Chapter Two
Breaking the Mold
"Alexandria!" Rebecca Costa-Brown took a moment to realize she absentmindedly answered her Protectorate mobile and thumbed the secrecy shield for her office in Los Angeles. Blast shields lowered across the floor-to-ceiling windows and a white noise generator hummed incessantly across almost every frequency. She muted the mobile and ignored the ranting until a green light blinked on her desk, "Yes, Eidolon?"
"Can you tell me why I received an email directly from the ENE Director requesting my healing? And why I can't find a single instance of that request on the PRT emergency network anywhere." Alexandria closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, letting the demand hang in the air. She had to give Piggot credit for her stubbornness. "What's worse, after looking through the log files, it's your authorization that removed the outgoing request from the Director. Not buried or lost in bureaucracy, but never sent out."
"Are you in a secure location?" She heard the rush of wind for a long minute before Eidolon spoke again. She didn't need a precog to tell her he was now several miles up in the air. "I am now."
"Contessa saw the path to victory shift around Brockton Bay last night. That request will never be answered."
Eidolon said nothing for a few moments.
"I'm not stupid Alexandria. The ENE doesn't reach out to the PRT, not after Contessa ordered the feudal experiment, and loathe as I am to admit it, I can tolerate that much. However," she reached over to her drawer and pulled a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol designed for elephants. "They have the greatest healer in the world at their beck and call."
"Contessa foresaw… something change and all she told me was to not interfere with Brockton Bay."
"You're telling me that we can't help Panacea, a teenage girl that answers Endbringer sirens, because Contessa said so?"
"We don't know it's about Panac—"
"Don't give me that bullshit! The ENE doesn't just reach out for help! If it was something Panacea could handle, Piggot wouldn't even bother!"
"And what would you have me do?" She hummed. "Let you go off and interfere with the Path?"
"And you would let her potentially die?" She heard him scoff after she offered no answer. "Panacea alone is responsible for raising Endbringer cape survivability by 9%; I checked the statistics. Isn't that the entire point of the PRT?"
"The Path has evolved. Her orders for Brockton haven't changed."
"Then it can evolve again! I'm flying over there right now."
"Don't you dare!" She stood from her seat and practically yelled into her phone. "Everything we've ever done and everything we've planned hinges on Contessa's plan. She's the entire reason we have as many capes as we do. Don't put all of that at risk!"
"Do you even hear yourself?" She flinched at his tone. "This is who we are now? We're to let a girl who's dedicated her life since her trigger to helping people, perhaps the one purely good parahuman, quietly die in her condemned corner of the world?"
"This is the path we must walk to end Zion." She heard nothing and double-checked her signal strength for any drops. "Eidolon?"
"Two days." She tried to get her question in but he kept on talking. "Two days and I fly to Brockton. Panacea is one of two healers we can reliably call on without the Endbringer Truce."
"David, this isn't the path. Please don't do this."
"Then you better hope Contessa finds a different one or Panacea gets better." She heard the disconnect tone, staring blankly at the device.
The blast shields suppressed the primal scream of rage and withstood the phone projectile thrown their way. Every expletive she knew resounded off the walls and a few of her desk tchotchkes joined the growing pile of debris strewn across her carpet. With her desk lamp shattered, she finally came to her senses, breathing deeply and heavily. She spoke to the empty air, "Door, Contessa."
James Fliescher slithered through Medhall's labyrinth of corridors, reaching the penthouse elevator. Max Anders decorated his office in deep reds and scattered archeological artifacts tastefully in glass displays. Heavy bookcases substituted for walls, weighed down by ancient books detailing everything from the rise of Rome to eugenics. He stifled his grimace as the elevator opened, his boss sitting patiently at his desk with his two bodyguards hovering at his shoulders.
Anders didn't say anything, continuing to work diligently at his paperwork while the two blonde valkyries did their best to burn him to a crisp with their glares alone. He sat across from him, waiting out the game he played against him. A few minutes later, after admiring a new art piece, he set his pen down and steepled his hands, watching him for a dozen seconds before speaking, "You've put us in quite the position."
