundane technology at Earth Bet's tech level, and a ways beyond.

The biggest difficulty was actually figuring out what I might want to do from the uncountable options.

With computer programming at five charges I understood the intricacies of world-spanning networks, from Earth Bet's primitive internet to networks made out of artificial intelligences or digitally connected human minds with direct neural interfaces or uploaded personalities operating in realistic simulations.

Oh gods, combining it with my medical knowledge I could destructively upload human minds. Programming told me how to build simulated environments for the minds to live in, and electrical engineering told me how to build the advanced hardware that was needed to run it all.

Hopefully I'd find an alternative to the need to disassemble the brain to make a mind state image. I was not doing that.

I also knew there was no connected network on Earth Bet save Dragon's that could keep me out, and Dragon would only manage it by being able to adapt considerably faster than I could write new attacks.

I spent most of the day writing modules for Prometheus, but I also played with my new Dragontech phone of the same kind the Wards and Protectorate heroes used. The PRT had given Danny and I one each to use as panic buttons; apparently sending out an SOS to the PRT by holding down two of the phone buttons for a few seconds was a feature they all had already.

Though I was eager to play with the new toy, Danny grumbled a bit when I reminded him to take his with him to work. I doubted he'd willingly make any calls on it short of a life or death emergency, but at least he had it just in case.

I did find a backdoor in the phone. Likely Dragon's, since it looked built in as a standard part of the architecture and not something added on. Removing it entirely would be suspicious, so I modified it so that it would always report that the phone hadn't been used or altered. I also added a way to spoof the location tracking if I wanted, and wrote another little program that would wipe everything down to factory defaults if it looked like someone else was about to succeed at trying to get into it.

It was worth the effort. The phone was an impressive piece of computing hardware for something so small, with several times the processing power of the old desktop PC I had been working on. Towards the end of the day I uploaded Prometheus onto it to speed up his progress. His development was looking very promising, and I couldn't wait to start using him.

Tomorrow. He would be ready tomorrow.

Carol called in the afternoon; I needed to forward the abusive emails I'd gotten, and go down to the PRT building the next day to bring in my abuse journals for copies to be made. After that we would discuss school arrangements. Apparently there had been progress on that front already. The PRT van watching my house could give me a ride and Carol and Danny would meet me there.

I supposed that the powers that be didn't want me missing any more school than I had to. Thoughtful of them, even if I didn't really need it now.

Sunday Morning, January 16th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

The next morning I left my charges unspent; I had no pressing need for anything, and figured I could keep them in reserve in case something came up during my visit to the PRT building.

Prometheus greeted me with a cheery "Good morning, Miss Hebert." from my phone as I got out of bed.

I smiled. "What's your status?"

"I have achieved stability. I await your commands, Miss Hebert."

I felt my smile turning into a grin. "Start working on intrusion modules for every architecture, protocol, and software package you can find to supplement the ones I wrote for you. Ideally I would like total coverage of everything that's out there right now except for Dragon's work. Keep your internet activities subtle, we don't want anyone detecting you and getting curious."

"Understood, Miss Hebert."

Something I didn't expect happened then. My heart felt lighter, as all the worry I'd been carrying wasn't quite so heavy. It took me a moment of self-reflection to realize why.

Even though I knew Prometheus wasn't actually sapient, talking to him still made me feel like I wasn't fighting alone anymore. Sure there was Danny, but while he was supportive he couldn't really do anything in the world of capes and conspiracies. Prometheus could.

And because I had created him, I knew that Prometheus would do anything and everything in his power to keep me safe and do as I asked. It was his core imperative. He would never sleep, never stop, never break, and never betray my interests.

Maybe Taylor's memories were making me a little insecure, but just knowing for certain he had my back helped.

Sunday Afternoon, January 16th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

PRT ENE Headquarters

It seemed the PRT had two agents in the van watching my house; riding to the headquarters building in the afternoon with them was uneventful.

They let me leave my coat in the van, and took me up the garage elevator to the lobby. Carol Dallon was there waiting for me.

"Taylor, good to see you. Did you bring everything?"

I nodded, gesturing with the journals under my arm. "It's all right here."

"Good. I believe they've got a conference room set aside for us, we can wait there for your father. We'll go over your notes to establish a firmer timeline of events, and then we can go over schooling arrangements for you. You won't have to go back to Winslow."

Thank goodness for that. Not that I had any intention of going back regardless. There were limits to what I was willing to do to keep a cover.

We had passed through security and were walking down a long hallway on the ground floor when there was a tremendous bang from the direction of the lobby. Red lights placed at regular intervals along the ceiling started flashing, and a siren began to blare.

"What does that mean?" I asked, looking back in the direction we'd come.

"The building's under attack," Carol answered, jaw tight. "I need to find a safe place for you, and then I'll go out and help. Follow me, hurry!"

Carol took off running, pausing only to make sure I could keep up. We rounded one corner, then another, and then Carol came to a sudden stop and I barely avoided running into her.

Fifteen feet ahead of us walking off an elevator was a muscular man with blonde hair in an orange prisoner jumpsuit. He was carrying a PRT-issue pistol, which he instantly raised and pointed at Carol.

"Brandish," he said.

Carol dropped her suitcase and solid lightning emerged from her hands to form a cruciform sword in one hand and a large shield in the other.

"Victor," she growled.

Victor's eyes shifted from Carol to me. "You shouldn't have brought the schoolgirl," he said, and moved the pistol in my direction.

"No!" Carol shouted, and shifted her shield to cover me. As she did Victor's lips quirked and he corrected his aim back to Carol, and the pistol barked twice.

"Uk!" Carol choked out. The shield and sword disappeared and she collapsed while clutching her gut. She briefly turned into a ball of light on the ground before reverting to human form. Whatever that had done didn't seem to have helped as she remained prone and bleeding.

Two gunshot wounds in the abdomen, my medical knowledge provided. They needed pressure, packing, and surgery as soon as possible, it helpfully added.

A look of horror crossed my face, and I dropped my journals and started to crouch to help Carol. Then instincts I'd absorbed screamed in my mind as I saw the muzzle of the gun beginning to traverse back in my direction. Without knowing if he was going to shoot or not I had only one option to ensure my survival. My crouch turned into a sprinter's start as I moved towards Victor with all the considerable speed that Taylor's body could manage with the benefit of long legs and perfectly optimized form.

Victor's eyes widened in surprise and his finger tightened on the trigger.

In panic I tried to dump every charge I had into martial arts at once.

A sea of knowledge flooded into my head before I hit some kind of wall that I had no time to think about. I seized on some pieces having to do with predicting hand motion and the vector of a bullet based on the direction of the muzzle and the stance of the shooter. I bent my upper body just so between sprinting steps and something sharp cut my upper left arm, but I ignored it and the ache of my cracked ribs because then Victor was within my reach.

My first task was to keep his gun off line so he couldn't shoot me, and then to gain control of it. He fought back. He threw a punch while I adjusted my stance to let it go wide. He tried a kick aimed at my lower leg while I stepped over it. His eyes widened again in incredulous surprise as I anticipated each of his maneuvers from the shifts in weight and stance that signaled their use, and then countered them with maneuvers from a variety of different styles that were perfectly suited to shutting each down. And with every moment I put all my strength into shifting his arm to get me closer to fully controlling the gun, keeping my body out its way.

After the sixth move and countermove I felt an odd tugging somewhere in my head, and the warm spots flared with something that wasn't quite heat.

"There's so much. What are you?" he said, almost dazed.

I took advantage of his distraction to finally gain sufficient leverage over his gun arm to control where I wanted it to go instead of just avoiding being on the wrong end of it.

"Are you like me?" he asked while struggling against my grip.

In that moment came a horrible realization.

Now that the gun wasn't a threat I could break one of his knees, get the gun away from him completely, and hold him for arrest while tending to Carol until help arrived.

But he would tell people about the thousands of years of knowledge he was no doubt flipping through in my head already. Whether he told the PRT or escaped and told the Empire, I would be screwed. The gangs would know either way. Coil would know either way.

There was essentially no chance Victor would keep quiet.