"A good one or a bad one?" He grinned wildly.
"Both." Anders played with his pen, spinning it idly between his fingers. "You placed the Dallon household and potentially all of New Wave under our debt but you also allowed Glory Girl to threaten you into submission."
"No one outside the Empire knows about the threat or would you rather we spend the funds on rebuilding our nightclub?"
"At least then we could've sued her family for damages. We can't trust Glory Girl to keep her mouth shut."
"We don't have to. Glory Girl won't reveal she went to the Empire for help. That would tarnish her image. And Othala couldn't heal Panacea. That's enough bait to keep her quiet, repay the grievance from Fleur's death, and potentially get a foot in with the younger generation. Glory Girl is a perfect model for the 88 and if she's willing to threaten me on our territory then she can be bent and broken to our will over her sister's health."
"Good, you've at least given this some thought. Othala is yours. Get her attached to the younger Dallons. I want her working at Brockton General by Panacea's side, publically seen together. That'll buy us some goodwill with the city and get the two of them acquainted."
"Then what about the rumors that Othala was spotted following Glory Girl into the hospital?"
"Let them run unchecked. Whichever way the PHO cesspit swings is bound the help us. Have a few of our patsy's drop hints about Glory asking for help. Either she admits it and that takes her a little further away from New Wave and into our hands or she denies it and our PRT moles help out."
"I'll have Othala check in with them later today and see if Panacea's awake yet." Even if she denied her healing, the effort was made and that made the Empire look better by comparison, and Brockton Bay loved Panacea like no other.
"Stay on top of this. You're dismissed." Not even Hookwolf's antics could strip his smile. Another step to affirming Gesellschaft's hold on Kaiser's little rebellion.
Vicky dragged her eyes open, wiping away the gunk gathering in the corners. She unfurled in the armchair, stretching her back and relishing in the cracks echoing from her poor spine. Sometime in the night she accidentally tore her blanket and she did her best to gather it in a respectable pile to hide the damage. As she blinked the sleep away, she found Amy still wrapped in a mass of cables and tubes all dedicated to keeping her alive, eyes still shut and breathing low and soft. Still unconscious to the world.
She tightened the reins on her aura, reeling it back from running rampant through the hospital and sending the majority of them into cardiac arrest. Her heart thumped loudly enough to hear through the disappointment and worry clogging her ears. Although she looked a little healthier, a bit more color in her face, she had hoped Amy could fight through her illness through the night… only to have that all crash down around her.
Her invincibility flickered from her mental grip, nails drawing blood briefly from her palm. She cleaned up in the attached bathroom, barely recognizing the gaunt face staring back through the mirror. Most of her eyeliner went by the wayside, dried streaks of black flecks strewn on her cheeks, and patches of everything else rubbed off into the poor blanket. She checked her phone for the time and paled, cheeks stretching a shade more gaunt. She broke her record for cleaning off the excess and dabbing on just enough to survive the day. Back in the room, she sacrificed her charger to keep Amy's phone powered after checking it over and mentally prepared for the day, hoping Dean kept his mouth shut about why she canceled their date.
Two more officers greeted her as she left the room, kitted out far more than the usual grunts with both firearms and confoam sprayers. Another pair stood guard at each end of the hallway and one of the knots in her chest unraveled. If they wouldn't provide one of their healers, at least they provided the security to keep her safe. Not like they had any healers to call on if she remembered their roster, not anywhere in the Northeast. Wasn't like Amy kept pulling their asses out of the fire whenever they fought the various Bay gangs. She ran herself ragged for their benefit and they couldn't so much as spare a tinker to look her over.
Her form streaked across the morning sky on her way back home, spending only enough time to sneak through her window and grab her backpack and a change of clothes. She heard someone downstairs but paid them no mind, blasting away to Arcadia for a late start to the day. The truant officer did her best to bring her down with her glare as she alighted next to the gym, sneaking in with her ID. Someone probably just forgot to remove her access to the locker room from her basketball days but she certainly wasn't gonna complain. After a quick shower that somehow lasted twenty minutes, she zoomed off to her second class, writing off the first with only five minutes left.
Those five minutes passed in the blink of an eye as she waited by her classroom, idly browsing the PHO forums and stumbling on a new thread with Amy's cape name in it as the bell rang and released the hordes. The first student that caught her gaze made her wish she stayed at the hospital, some piece of juicy gossip having made its way around before even the first lunch period. The whispers started when the second student found the first until one large amorphous conversation dominated the hallway with everyone failing their stealth checks and shooting her discrete looks of pity. Thank fuck she started her aura control in Amy's room.
She blocked out the noise with her earphones, turning up the music to drown out the public, and slipping into her math class. That barely helped, her classmates piling in with the same looks of pity or intrigue she ignored. Even the teacher asked if she was okay when taking roll call, getting a slow nod that tested her patience. Insatiable gossip queens, the lot of them. Brockton General knew better than to leak a patient's identity and the PRT barely had a presence here, certainly not large or fast enough to get the entire student body on her shit.
Lunch could not come any faster and she stashed the rolling pit of emotions so far deep she'd need Amy to scan her and figure out where they went. The squawking masses cleared a path without so much as a word from her, continuing their hushed chatter away from her direct wrath. She beelined for her usual table and sat across from her on-and-off boyfriend, surrounded by the other Wards, their conversation immediately cutting so they could all stare at her with their stupid expressions.
"Dean." He froze instantly, some egregiously funny or witty comment dying on his lips. Good, his emotion reading was working properly. Dennis and crew wisely kept quiet, shuffling away as far away as the table allowed. "Just once I needed you to keep a secret."
He held his hands up, leaning away from her. "It wasn't me I swear." Her eyes narrowed but Dean didn't so much as flinch, meeting her icy stare. She believed him so she instead looked over to the other gossip-monger, both Dennis and Chris miming surrender. Still, something felt off, all of them exchanging side-eyes and wondering who would crack first. She raised an eyebrow and Dean sighed, averting his gaze. "Claire read the text over my shoulder."
Her knuckles cracked in her grip, reverberating across the cafeteria and eliciting a sharp and short from one of the many competing cliques. She quietly added Claire and her groupies to her private shit list, sparing them a second to let them know to get their last wills and testaments in order. She shoved all that misplaced anger into that deep pit, shooting off a text to her Aunt Sarah about the brewing PR disaster inside Arcadia High. Her stomach growled at the worst time and she stymied her blush, wolfing down the meal with the ravenous hunger of a growing teenager. The rebellion lasted all of two minutes, quieting down after not eating since yesterday after school.
"Is she okay?" Dean offered himself up to her attention, drawing a faint smile that barely crossed her face.
"She's… was still sleeping this morning when I left."
….beeeepbeeeepbeeeepbeeeepBEEEEPBEEEEPSCREEECHHHHHHHHHHHNKJHBKGVJCFDXHGZSXCFHGVJBKHJNLKM
OKKAAAAYYYY! She slammed the floodgates up, disconnecting her brain stem from the rest of her body. Every hormone and nerve signal instantly stopped firing along her information superhighway. Everything instantly faded into a flat dream where only her thoughts bounced around her noggin. She deserved this disquieting hell after ignoring the mandatory readings involving soul collisions. She had said, I heal bodies, not souls and washed her hands of it, letting her superiors handle all that jazz. She stirred from her dream and slowly started reconnecting pieces of her body without overloading her senses.