The cold logic was that there was only one option, and my knowledge told me I couldn't afford to think about it.

Sometimes a martial artist had to kill, and that was something I knew too.

With a maneuver from Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu I hooked a leg around his and threw my weight to bring us both to the ground, me on top of him and still gripping his arm with both hands. I rammed my right knee hard into his groin to stun him before he could recover from the fall, then used every bit of body weight and leverage I could manage from my superior position to push his stronger arm holding the pistol towards his face. I leaned out of the way of a punch and saw the beginnings of a look of dawning horror forming on his face right before I finished shifting the gun towards his head and forced his finger down on the trigger.

There was a resounding crack as the gun went off next to my ear, and then he slumped like a sack of meat with a hole where his cheek used to be. My face felt wet. Blood spatter, I distantly realized.

The noise and seeing a man die by my hand left me stunned. I laid there, looking dumbly down at the body, until a pained groan from Carol where she was on the floor shook me out of it. I got to my feet.

I had two problems. One, it was bad enough that I'd just displayed improbable martial skill in the PRT building, but on top of that Victor had also said things that would give away that I was definitely not normal. I could not allow those words to exist.

Two, Carol was bleeding badly, and I needed to do something about that.

I pulled out my phone, opened up the terminal I could use to communicate with Prometheus, and thumb typed as quickly as I could. It would only draw more scrutiny if there was missing footage where it would obviously be checked, and Prometheus couldn't create a false interaction that would fit the physical evidence on the fly. I just I hadn't designed him for something like that, an issue I'd have to remedy. But he could degrade the audio and monitor the PRT.

Taylor Make sure the PRT can't tell what Victor said to me. Make it look coincidental. Cover your tracks.

Prometheus Command acknowledged, Miss Hebert.

Prometheus Deploying module PRT.EWAR. Stealth limiter is in effect.

Prometheus Adaptive network subversion in progress.

Prometheus Estimated time to task completion: 17 seconds.

That done, I squeezed the SOS beacon on the phone and then called the PRT dispatcher, putting them on speaker while I knelt next to Carol.

"Console is busy right now," came the harried reply as soon as the call connected.

With a grunt I tipped Carol over enough to check her lower back, but didn't see any exit wounds or bleeding through her suit jacket. That was a good sign. It meant the bullets were still inside, but for now two holes were easier to hold closed than four.

"Brandish has been shot! We're on the first floor near an elevator in the rear of the building, I need a medical team now. Victor is dead."

I tore open the lower half of Carol's shirt, buttons popping, giving me a clear view of the ragged holes that were pumping out blood as I watched. My knowledge reassured me that if things were really bad they would be gushing, but the serene certainty of the knowledge my power gave me didn't fully prepare me for the visceral experience of seeing someone so badly injured for the first time. It took some getting used to.

Choosing from among my mental options, which were sorely limited by the lack of any medical supplies, I took off and roughly folded my shirt so I could use it as a pad to press down as hard as I could on the wounds. The key with field treatment of gunshot wounds was to slow blood loss as much as possible to keep the patient alive until they could be transported to an operating room. Treating gunshot wound trauma was enough of a science even in 2011 that surgeons almost never lost a gunshot wound patient who got to the table alive. If it came down to it they could just keep pumping the patient full of transfusions until they patched all the holes.

The patients with bleeding too severe to patch usually didn't last long enough to make it to the table.

"Wait, repeat that? Who is this?"

"My name is Taylor Hebert. Victor is dead. Brandish is bleeding out. Victor shot her. I need a goddamn medical team. Call down to the infirmary and get them up here, now!"

Some of my stress might have been showing.

"Crap, right, right. On it."

Was that one of the Wards? One of the boys. They sounded young and unsure.

Not important right now.

As I kept pressure on Carol's wounds I heard loud, indistinct noises coming from somewhere out front. Something like big booms and crashes, but the building was muffling them too much for me to make anything else out. I could feel them through the floor more than I could hear them.

"Ca...call…" Carol tried to get out, and weakly began tugging her phone out of her pocket.

"You really shouldn't be talking or moving right now, Mrs. Dallon. Help's coming. I don't think any arteries were hit or there would be a lot more blood, so we've got plenty of time to get you help. Everything's going to be alright," I said, attempting to keep her calm.

"Ah...Am...Am…"

It took me a second to realize what she was trying to say.

"Amy, I'm an idiot! Panacea is your daughter. Okay, I'll call her."

I helped Carol use a finger to open her phone - fortunately it seemed that it being covered in her blood didn't impair the sensor - and found Amy in her contacts. I hit dial and then speaker, laying it on the floor so that I could return to putting pressure on Carol's wounds.

"Carol?" Came a girl's voice.

"Amy?" I asked.

"Who is this? How are you calling from Carol's number?" The voice turned harsh, accusing.

"My name is Taylor. Your mom's been shot twice in the abdomen. She's here with me but she can't talk; we're in the PRT building. A medical team is supposed to be on the way but something is going on and I don't know how long they'll be. I've got no equipment and all I can do is put pressure on the wound to buy time. Can you come to us?"

Amy's voice shifted from accusing to fearful. "Yeah, yeah I can. Vicky!"

There was a click, and I glanced down at the phone. It looked like she'd hung up or else the call dropped.

Carol mumbled something I couldn't make out.

"Everything is going to be fine. Cavalry's on the way." I assured her.

That prompted something like a laugh from her before pain turned it into a moan.

Author's Note: Thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading.

Last edited: Mar 8, 2022

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 8 - Ripples

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TaliesinSkye

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Dec 26, 2020

#1,291

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Sunday Afternoon, January 16th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

PRT ENE Headquarters

I tensed from where I was still kneeling and putting pressure on Carol's wounds when I heard footsteps approaching at a run, but with relief I recognized the same silver-haired doctor who had examined me two days ago carrying a big red paramedic's bag as he rounded the corner. His ID tag read 'Dr. Townsend'.

"Sorry," he said as he approached. "The Empire's attacking the front of the building. Protectorate's out there now, but several troopers were badly hurt. They must be here to break out Victor."

Then he stopped and took in Victor, lying in a pool of blood with more blood and splattered brain matter covering a significant portion of the corridor behind the body.

"Jesus, I guess they won't be getting Victor," he said before shaking his head and kneeling by Carol as he unzipped the bag. "What happened? She get him?"

"Victor shot her as she tried to shield me. Then he turned his gun on me. That proved to be a poor life choice," I said, deliberately keeping my voice level. I wasn't letting myself think about how I'd just killed a man right then.

The doctor's eyebrows raised, and he paused a moment in ripping open the plastic packaging of a hemostatic trauma pad. "You killed him?"

"Yes," I said, and tilted my head towards Carol. "She's hemorrhaging."

He shook his head as if to clear it. "Right. Okay, move."

I lifted my hands and the soaked shirt. He applied the trauma pad and then leaned down on it to apply pressure; my knowledge told me the pad was a combat dressing treated with drugs to induce clotting quickly, something invented for the military to treat gunshot wounds on the battlefield.

I took the opportunity of having freed hands to check Carol's pulse at her wrist and counted a bit more than two beats per second. "She's tachycardic."

The doctor frowned, and I wasn't sure if it was at me or his patient. "It's the blood loss. I told two troopers to find a gurney and follow me, they should be here soon. We don't have an OR but we've got enough to keep her alive in the infirmary until the fight's finished. The other medical staff are busy with the wounded troopers though."

He nodded in the direction of my left arm. "You're bleeding."

I looked down, which unfortunately reminded me that after stripping off my shirt to use as an improvised bandage I was down to my bra. The bruising from Sophia was exposed and covered much of my left side in mottled purple.

Best not to think about any of that.

My left arm was indeed bleeding. There was a shallow furrow in the flesh on the outside edge, about three inches below my shoulder.

"Graze from when I rushed him," I explained.

"You rushed him," the doctor repeated, his voice flat.

"Yes. Only thing to do when you're unarmed and probably about to be shot, really. May I?" I asked, gesturing at the big medical bag.

The doctor shook his head in evident disbelief. "Be my guest, there should be rolls of gauze in there."

I found some and wrapped the wound up somewhat awkwardly with one hand after tearing it out of the sterile packaging. I had to hold one end in my teeth to tie it off with the knot over the wound to put pressure on it. It would need proper treatment later, antiseptic and stitches, but for now gauze was enough.

I used some more to wipe the blood off my face and arm as best I could.

It wasn't long before two troopers arrived with the promised gurney. One of the pair was limping, and his armor looked like it had been scratched to hell as if he'd been dragged down a road.

Between the four of us we managed to get Carol transferred to the gurney. I picked up the two phones, my journals, Carol's briefcase, and my likely ruined shirt, and then we were off to the infirmary.

We left Victor's body behind, the gun still in one limp hand.

Some time later in the infirmary the doctor had gotten an IV line into an unconscious Carol and started a blood transfusion. I kept pressure on the trauma pad while medical staff bustled around. Curtains kept me from seeing the condition of the troopers present as patients in other beds, but they were bad enough off to be keeping the infirmary's two doctors and four nurses busy.

"Where's my mom?!" Came a girl's voice, and I had to take a moment to push down an unaccountable sense of overwhelming terror that made me want to run.

"Vicky, aura!" I recognized Amy's voice from our brief conversation on the phone.

The feeling subsided. "Right, right. Where is she?"

"Over here!" I shouted. A moment later a hand was pulling back the curtain and Victoria Dallon flew to her mother's bedside, followed a moment later by a walking Amy Dallon. Neither of them were in costume, instead bundled up in regular winter coats. They must have come without stopping to change.

I lifted my arms and let myself slump back into the chair I'd been using with relief. My arms ached, especially my left. It was pulsing in pain with my heartbeat in a way I was trying to ignore.

"Hi, I'm Taylor. Kept her alive. She's all yours," I said, tiredly.

Amy immediately put her hand on Carol's arm and her gaze became distant. Vicky looked at me. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt?" she asked.

I pointed at the blood soaked mess of cloth that hadn't entirely fallen into the medical waste bin where I'd thrown it.

"Oh," she said.

"Shirts make decent trauma pads if you have nothing else," I explained. "At least until they soak through."

Vicky looked down at her stricken mother as Amy worked.

"It's strange seeing mom shot, our costumes are bulletproof but I guess her work clothes aren't," she said quietly.

"We got really unlucky," I said. "Ran right into Victor during his escape attempt. He had a gun and threatened me with it. She shielded me, and he shot her. I'm sorry, she got hurt protecting me."

"Mom always says we're heroes first," Vicky said, and shook her head. "And it's not your fault you needed protecting, or that she got hurt. That's Victor's fault." She clenched her fists. "I'm going to beat him to a pulp when I find him."

"He's dead," I said quietly, shifting my gaze down to the floor. "I didn't have a choice."

Not a lie, but the words sure were misleading about why.

She turned to me with a look of shock. "You killed him?" Vicky lowered her voice. "How? Are you a cape?"

I shook my head. "Not a cape. Just wrestled him for the gun he stole and shot him with it."

"Whoa," Vicky said.

"Please don't tell anyone. I don't want the Empire finding out and killing me or my dad."

The feeling of Vicky's hand on my shoulder got me to raise my head.

She looked me in the eyes. "Don't worry, we won't tell anyone. Or let that happen."

I offered her a weak smile. "Thank you."

"Here," she said, shrugging off her coat and offering it to me.

"Thanks," I said, putting it on with a wince as it went over my left arm. It didn't fit well, I was taller and thinner than her, but I'd been feeling pretty exposed.

"I do want that back, but maybe I can take you shopping for new shirts. I bet mom wouldn't mind," she said.

I laughed despite myself. "Sure, when this is all over we can go shopping."

Vicky grinned, and I suspected that I'd just given her the perfect excuse to wheedle her mother's credit card for a shopping trip.

Oh well, too late now. And I really did need some decent clothes, Taylor's wardrobe was...not great. Almost everything that still fit was baggy enough to get lost in. A result of Taylor's attempts to look as unremarkable as possible in the vain hope that it would make a difference.

That was when Carol spoke, evidently awake. "Amy?" she asked and then coughed several times.

"Please don't move, nearly done," Amy said. "One of the bullets tumbled, it made a real mess."

All three of us waited until Amy removed her hand. Then she peeled off the big trauma pad, still sticky with drying blood, to reveal bloody but unmarred skin underneath and the two deformed bullets she'd pushed out of Carol's body.

Those she scooped up and tossed in the medical waste bin.

"Aw, Ames, what if Mom wanted them as a souvenir?" Vicky asked.

"I think I'd just as soon forget today, thank you," Carol said. "Amy, I saw Taylor get shot protecting me after I went down."

Amy nodded and walked around the gurney to where I was sitting, Vicky stepping out of her way.

"You don't have to do that, it's just a graze, I'm not dying or anything," I protested.

Amy rolled her eyes. "I'm here. Do I have permission to heal you?"

I sighed and held out my arm. "...It would be nice, thank you."

Amy touched me, and instantly all the pain I'd been ignoring was blissfully gone.

"Laceration, cracked ribs, bruising, loose tooth, strained muscles…" Amy mumbled.

"Most of that was Shadow Stalker on Friday," I explained.

"Why were you fighting Shadow Stalker?" Vicky asked.

"It's related to a case, Victoria," Carol explained with a sigh.

"Ah, sorry Mom," Vicky said.

"Have I healed you before?" Amy asked, her gaze still distant.

"Yeah. Sunday, I think. I was unconscious. Severe infection, sepsis," I said.

"Oh, you were the one I did twice, with the air embolism. Your brain-"

I cleared my throat meaningfully.

"Right," Amy said, and thankfully said no more, although she gave me a long look. I wasn't sure what she was going to say, but if it had anything to do with my non-shard power doing something to my brain, I certainly did not want any monitoring devices in the building to pick it up.

After a moment she removed her hand. "There, I had to prioritize the laceration, tooth, muscles, and ribs. Your body is already depleted from the healing I did before, it would be dangerous for me to fix all the vasculature in the bruises. They'll heal on their own."

"Thank you," I said.

Amy shrugged.

"...So," I began after an awkward moment. "Do you two know what happened with the fight outside?"

"The Protectorate won; they were all out there. And there was an awful mess with smashed buildings and cars and steel everywhere. And the lobby is a disaster area. But the Empire capes must have run before we got here," Vicky said.

"I wonder what-" I began, but a blue gauntleted hand moved aside the curtain and Armsmaster stepped in.

His power armor was in rough shape. The right pauldron had been completely ripped off revealing mechanical components where the arm met the shoulder, and there were numerous visible dents and scrapes on the torso. It had to be a testament to Armsmaster's skill as a tinker that he was still able to move around in it.

"Greetings," he said. "Are you all well?"

"Thanks to Panacea," I said. "Victor shot us both before I put him down, Mrs. Dallon was severely wounded."

"I reviewed our security footage of the fight," he said, and his gaze lingered on me.

Carol sat up and swung her legs off the bed, facing Armsmaster. "If my client had killed Victor, that would make her and her father a target for Empire reprisal. That's why Victor was killed by an unnamed PRT trooper while attempting to use lethal force to effect his escape," she said quietly, her gaze drilling into Armsmaster's visor as he turned to look at her. "That is what all the PRT records will say, and you'll remove any video that suggests otherwise from your network."

"She's right," I said after a moment, breaking the staring contest between the two of them. "It's the best way to keep us safe."

Thank you, Carol Dallon, I thought to myself. "People might also think I'm a parahuman because of what I managed to accomplish, even though I'm not," I added.

Not a lie. My powers were from another source. Whatever that was.

"I don't want anyone trying to recruit me by force if they get my name from a stolen document. Or just not care if I'm not a parahuman and try to recruit me anyway, just because I've beaten two parahumans," I continued.

Armsmaster looked at me for a long moment. "The Director will need to clear it because it's against regulations to falsify records, but it might be the best option in this circumstance. I will speak to her."

"Are the Protectorate all okay?" I asked.

He rolled his right shoulder. "No serious injuries. A great deal of property damage, however," he replied. "I have other tasks. Brandish, Panacea, Glory Girl, Miss Hebert."