First came all the various systems of touch and she vastly overestimated her skin's sensitivity, seconds, maybe hours ticking by as she ramped up the nerve endings and reconnected that part of the spinal cord until she hit the max threshold this sorry excuse for her body allowed without a complete renovation. Setting that aside for later, she noticed soft fabric swaddled her form entirely. Oh good, she wasn't just passed out somewhere in the elements. Sharp prongs of metal dug into muscles and veins across her arms, and rubber tubing lay across her chest so she was getting cared for in some form of a hospital.
She re-activated her sense of smell next, another long stretch where she tried to swim in the flood of information. Citrusy antiseptic primarily dominated everything with the very light sweet scent of death thrown in to make things interesting. Still, vastly below what she expected slowly when breaching the shell of protective unconsciousness.
Hearing came next and she immediately recognized the dull drone of an ancient heartbeat monitor and a ventilator keeping her alive. The rattling of the HVAC above her added to paint a picture of her old haunt of Brockton General, the last place she remembered before her collapse and likely where she attended to her needy patients when Taylor triggered, locked in a biohazardous nightmare.
She released the floodgates just a bit then, the pain slowly mounting in the back of her brain as it reconnected every other sense in a sequence. Her taste buds rebelled against the dry air pumping through her mask and into her lungs, screaming out for something to quench their thirst but when she dared open her eyes, that problem disappeared under the relentless assault from the fluorescent lights. She tried to cycle her vision, first dimming it, then shifting into other bands of the spectrum, and then failing all of them, peeking through her eyelashes and taking in the off-white tiles of the ceiling.
Great, just great. Years of work spent upgrading every little piece of her body thrown away for her old fleshy birth carcass with all the problems of a sedentary teenager addicted to coffee and smoking. The IV nutrition dripping into her veins sufficed for maybe half of an upgrade to just one of her senses.
Her muscles protested with minimal movement, hand searching for the remote she remembered every hospital bed had clipped to the side and eventually turned herself enough to locate the call button. She barely managed to get the bed to recline up, fingers struggling to depress the key before failing under the strain. Oum above, she felt so incredibly weak and she genuinely couldn't tell if this was the result of the collision or if 16-year-old Amy couldn't even lift a 2-kg weight.
She winced when a cavalcade of feet thundered through the door into her room, several of her oldest nurse colleagues falling over themselves. The PRT officers poked their heads in long enough to confirm she was fine, flicking on their walkies, before returning to their posts. She blinked boringly as the mass of limbs untangled into three people, taking the chance at removing the ventilation mask and slamming into the same roadblock with the remote.
"Water." She rasped out, feebly reaching over to the side table. Carlos rushed to her side, moving the table over and pouring her a cup while Melinda helped release the clasps of the ventilator mask.
"How do you feel?" Janice, perhaps the one with her head screwed on right, looked over the clipboard hanging off the bed and rifled through it, not finding any changes that indicated why she awoke now of all times. She greedily gulped the cup of water down, uncaring about any spilling over, looking at the jug again once the first one emptied.
"Weak." Her tongue sat wrong in her mouth, twisting in a strange way to accommodate speaking English. Even her vocal cords vibrated wrong, unable to drop into any sub or super vocal ranges, fighting the smallest of changes she attempted before giving up when she exhausted her fat reserves. "How long was I out?"
"A day and a half." She answered. "Although, we couldn't figure out what was wrong with you."
"That's okay. I'll be fine in a few days." She demolished the offered applesauce, converting a small portion to biomass and reinforcing her fragile bone structure after subtracting the conversion cost.
"You slipped into an unexplained coma and woke up without any changes." She stifled the snort. Visually, sure, she probably looked exactly the same as she did when she collapsed. Same short frizzy hair, same brown eyes, same splash of freckles an artist sprayed with abandon. Still, she expected some form of body dysmorphia or schism when she found a mirror. "I'd like to keep you for a few more days just to monitor you."
"No thanks! I'm checking out against medical advice." Janice frowned but didn't protest more than that, signing the dotted line and then handing it over. Every applesauce cup she inhaled provided just the extra sugary bit of energy needed to swing her legs over the edge and up into a seat. A small device dropped from beneath her pillow and she silently thanked her omnipresent Queen.