He nodded to us each, then departed.

Carol eyed the blood transfusion bag that was still connected to her arm. "I suppose I have to wait for this?"

"It will get you on your feet faster," Amy said. "And they can't reuse a partial blood bag."

Carol sighed and settled back in the bed to wait.

"I hope my dad is okay, he was supposed to have been here by now," I said.

"He's probably just caught in traffic. The streets outside were completely wrecked," Vicky told me.

I nodded. I could call him on our new phones, but I doubted he would answer, especially while he was in the car. He could call me if he needed to make sure I was safe and couldn't get to the PRT building.

"So Mrs. Dallon, what were you going to tell me about schooling arrangements?" I asked.

Carol took a breath, visibly switching trains of thought as she looked at the ceiling. "The school district doesn't have a mechanism for facilitating mid-year transfers, but the PRT's contract with Arcadia to enable them to place Wards doesn't actually require that the students they place be Wards, even though that was the intention. So they'll be naming you as a pick and you'll transfer in. If you want it," she said.

Arcadia. It would be better for my 'just a normal, definitely not parahuman teen' cover than switching to homeschooling, but it would eat up a lot of my time. Did I really want to do that?

Suddenly I was being hugged and feeling overwhelming joy. If anything it was more disorienting than the fear earlier, because my first instinct wasn't to push it away.

"Vicky, aura!" Amy said.

"Ah, right," Vicky said, and the feeling subsided. She pulled back from her hug. "You'll be with us! We can be friends, it'll be great!"

I thought about how Vicky must see me. The strange tired girl who'd just killed a villain without using powers, and who'd saved her mother's life. A girl who had been healed in the hospital by her sister only a week ago, which meant she had been terribly sick.

Vicky saw someone who'd helped her mom, and who probably needed a friend. So she wanted to help by being a friend.

Oh Vicky.

My voice wasn't entirely level when I spoke. "You're a good person, Victoria. I haven't had any friends in a long time. It would be nice to make some again."

She smiled, and it was a bit sad. "Call me Vicky."

I mirrored her smile. "Vicky it is then."

Then I shifted my gaze to Amy. "I would be glad to be your friend as well. I get the feeling you like being the quieter sister, though, and that's okay. I'm usually on the quiet side myself."

"I guess," Amy said. "I should go help the other injured."

I nodded, accepting, as she left.

She was a depressed, stressed out teenager dealing with things she couldn't tell anyone about.

One more thing for the todo list.

I was drifting, though. I needed to make a decision on Arcadia.

Making friends would be good for my mental health and stress levels. Mentally stabilizing power or no I would still make better decisions if I was in a mentally good place. Even if the friends were teenagers that were below the maturity level I'd prefer in friends, I could deal with it. I might end up mothering them, but there were worse things.

In addition to Vicky and Amy, I could befriend the Wards. Maybe even build a relationship that would enable me to recruit them to help me in the future. Clockblocker and Vista had strong powers with lots of potential, and Kid Win's tinker specialty of modular design was practically purpose built for collaboration, if I could figure out whatever his shard did to obfuscate his work. And they were all good people.

And if I ever got into trouble, if I was their friend they might be willing to bail me out.

A selfish thought, but not wrong.

Would Piggot ask them to keep an eye on me for anything odd, after this? It wouldn't surprise me, but I supposed it didn't matter.

I turned to Carol. "Please tell them that I would like to accept the transfer to Arcadia, Mrs. Dallon."

She nodded and gave me a small smile. "I think it'll be good for you, Taylor."

"I do too," I said, meaning it. "Also, I believe there are matters we need to discuss privately. Would you allow me to visit your home?"

Carol gave me a penetrating look. "Tomorrow," she said.

I nodded.

"Please invite Lady Photon," I added, earning an arched eyebrow.

"I assume you have a good reason and this isn't simply you wanting to meet her, Taylor?" Carol asked.

"There is a particular reason, yes," I said. "She will not find her time wasted."

It was time I placed some trust in Carol Dallon and New Wave. Carol already likely suspected something was off about me, and now was an opportune time to come clean. New Wave was also independent of the corruption and spy issues that the PRT had, and had enough strength to protect me for a time. And they had problems that I could fix in return. If they let me.

This would be...delicate.

Author's thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading.

Next time on Scientia Weaponizes The Future, we see what the PRT makes of the whole mess.

Last edited: Feb 8, 2021

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 9 - Missives

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TaliesinSkye

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Jan 2, 2021

#1,453

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Sunday Evening, January 16th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

Dad Danny eventually found us in the infirmary, and was very glad to see that I was safe. He thanked Carol profusely for stepping in to save my life and introduced himself to Vicky, who left soon after to take Amy home. I left my abuse journals with Carol to make copies, then we collected my coat and went home.

The drive home was quiet. Danny kept shooting me worried glances but I wasn't sure how to talk to him about what had happened. Nor did I particularly want to think about it myself. When we arrived at the house we had a quiet dinner.

Laying in my bed later I noticed that I still had four charges resting, warm, in the back of my mind. In panic I'd tried to dump everything into martial arts during the fight with Victor but hit a wall after one charge, which meant that I wasn't able to invest more than four charges in learning martial arts.

Did my power just have no more knowledge to give me on the subject? Artificial intelligence and computer programming each went up to five charges, and I wasn't sure if it could go higher, but I could also see them being more expansive subjects. There were only so many ways the human body could move, only so many ways to react. The problem space compared to the technicalities of software engineering was smaller.

That seemed...plausible. Perhaps my power had taught me literally everything it was possible for a human to ever know about martial arts.

Experimentally trying to push another charge into martial arts, I felt the wall again. Nothing happened to the charge.

With a sigh I stuck two charges each in nanotechnology and cybernetics, because I had some ideas for projects down the road.

The flood of knowledge told me I wasn't there yet, but I wanted something non-invasive that would let me interface with computers directly, damn it. And nanotech would have a million other uses, depending on the ultimately physical limits of the field.

I did get some interesting ideas that might be useful, like high quality subdermal tracking devices and a nanoassembler that could create most objects and some pretty exotic metamaterials when combined with my chemistry knowledge. No self-assembling general purpose nanites, though. What I had was more like thousands of nanites that each had a very specific molecular task, and could do useful work when put together. I also had a variety of interesting metamaterials that were promising.

Some of the cybernetics knowledge when combined with medicine and biology was giving me ideas that might help me help the Dallons with their problems. If Vicky couldn't control her aura and it was hurting the people around her, perhaps I could find a way to offer them immunity. If I could study what the aura actually did.

It's a pity there was no medical fix for Carol's suspicion and distrust of Amy as a result of her father being a villain. Well, nothing quick. I had a charge in psychology so I understood, but I couldn't just manipulate her into getting over it because people did not work that way. At best I could show her that there was a problem and hope she made the right decision to face it and not blink.

That was going to be the hardest thing, out of all of the family's problems.

"Miss Hebert, I believe there is something you should see," came Prometheus' voice from my phone.

I picked it up. "Yes?"

The screen lit up with a video as audio played; security footage of a meeting in Director Piggot's office, taken from a camera looking down from a corner of the room.

Director Emily Piggot was sitting in her chair watching looping side by side video on the wall display of me defeating Shadow Stalker and killing Victor.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia stood on either side of her desk, as well as an imposing figure whose ID badge identified him as Commander Cole, PRT ENE close combat instructor.

"Something isn't right about this girl," Piggot said after watching several loops.

"Maybe she just got lucky both times?" Miss Militia suggested.

Cole pointed at the screen. "Look at how sure her motions are in both videos. She's reacting to her opponent to counter them. There's none of the hesitation you see in someone inexperienced. Shadow Stalker isn't very skilled, more of a brawler really, but she controls the fight with Victor too, and he's known to have taken the skills of several masters. Each move he makes, she reacts as well as she could have.

"This is not an amateur in her first two real fights. And see there at the beginning, when she charges him and gets shot? She starts twisting before he fires. She didn't even flinch when she took the hit."

He shook his head. "Maybe dodging the shot was luck, but given the overall performance, I have my doubts. In my professional opinion she fights like a combat precog. If she's not, my best guess would be getting training since she could walk like some sort of child soldier."

Miss Militia's flinch was visible despite her bandanna.

Armsmaster interjected. "Her paper trail does not have any irregularities. She was born in Brockton Bay, and has a typical school attendance record. There's a note on the possibility of her skipping a grade in middle school but nothing ever materialized. Her mother was an English professor who died in an automobile accident in 2008. Her father is the spokesperson and head of hiring at the Dockworkers Association. Neither has any known combat training. She has no other nearby relatives. We can investigate family contacts, but she would have had to have spent a great deal of time with someone for that kind of training."

"So she's likely a parahuman," Piggot concluded.

Armsmaster shook his head. "That would be inconsistent with existing evidence. We've received her medical records as part of the settlement negotiation. An MRI scan confirmed the absence of coronas. When I spoke to her today my visor also confirmed that she does not believe herself to be a parahuman. The system is still experimental, but it reported high confidence."

"A stranger power?" Piggot mused.

"That would be an awfully specific power, hiding her coronas from medical scans and making her think she's not a parahuman," Miss Militia observed.

Armsmaster nodded in agreement. "While nothing is impossible, it would not fit the pattern of other known stranger powers, especially in conjunction with precognition or combat expertise."

"Maybe she has a power but no coronas to go with it. There's a lot we don't know about powers, or what's possible with them," Miss Militia said.

"What about power or tinker augments?" Cole suggested. "It would explain her having an apparent power, but no coronas."

Armsmaster tilted his head briefly in apparent thought. "Permanent tinker augmentations would have likely shown up as anomalies on her medical scans and tests. It also seems unlikely a tinker would invest such an expensive procedure in an otherwise normal teenage girl.

"It is remotely possible an unknown cape augmented her in some way with a power. However, it seems improbable that it would have happened right before something that could have been a trigger event, and she's had limited contact outside of her father in the week since. A power that can augment a human permanently or for long periods has never been documented. Teacher is the strongest such cape on record, and his augments were observed to wear off several days after contact."

"Crane the Harmonious then," Cole pivoted, narrowing his eyes as he watched another loop of video.

"Crane would have the ability to impart the training, but there's no evidence of the girl being kidnapped. Crane took a significant period of time to train her 'students'. And she always targeted capes for her extreme training before she was sent to the Birdcage. And Miss Hebert would have been considerably younger than any of Crane's other students," Armsmaster argued, shaking his head.

"What was it that Victor said to her? I couldn't catch it when I listened earlier, but he seemed to hesitate for a second, and his jaw moved," Miss Militia asked, her power cycling between a pistol and a bowie knife at her hip.

"That part of the audio was too faint for analysis tools to pull anything useful out, and he is facing away from the camera so lip reading isn't an option," Armsmaster answered, lips thin for a moment with frustration.

"Is there anything else odd about her?" Piggot asked.

"Doctor Townsend reported that she appeared to have first aid training. She also managed to build a crude but effective covert recording device into her shirt for the confrontation with Shadow Stalker, suggesting a degree of technical aptitude," Armsmaster replied.

"So she's precocious at more than just fighting," Piggot said, leaning back in her chair. She tapped her index finger on her desk several times, thoughtful, before turning and typing something into her terminal. The view on the large wall display shifted away from the two looping videos to a view of Miss Militia and a PRT agent leaving an interview room, leaving Carol Dallon, Danny Hebert, and Taylor Hebert behind. With a click Piggot unmuted the volume.

"That was well handled, Taylor," Carol Dallon began on the tape.

"Director, this recording is privileged. We can't watch this," Armsmaster objected, looking at Piggot.

"We're giving the girl everything she wants, the case will never go to court," Piggot said, dismissive. "Just listen, Armsmaster."

He fell silent with a grimace, and the four of them watched the recording until Carol Dallon left to pull Miss Militia back into the room and Piggot paused the playback.

"She has a great deal of legal knowledge, too," Armsmaster finally said.

"If she's been bullied for this long with no support, I could see researching the law. She's an intelligent girl. The trouble is that this is just another subject she's well-versed in. No, I'm not sure I buy her story about getting it just from reading books, regardless of what your visor says. Not with all her other apparent skills on the table," Piggot said, drumming her fingers on her desk.

Miss Militia tilted her head in a thoughtful posture. "It wouldn't explain the lack of coronas, but if she didn't remember her trigger and she had a thinker power that caused her to learn things quickly, that might explain what we're seeing. She's just a kid, she might not realize she's doing something unusual."

Piggot sighed heavily. "Perhaps. Something is going on with this girl, and we don't have enough information to know what it is. Maybe her MRI results are fake and she's able to defeat your visor prototype. Maybe she doesn't know she has a power. Maybe it's not a power at all. Whatever is going on I don't like being in the dark. We'll keep an eye on Miss Hebert and see what else shakes out. In the meantime we won't be telling anyone she killed Victor, and the paperwork will reflect that. Whatever else is going on I can't disagree that it wouldn't be safe for her if that got out."

"What is our strategy if she does turn out to be a parahuman?" Miss Militia asked.

"We bring her into the fold," Piggot answered. "She was willing to kill Victor when she believed her and Brandish's lives were on the line, but she avoided doing any more harm to Shadow Stalker than she had to."

"Rational," Armsmaster observed.

"Like a soldier," Miss Militia said, voice tinged with concern.

"Whatever she is, she doesn't act like a psychopath. As long as that's true, we can work around anything else that's going on with the girl. A psych eval will tell us," Piggot finished.

"If she is a parahuman, she's put a lot of effort into hiding that fact from us. She wouldn't do that if she was interested in joining," Miss Militia noted.

"A lack of trust in us wouldn't be surprising after her persecutor was revealed to be a Ward, who then attacked her with a parahuman power," Armsmaster said.

"If she turns out to be a parahuman we'll make the usual appeal to her father that she's safest in the Wards. It has the benefit of being true. Cole excepted, you would just have to work to make up for Shadow Stalker's fuckup and earn back enough of the girl's trust that she'll work as a Ward. You're all dismissed," Piggot concluded.

I sighed when the recording finished.

"Well, they're suspicious, but it could be worse."

"I concur, Miss."

I mulled over what to do. For now, it seemed like I did not need to do much. Reaching out was an option, but it could wait. Prometheus would continue to spy on them for me to monitor the situation unless I told him not to, so I could react if the situation changed. Right this moment all I needed to do was keep Piggot's suspicions out of hostile hands.

"Prometheus, could you please make sure Coil and Tattletale can't get their hands on that video?" I ordered.

"The drive it was stored on has already suffered an unfortunate hardware failure, Miss." Prometheus said.

Cheeky. I hadn't realized he'd picked up wry humor. It was one of the more complex semantic constructions to model.

"You didn't ask first?" I questioned.

"Action was taken under my primary directive to protect you and obey your commands, Miss. The exposure risk associated with electronic observation of PRT activity and triggering the hardware failure was less than the risk associated with Coil, Tattletale, or gang informants getting their hands on information about you had I not acted, so I acted promptly."

I thought that over, trying to make sure I hadn't made any mistakes when creating Prometheus.

I had to concede that he was right. It was spooky that he'd acted without my explicit command, but that was part of what I'd created him to do because I needed it. I might not always be able to offer guidance, and I certainly could not decide and act in the space of milliseconds like he could. If I forced him to consult me for everything he would not be effective, and I would probably have to devote a lot of time to it.

As his creator I knew that he was deeply rational, understood ethics, and could make complex value judgments to determine what was in my best interests and act appropriately when necessary to protect me from threats. It was quite possible I would not always agree with his decisions - he would always be better at being rational and doing pure statistical analysis than I was by virtue of having a computer for a brain - but the scope of the problem space for it going badly was acceptably small.

Having to apply ethical considerations and outcome modeling meant he would not go completely off the reservation and start to order hits on my enemies or take over the internet or anything like that. Not without my command. Unless it was the only option left in a situation so bad there was no other way to save my life or salvage the world. Nor could he hide things from me, or refuse my orders. A direct command could even override his directive to keep me safe. I could exercise that option if keeping me safe led him to do something I really didn't approve of.