"Call us if you need anything!" Melinda called out and shooed the other two out with her, leaving her alone to change her clothes. Carlos, bless him, left another six applesauce cups she demolished between shucking the hospital gown and pulling on jeans, a sweater, a winter coat, and sturdy boots she thanked her younger self for getting. Then she found the bedazzled bright pink charger topping up her phone and froze.
She brushed a finger against the tiny jewels. Victoria went crazy with the be-dazzler she got two Christmases ago, covering everything she had and then sticking a few more temporary ones on her face just to make a point. She didn't deserve the time she took out of her day to care for her. She carefully disconnected it and stuffed it in her pocket. She checked the time, noticing it was Tuesday, January 4th, 2011. So Victoria had been here, probably worried sick, and then had to leave for school.
Cracking open the back of her phone, she removed the battery and then the SIM card, sliding it into the device found under her pillow. A holographic screen projected from it, reconfiguring the new connection to the many different telecom lines before falling quiet. Her old flip phone went into the trash after she snapped it in half.
One of the PRT officers offered their assistance when she left the room and she politely declined, weaving down the halls and elevators until she reached her locker room. The mirror startled her as she passed by, staring through the reflected image rather than at it. Her skin itched everywhere in discomfort and paled drastically, leaving her freckles out to dry against the white canvas. She grabbed the sink in support and sighed in relief when it didn't crack under her grip, shuffling the sugary energy from earlier around and smoothing away the shadows under her eyes and returning some life to her cheeks. Black lined her eyes and a rainbow of colors seeped over her face, pimples and pockmarks disappearing until she found a younger version of herself scrutinizing every detail.
She ransacked her locker, finding her purse and a few paper bills to tide her over until she figured out how to connect back to her usual bank, doubtful any merchants had the tap-to-pay needed to read the cards stored on her phone. A debit card linked to Amy Dallon had slightly more to use and went into a backpack pocket. Clothing-wise, she donned a thin pair of gloves and left her winter coat, instead opting for the single lab coat she got as a gift from the oncology department that she never got to use as Carol insisted on her ridiculous costume.
The moment she stepped on the sidewalk, after waving goodbye to the receptionists, she declined a call from said woman and carelessly wandered through the downtown area. Every step she took demanded far more attention as she shifted excess biomass to her bones and muscles and a quick restock at the local grocery store netted her various fruits and vegetables she continually broke down and repurposed.
Eventually, her feet led her to a large campus nestled against Captain's Hill she instantly recognized as one of her favorite places to play as a child: the Botanical Conservatory. Colorful flowers and cherry trees blossomed when spring arrived but now stood bare, shivering against the biting winds of winter. However, not all plant life died and they adapted to showcasing the hardy hollies, winterberries, and stalwart evergreens.
She stepped along the path and squatted down near a patch of dead daffodils. Breaking the ice and brushing away the snow, she removed a glove and touched a leaf, smiling widely when the green resurfaced. She tweaked their resistance to the cold and upgraded their chloroplasts until a bouquet of yellow dotted the white landscape.
Continuing, she tried the door and walked right in, surprised not a single other soul wandered around. The warmth pleasantly chased away the cold and helped the dozens or so vines and flowers stretched across the atrium.
"Hello?" Her voice echoed and she winced at the tone, physically shifting her larynx lightly to the side and applying a change. An older gentleman poked his head from a door and she wondered just how loony she looked as she worked her jaw and ran through the vocal scales, finally settling on her normal voice. She waved at him brightly. "Could I please see your greenhouses?"
He adjusted his glasses, squinting at her as he logged into the computer. "Of course, Miss." She didn't so much as blink at the price, swiping her card and accepting the day pass. "Unfortunately, the central greenhouse is under repairs after a cape incident."
"Oh?" A faint memory bubbled forth with the answer. "Right! Sorry about that. My… sister can get a little enthusiastic when she fights. Could I go in anyway? I could try fixing the damage if you'd like."