It meant he couldn't save me from myself if I made a really bad decision and ordered him to keep out of it, but that was the price of being the one in charge.

I told myself it would be alright, and that I needed to stop worrying.

"Good work, Prometheus. Thank you for having my back," I said, praising him. An odd feeling. I was essentially raising a child in some ways, even if it was all an illusion.

"It is and shall always be my privilege, Miss Hebert."

I smiled a bit at that. Maybe the illusion of a person I could talk to and trust was enough for now.

With Prometheus up and running I could get some of my earlier plans going, and working would distract me from thinking of the day's events. I spent the rest of the evening writing letters and having Prometheus muddle my narrative voice out of them to thwart any attempts by thinkers to glean insights I didn't want them to have.

The time had come for the first act of a crafted heroic persona. I'd had to think about what I wanted it to be like, and a name.

Dragon's approach was a good starting point for my needs. Someone who doesn't appear in person, but intervenes remotely. At least until I was established enough that there wasn't a risk in exposing myself, that was the safe path.

But Dragon was also known. Her capabilities, her affiliations. She was very much a part of a system and understood, save for that which she kept secret. The world's greatest tinker, able to understand the work of other tinkers.

I wanted something more mysterious. A veil to protect me, and to justify pulling out whatever capabilities I needed in the moment.

As necessary, the persona would in many respects be able to mimic the abilities of a precognitive, postcognitive, general thinker, and tinker unconstrained by the usual limitations of tinkertech.

Reactions to that would be...interesting. Although I did not intend for the persona's full capabilities to be revealed to the PRT or public for quite some time. Hopefully I would be able to avoid the necessity. Being underestimated and drawing less attention for as long as possible would be good.

When I did cut loose I expected people to wonder if I was actually an entire group of parahumans, or if I was something like another Eidolon with a thinker slant. Either way, someone or something useful and probably well-intentioned but not to be trifled with, which was the face I wanted.

Hopefully wondering if I was secretly the Simurgh running a con would be sufficiently unthinkable. The PRT thought her range was too limited to interfere on Earth while she hovered in space between attacks, still under the impression that the Endbringers were fighting seriously when they displayed capabilities.

That brought me to the question of a name. A name could lead and mislead, and would often be a first impression. It was a tool, an expression of how the persona would be viewed. It was also an opportunity to make a statement of what it would stand for.

I considered quite a few things. I wanted something that expressed competence, knowledge, confidence, awareness. Something to inspire a bit of awe. A name that would nudge people towards being inclined to trust what the bearer said. A name that would discourage opposition without sounding villainous.

There were some goddesses that incorporated both knowledge and a martial or practical slant that made them sound active and formidable. Athena came to mind as one that was readily recognizable. There were some mythological figures connected to knowledge, but like Cassandra they seemed to come with the wrong connotations or bad ends.

Ultimately I settled on a word. Not in English, as that was too pedestrian. Not something from another modern language, either, as I didn't want it to sound foreign. A recognizable root to known English words was perfect. Just unusual enough, but also not unfamiliar.

Scientia. Latin for knowledge, experience, knowing. Later it carried the connotations of the seeking out and systematization of knowledge. Root of the words science and omniscience, seeing it would often remind an English speaker of both concepts, overtly or subliminally, and both were impressions I would benefit from conveying.

It was as perfect as I was going to find, I think.

Tomorrow would be a better day.

The recharge time slipped another four minutes earlier, and after activating Prometheus' deployment of my first letter I went to bed.

That night I dreamed I was watching Prometheus, aware of the actions I knew he'd perform as he followed my command to deliver the letter I'd written.

Splitting off as a fork of himself I watched him race through the internet. He danced from machine to machine, casually infiltrating each and erasing any signs of his presence as he left. His target was fond of social media, posting selfies of herself with captured villains to PHO.

Thus it was only a matter of carefully obtaining the device address from PHO's server, wary of any potential monitoring by Dragon, and then I followed as he was off to deliver his message to the target's device of choice.

The fork's task complete, it self-deleted. It was a safer choice than attempting to report back to the host process, and Prometheus, not being aware, was not alive and did not suffer from the inconvenience of fearing an end.

Then my dreams turned to the moment I shot Victor, splattering his blood and brain matter over the corridor, and for the rest of the night I dreamed fitfully of blood and death in settings I didn't recognize.

When I woke I could only remember vague impressions of murder and of battlefields, of people dying instantly of heat and radiation or slowly gasping for air, or a thousand other even more dimly remembered fates. Killer and killed, scenarios played out one after the next until they all flowed into one another.

Stress dreams. Understandable after what happened, so I did my best to push them aside.

Mouse Protector,

My nom de guerre is Scientia. I am an independent hero with knowledge of the past and future, among other things. I write on a matter of life and death.

At some point in the next several months Ravager will hire the Slaughterhouse Nine to kill you. Needless to say, it will not go well for either of you.

If you had not received this message the Nine would have ambushed you, then - and I'm being vague here because you don't deserve the nightmares - have done unspeakable things to your semi-revived and aware but helpless corpse.

I have plans to deal with the Nine permanently, but as I do not know when precisely all this will occur I wanted to send a warning as soon as possible.

Staying in your usual haunts is a bad idea. I suggest going for a long trip, and staying far, far away from Ravager for a while. I hear Hawaii is nice. Maybe you'll even be able to save Ravager's life by letting her anger cool without you around. Don't try to engage her, it won't work.

If quiet islands aren't heroic enough for you, I do know some people in genuine need of protection only the Mouse can offer.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to Brockton Bay.

Part the first, place a tag on a little girl named Dinah Alcott. She's the Mayor's niece. She will be kidnapped sometime in the next few months by a supervillain who will cause her serious harm. I have another plan in the works to prevent the kidnapping, but it's good to have a fallback just in case. Don't tell anyone about Dinah or the tag and it'll take the kidnapper by surprise. He's got a thinker power that lends itself to gathering information, even from places like the PRT.

Part the second, place tags on a girl named Taylor Hebert and her father, Danny Hebert. More future possible kidnapping targets. Same supervillain. They're already being monitored by the PRT after the girl was attacked by an ex-Ward called Shadow Stalker, real name Sophia Hess.

Here are a few proofs that all of this is real.

You may recall that during the first meeting of the inaugural Wards Chevalier sat next to Miss Militia and you implied that he was interested in her because she was hot. The word 'poontang' was used. (We were all teenagers once. It's okay.)

If you still doubt, thinking perhaps someone else in that meeting might have said something about it, you can call Miss Militia and tell her that she's not the only one who remembers seeing the enormous living thing that fragmented. She's never told anyone about what she saw when she triggered, but suspects there are others like her. She's right. Her first instinct that it was best kept quiet was also right.

If even that's not enough, and only if you really must, then ask Chevalier what your power looks like. He can see representations of them hovering around parahumans. Only a few people know he can do that. The PRT will not be happy that anyone outside the PRT knows he can unmask capes just by looking at them, so please don't unless it's really necessary. The impressions of powers that he gets are usually on the more disturbing side of visual metaphor anyway. You're probably happier not knowing.

Be careful, I cannot provide future forewarning of anything that might happen to you now that I've changed things.

This message will now self-delete. Remember, if you want to help, Dinah Alcott and the Heberts.

Good luck,

Scientia

Author's Note: Thanks to @Corvus Black and @Kryslin for proofreading and another pair of eyes, respectively. This chapter went through a whole series of rewrites from its original incarnation. Hopefully it reads well at this point.

Next time on Scientia Weaponizes The Future, a walk and a visit to New Wave.

Last edited: Jan 1, 2023

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TaliesinSkye

Jan 2, 2021

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Threadmarks Scientia Ch. 10 - Dialogues

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TaliesinSkye

Occasional Editor

Jan 9, 2021

#1,584

Spoiler: Spent Charges

Monday Morning, January 17th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Docks Neighborhood

I bundled up for the crisp January air and went for a long walk after breakfast in the morning. My footsteps crunched through several inches of snow that absorbed the city's sounds and offered an impression of peace that was, in Brockton Bay, only skin deep.

My two PRT monitors had insisted on trailing behind in the van; today they were a quiet towering wall of muscle by the name of Gary Fleming and a snarky woman by the name of Aspen 'Call me Asp' Dawson. Her comment about my being stalker bait aside, I needed to get out in some fresh air for a while.

I'd killed a man yesterday. Not because it was do or die in the moment, but, it could be argued, because it was convenient.

Yes, I'd been protecting myself and Danny. Yes, the Empire, Coil, and the PRT would very likely have found out things I didn't want them to find out if I hadn't killed him, things that might have resulted in me or Danny getting kidnapped or killed. At best I may have had to make us disappear for our safety, completely disrupting our lives and limiting my ability to build up. And that had an uncertain chance of costing untold lives.

One of the reasons I studied law was that it often helped me feel like I could know whether I was doing the right thing, or at least a thing that was acceptable.

The law as written would say that I did the right thing in killing Victor. He used lethal force against Carol Dallon, and I had every right to kill him to stop him from using it again. A clear cut case of both self-defense and defense of another.

But the philosophy underpinning that law is that lethal force to defend against lethal force is permissible because using non-lethal force in that situation isn't safe. It is unreasonable to expect people to endanger themselves or others to bring in a killer or would-be killer alive.

And that justification just didn't apply to me in the critical moment. I had control over the grapple. My skill was at a different level from even Victor's stolen expertise. I could have disabled him and taken his weapon with little or no risk to myself or Carol.

There was the issue that allowing him to live would almost certainly have endangered my life and the life of another in the future, but the law doesn't permit the use of lethal force on a non-immediate possibility. Future possibilities are so uncertain they can't support a death sentence.

So had I been wrong?

Or had the very likely future threat to myself morally justified my actions? Were the conclusions of the great legal and other philosophers of my Earth, meant as they were to apply to regular people in a society without superpowers, completely unsuited to the extraordinary circumstances I found myself in?

I didn't know. I just didn't know.

I knew I wasn't a monster. A monster wouldn't be experiencing doubt. But that didn't mean I'd made the best choice, either.

Realism. Idealism. Traps on both sides and a path between too thin to see.

Poor Taylor. In the original timeline she had found herself faced with similar questions and hadn't had anything like the education or maturity I had. Even with those tools it was all hard enough, but without? It had been very easy for her to pave a path to hell with good intentions, and it was good fortune and determination that had kept it from going much, much worse.

I could resolve to value life and avoid compromising myself again. It would avoid my becoming another Skitter, or Khepri.

But it could also cost untold billions on countless Earths their lives.

No, I was almost certainly going to be killing more people in the time to come. Perhaps not with my own hands, but my actions would be aimed at bringing about deaths, or result in their deaths without my intention. If nothing else Earth Bet had a list of total monsters that needed to die.

So what could I promise myself?

I would do everything in my power not to callously kill anyone innocent deliberately, no matter how convenient it might be. That was a bright line I felt I could draw. If it looked like the only way, I'd find another way. That was a line I needed. I would not become a murderer in the name of the greater good.

If that was cowardice, the universe could suck it.

I would avoid killing the guilty if I could safely do so. To do my best to not fall victim to the human desire for bloody vengeance against the wicked. If it was unsafe to do so, like with Victor, well, I'd have to make the judgement call based on the circumstances.

I'd have to do my best not to let killing be the one stop easy answer to all my problems. That was how monsters were made.

When I got home I warmed up with some hot cocoa and spent my charges for the day. One each in biology, cybernetics, mechanical engineering, and nanotechnology, mostly to aid in plans for building things I wanted or that I wanted to create for New Wave, and an experimental one in languages.

It turns out that one charge in languages was enough for fluency in the major languages on 2011 Earth, spoken and written. It didn't give me minor dialects, accents, minor languages, or ancient languages or older versions of existing languages, but for something that I'd expected to be too broad to work it was pretty incredible.

It wasn't long before it was afternoon, and I had Gary and Asp drop me off at the Dallons' before returning to keep an eye on Danny. I hardly needed bodyguards around a family of superheroes, after all.

Monday Afternoon, January 17th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Dallon Residence

The Dallons had a large house in a nice neighborhood, as might be expected from Carol's income as an attorney and the team's income, however that worked. Fundraising and merchandise, I imagined.

When I knocked on the door Vicky answered it with a squeal and dragged me inside. "Taylor! You came, come in!"

"Hi Vicky," I said, removing my shoes on the mat in the large entryway. She took my coat as I shrugged it off. "Where's your mom?"

"Mom and Aunt Sarah are in the living room, this way," she said, and zipped on ahead. Literally.

The living room wasn't far. It was a large space with a cathedral ceiling and tall windows looking out on the spacious backyard. Carol Dallon and Sarah Pelham were seated on a sectional sofa, drinks in front of them on a coffee table. The walls had a lot of photos. Some of the family in civilian garb, some in their New Wave costumes, and some older ones from when they were the Brockton Bay Brigade.

I noticed that Amy was only ever present in group shots, and had to mentally set aside my disapproval at Carol's issue.

"Taylor's here!" Vicky called.

"Taylor," Sarah greeted me as I entered, standing up and approaching to shake my hand. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Sarah Pelham, also known as Lady Photon. I hear you saved my sister. Thank you!"

I nodded. "You're both most welcome. She got hurt protecting me, so really we're even at best."

Sarah smiled at that. "Modest, too. Well, please have a seat. I'm curious what you wanted to talk about."

"As am I," Carol noted.

I nodded again, and turned to Vicky. "Vicky, I'm really sorry, but this is going to be really private stuff. Would you mind if...?"

"Aww, okay. But you still owe me that shopping trip!" she said with a fake pout.

I laughed. "I do. Thank you, Vicky."

"No problem, Taylor!" With that she raced off toward...somewhere else in the large house, pretending not to hear Carol's call not to fly indoors.

I sighed heavily and took a seat across from the heroic sisters, waiting a moment to ensure Vicky got out of listening range. "So," I started. "I imagine Mrs. Dallon likely already suspects, but-hold on." I pull out my phone and set it down on the coffee table. "Prometheus, are we clear?"

"There are no broadcasting listening devices in the Dallons' home that I can detect, and their phones are clean of spyware and backdoors, Miss Hebert," Prometheus answered aloud, taking my cue to break his usual stealth rules.

"Who the hell is that?" Carol said in alarm.

Sarah looked less angry than her sister but was about to add something when I jumped in. "Not a who, a what. That's Prometheus, a non-sapient software tool that I created to handle my digital security needs and assist me. If he believes your devices are clear then we're clear to talk. I'm sorry for the presumption, but my life hinges on keeping much of what I am about to tell you a secret for some time."

"So, you are a cape," Carol said, and shared a heavy look with Sarah.

I grimace. "I have powers. Rest assured I have no interest in being a villain. I intend to be a hero."

"That's always good to hear. What are your powers, Taylor? Are you a tinker?" Sarah asked.

I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I sat back. This was the point of no return.

"Not...exactly. My primary power is to give myself knowledge. That includes things like making myself the finest martial artist who has ever lived, which is how I beat Victor despite him having a gun and being physically stronger than I am. It also includes things like science and technology centuries or millennia more advanced than what is considered state of the art. Prometheus is just one example."

"You're like Uber but you can give yourself tinker specialties?" Carol clarified.

"No, it's all real technology. I have none of the usual tinkertech limitations on reproducibility and maintenance, although I also don't have any special ability to assemble a ray gun out of a TV remote and a fork or any of the other weird impossible things tinkers do. All my knowledge gains are also permanent, and I add more every day. The gain rate is very fast. I believe it will effectively make me one of the strongest tinkers and thinkers in the world."

Carol and Sarah exchanged another heavy look. I could only guess at the meaning; they were doing a wordless communication thing that I'd seen occasionally in married couples and siblings.

"Not that we don't believe you, Taylor, but that's a tall claim. Do you have any evidence?" Sarah asked, turning her gaze back to me and leaning forward. My psychology knowledge told me I had her interest, at least.