He adjusted his glasses again, realization dawning. "You're Panacea! I thought I recognized you. You used to come here every spring."
"Just Amelia please." She waved him down from the hero worship. With a faint gesture, he led the way to an area cordoned off and through some heavy doors. She simply sighed heavily, marveling at the damage Victoria caused with her careless disregard for infrastructure. We'll, maybe not completely careless. She did throw Hookwolf through the greenhouse instead of into it. The vicious Nazi would have left nothing behind if she did.
A few botanists greeted her while they fought the elements, preserving or uprooting as many delicate flora as they could for reseeding elsewhere. The rest worked on sealing the two massive holes in the walls with plastic tarps and cutting away the damaged supports.
Such primitive devices.
She clicked her tongue and snapped a branch from a nearby tree much to everyone's horror and quickly shushed them. After sealing the wound shut, she ripped part of the first tarp free, digging the branch into the soil, and before any of them could question her, she stimulated its growth, leeching vital nutrients from the soil and the sun.
Slowly at first, she grew roots until she exhausted the usable space inside and expanded out instead. A hilariously large base of thick roots encased the foundation layer and wall in a secure hold and then grew upwards, clinging to the cut glass and framework cleaned up from the incident. Primary branches stretched across the gap and stabbed into the wall or wrapped down into the soil to create a secondary offshoot tree until a massive skeletal frame of bark held fast to the hole.
Her smile only grew as a fine green mesh of chloroplasts grew across every branch, tinting the incoming sunlight a luscious green and blocking the chilling winds. Inspecting her handiwork, she grew a few cherry blossom buds from the wood, tinting every other one a different color in a bright display of early spring and tested the springy mesh, satisfied the worst of the Bay's winds would tear through it.
Lost in her own little world, she only tuned back for the sound of applause from the Director and his staff, a faint blush rising to her cheeks. "That was wonderful! How long will it last?"
"The tree will outlive us all with proper care and I suspect you'll have to rework the masonry before it gives out." He stepped forward to shake her hand and she cradled her bare hand protectively, taking the time to slip the glove back on before doing so. "And here." She rummaged through her bag and found a scrap of paper she scribbled her email down on, handing it over. "If my sister happens to throw anyone else, please send me a message and I'll come down to fix it."
"Thank you so much, Miss Amelia. We can't thank you enough."
"It's no problem." She grew another pair of trees on the other side of the breach, adding in a little bench and backrest for any patrons and then covering it with a layer of springy moss she spent a few minutes indulgently running her fingers through. "Could I help with the replanting?"
Their collectively violent nods worried her enough to consider offering quick check-ups, all of them thanking her for the time and effort she offered them, and she burned the next couple of hours sitting on the newly grown bench and toying with the artificial biomes, sometimes accelerating growth when one of the volunteers asked or removing traces of blight.
When she took a break, she noticed half a dozen missed calls from Carol and swiped them away. She needed to learn her boundaries and stop the passive-aggressive helicoptering that eventually caused her 'fuck it' moment and earned her a Birdcage sentence. A single message from Crystal asked if she was okay and she replied positively.
Victoria's messages, free from Arcadia's Faraday cage, read frantically.
Vicky: Are you okay?
Vicky: Do you need help?
Vicky: Mom's freaking out. She said you checked out of the hospital
Vicky: Where are you?
Vicky: I'm flying over the city, please get back to me
She weighed her options. She was on vacation, she didn't need to indulge Victoria with her concerns but she had a chance to avoid her sister cutting her off entirely. Selfishly, Victoria might be safer away from her, sad and moping as she cut ties with her instead. But… she did miss her sister. She missed talking with her, hitting up the Boardwalk stores, and going out for dinner after classes.
So she took a chance. Taylor would have to wait a little longer.
Amy: In the Conservatory
Hanging high in orbit and nestled in her cocoon of wings, an angel smiled.