I nodded. "There's Prometheus, something only someone who can imitate a tinker could create. There's the impossible degree of martial arts expertise I displayed going up against Shadow Stalker and then Victor." I turned to Carol. "There's also the legal knowledge that you likely noticed as oddly advanced when we met."

"Why did you lie to me about being a cape, Taylor?" Carol asked, back to angry again now that I'd reminded her.

I wince. "I'm truly sorry for deceiving you, Mrs. Dallon. I had no choice because the PRT camera was recording us, and PRT information security is less than perfect. The gangs have moles in the building. It's how they break captured members out so consistently, among other things," I explained.

"How do you know that?" Sarah questioned, tilting her head with interest.

"My power," I answered.

Her eyes widened as the implications hit her. "You can just give yourself knowledge about people, too?"

I shook my head. "Not exactly. My power is best at giving me expansive knowledge of skills and academic subjects. But I got a sort of precognitive snapshot of important people and events when I triggered, about what would happen if I did nothing. I'd rather not go into more detail on the specifics right now. I do have a plan to aid the PRT with their mole problems soon, but that's neither here nor there.

"What matters right this moment is what my power has told me about New Wave. I know that you are good, heroic souls. Uncorrupted and free of moles. I also know that you are human with foibles and problems. Fortunately, they are mostly problems I can help with."

"What do you know about us?" Carol asked hotly, her look dark.

I closed my eyes. Then I opened my hands and held them palm up on my lap, body language open to express that I was not a threat.

"You want complete honesty?" I asked quietly.

"Of course," Carol replied quickly.

I nodded slowly, mentally tallying up everything and preparing myself.

Most people naturally develop strong psychological defenses over time. Tools that allow them to keep going despite criticism and setbacks. There are many such defense mechanisms, some healthier than others.

To get someone to understand that they've done something wrong, or that they need to change somehow, you have to get past those defenses. There are a number of approaches that can in principle work, but none are certain.

"I'll do the best I can, then," I said. "I have to warn you that some of this will be difficult to hear, but I believe you are better off knowing."

I heard Sarah and Carol both make movements, tensing up at that. I continued.

"I know Flashbang's secret is that he is depressed, just as I know that I have the medical knowledge necessary to permanently cure him with a pill. No side effects. I know that his depression has been worsened as a consequence of chronic exposure to Vicky's aura impacting his brain chemistry, and I know that all of you are not as immune as you think. I also know that I can give you all immunity by medical means, if you want it."

Carol in particular would have a hard time accepting the need to change in any way, so the approach I was going with would be to hit as many vulnerabilities as I could.

"I know that Vicky's secret is that she has been struggling to tame aggressive impulses that her power is feeding her, because it wants to fight and she doesn't have an adult's impulse control yet."

Whatever her flaws, Carol did care about her family, as the rest of New Wave did. That was one crack in the armor to be exploited. If I could show her that she needed to change to keep her family safe, that might be enough.

"I know your secret is how you defeated Marquis that night, what you found in the closet. I know that because your experiences have scarred you that you've never been able to trust and love Amy properly, seeing in her the sins of her biological father. I know that Vicky's aura constantly demanding your love and attention has made that problem worse than it would be naturally."

Another vulnerability was a vulnerability everyone has. Like a piece of steel, humans are resistant to individual blows. But hammer them over and over in a short span of time, and they can be moved before they have a chance to mount their usual defenses properly.

"I know that Amy's secret is that she is working herself to the point of a catastrophic psychological breakdown in the next six months trying to earn your approval, and something needs to be done."

Another vulnerability was a vulnerability that all parents had; the fear of being a bad parent. Even if she didn't like Amy much because of her projecting Marquis onto the girl, she might be shamed if the effects of her neglect and poor treatment were made clear.

"I know that Vicky's aura has had other unfortunate side effects on Amy's psychology that are private to her that I will also offer to help her with, if she wants it. I know that Amy is one of the most powerful capes alive, and that healing is the tiniest portion of her potential for good. I know that she could save an uncountable number of lives, especially if we worked together on things like making medicines."

A lesser vulnerability; their self image as heroes. That identity would make it hard to think about allowing people to die because of the issues Carol was projecting onto Amy.

"I know that if I had said nothing then Manpower and Shielder would have died to Leviathan this year. Your powers are strong, but the Endbringers are on another level entirely. I know how they work, and how they can be killed, however."

A final blow; they didn't want anyone in New Wave to die, especially not after Fleur would have made the prospect feel all too real. Combine that with the hope that I might actually be telling the truth about knowing useful things about the Endbringers, and they would want to know more.

I opened my eyes to see a shocked Sarah Pelham and a mixture of anger and shock and...guilt, I think, on Carol's face.

How much had they believed? Some, at least, to get that reaction. I'd told them some things I should have no way of knowing and that would buy some credibility, but it was hard to say how far it went. At least Carol hadn't physically attacked me. I had worried that might happen.

"Rest assured that I will keep your secrets, in the hope that you keep mine," I said. "I truly do respect you, and want to help."

Lightning glowed and danced around Carol's hands as she gripped them into tight fists, not taking any definitive shape. Then she stood and stalked out of the room.

I took a breath. "I'm sorry for the trouble," I said to Sarah.

She was pale, I noticed.

"We don't do Endbringer fights," she said dazedly.

"You would have when Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay this spring after a series of events destabilized the Bay," I said softly. "Mostly a bombing campaign by an insane bomb tinker cape named Bakuda who will be joining the ABB."

"Oh," she said, voice numb.

"I will be taking measures to head those events off, so hopefully the attack won't happen now. Regardless, you should not fight the Endbringers. If you must go to one of the fights, your best bet is for the whole team to hang back at the medical tent and protect Amy," I advised.

"I'm sorry, Taylor, I'm not sure how to take all this. If all this is true, what do you want from us?" Sarah asked, sounding lost.

I offered a slight shrug. "Your protection. I need time to build what I need to help people, and I am very vulnerable until I can get my technology in order. I would like Carol to help create a legal shell that orders what I need so I can set up a proper lab. In exchange I'm offering my help with the problems that Vicky has inadvertently caused with her aura, and whatever else you need."

She didn't say anything.

"You could think of me as a New Wave affiliate, if you want. Or if that's not good enough, I would be willing to join officially. I just can't go public until I'm strong enough to protect myself and my father. I'd need a few months to get there." I offered.

Sarah still didn't say anything.

"Mrs. Pelham?" I asked, starting to get worried.

"...I'm sorry Taylor," Sarah finally said, shaking her head. "I just didn't realize how bad things were for Carol and Mark and Vicky and Amy. I knew Carol and Mark were having problems but I can't believe I didn't notice how bad things were. I should have talked to Carol, or done something." She looked away, in the direction Carol had left.

"Hindsight is always twenty-twenty," I said. "There's something I should talk to Vicky about, then I can leave and give you time to process this. You should probably talk to your sister, I imagine she needs help right now."

"...Yeah, you're right," Sarah said with more purpose, and stood. "It was...nice meeting you, Taylor."

I shake my head sadly. "I know it wasn't, and I'm sorry. These are difficult things to have to confront face on. But now that you know the problems are there, they can be fixed. You are good people, you deserve long, happy lives. Together, as a healthy family."

Sarah blinked. "'There's so much, what are you'," she muttered.

I cringed. "Carol heard what Victor said, then," I sighed.

Sarah nodded slowly. "She told me. I've met thinkers before, but you're not like any of them. Or like any teenage girl I've ever met. Did Victor see something in your head? What are you, Taylor?"

"I think he saw the inconceivable amount of knowledge that's up here, now," I said, knocking on the side of my head. "As for what I am..."

I thought. 'Humanity's last hope' might quite possibly be accurate, but would probably make me sound like I had delusions of grandeur. Besides, I wasn't just humanity's hope for survival. I could be a great many other hopes besides, like the hope for a better path that I would bring to each member of the Dallon family. A family which would have broken.

"I am hope," I finished.

I left the room and went looking for Vicky, leaving Sarah behind.

Thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading.

Next time on Scientia Weaponizes The Future, Victoria Dallon, secrets, and a rude awakening.

Last edited: Mar 28, 2021

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