Alt-power AU: Hear No Evil

It began with a simple post online, duplicated to several different popular media platforms.

One hundred dollars for the truth. Provide an audio recording of an intelligible statement. Receive a translation of the unvarnished truth behind the statement. One hundred dollars per interpreted statement.

An anonymous account, bearing an unremarkable name that varied by site. Details provided upon first individual contact. Proof of capability offered for a small down payment; ten dollars.

"Think of an object, or a feeling, or anything you can imagine. Record yourself saying something, anything. Send me the recording, and I will tell you the truth of what you were obscuring."

The posts were met with derision at first. Some were taken down as against site rules. Others were spammed to oblivion by other users who saw a good joke, or a mockably transparent scam, or just an opportunity to frustrate someone. Of those who did contact the poster, only one in twenty actually read the rules and sent in the downpayment. All demanded proof the service was legitimate before going any further.

'Here, my audio file. It's me saying "I think this is a massive hoax." Be quick about it.'

'Translation: I want you to know that I think this is a massive hoax, and I do not believe you can divine anything from this statement about yellow submarines impaled on blue stripper poles.'

From there the retention rates were better; only one in five of those who gave a downpayment refused to continue the transaction.

'Well, fuck me if that isn't convincing. Can you tell if my wife is cheating on me?'

'Ask her, record her answer, and I can tell you what I hear. The more you can get her talking about the subject, the better. Hold an entire conversation if you can.'

'Will do. I'll send it to you by Friday.'

One hundred dollars per customer, at an average of two hours of communication and divining each. It was a lot of money for a service that started with no more credibility than an internet hoax. The first customers were the desperate, the fools with too much trust and too much money. Those who followed were the skeptics, the ones willing to waste money to prove themselves right.

All who engaged in good faith and paid the fee found that they received answers.

'The most important translation I have for you is of her very first statement; 'Of course not' translates to 'Of course not, I know you would catch me if I tried.' I understand that this may not be a satisfying answer, but I believe a further translation later on lends a verifiable statement for you to check. 'I can't believe you would accuse me of that' translates to 'I can't believe you would accuse me of cheating when we both know you had a fling two years ago on your business trip.' Please keep in mind that I claim no ability to see the future; she seems to not have cheated on you as of the time of this conversation. What she will do in the future may not continue to follow this pattern.

Then, as positive reviews filtered in and the skeptics failed to prove themselves, the ad-hoc service started attracting real attention. Some from larger, more important customers.

'My consulting company would like to hire you on retainer.'

'For obvious reasons this is a conversation I will only consent to having in the form of audio recordings on your part.'

'That is unsatisfactory.'

'My apologies. You may continue to hire me on a per-case basis.'

Some from official groups.

'The Protectorate would like to offer you a standing interview at any branch across the nation, or over the phone at your earliest convenience. Standard pay for Thinkers signing on is significantly more than you would be making from your current rates even if you worked all day, every day.'

'I think I like you. You're either remarkably idealistic or too endearingly stupid to wonder why I'm not already working for them with this power. Or you're a catspaw account with another Thinker trying to manipulate me into joining.

It was noted that the truth-teller tended to not like official government contacts. This was considered to be reasonable by the masses. Private or government-sponsored, none succeeded in changing the status quo. The ads continued to pop up on message boards, social media, and elsewhere across the internet. The pay rate rose, fell, and finally stabilized at a price more in line with the services of someone who could verify the truth and ferret out secrets from next to nothing.

The services of the truth-teller gained in popularity. The truth-teller herself became somewhat popular as a mystery figure. Discussion threads were founded about her. Theories were thrown about. The general consensus among those who followed her most closely was that she was making bank in a safe, legal way and that she had lucked out with her powers. She was a modern success story, an example of a parahuman rogue prospering without conflict.

It began as many things in America did, with a depressing amount of unexpected medical debt foisted onto an already struggling family. With the confluence of anguish, despair, and uncaring, unfeeling chance.

With two invalids struggling to survive.

The house was cold when Taylor woke up. It was cold when she went downstairs to fiddle with the thermostat. It remained cold as she determined that the thermostat was broken in the middle of February. It needed to be fixed. Another bill to add to the list.

She limped over to the kitchen, forced her aching back to straighten long enough to reach up and take a pan from the cupboard, and laboriously made scrambled eggs. The fridge was worryingly bare, and that meant a trip to the store.

Money wasn't the problem. Not really, not so long as the flood of petty grievances and misunderstandings and corporate espionage continued out in the larger world. The problem was people.

She made two plates of food and left one on the table for herself. The other she took up to her dad's bedroom.

He was asleep when she entered the room, and he didn't wake even when the plate clunked down noisily on his dresser. She left it there for him.

Then she bundled up in an old coat and forced herself to brave the cold. The closest store was an hour's walk from the house, but she went regardless. A bus would be quicker and warmer… A bus would involve interacting with other people. She would rather walk. Nobody tried to hold a conversation on the sidewalk, not on a day like today. Not in Brockton Bay.

As she walked, she distracted herself by thinking about the upcoming weekend. Worrying, really. There was an appointment with a specialty doctor to keep on Saturday. Hers, this time, for her back. Not covered by the lackluster insurance her father held, but that was what her online jobs were for. Next week was her father's biweekly checkup for his head injury, and that promised to be much more of a struggle. The family vehicle was totaled, and she couldn't manage her father and public transportation without risk. One or the other was hard enough.

And wasn't that just the story of her life these past few months? Too many major problems, major dangers, to deal with all at once. Like struggling to stay afloat while birds tried to peck her face. Two completely different dangers that made it impossible to fully fight either off. All while she tried to stay quiet, lest the monsters in the deep below take notice of her…

She shivered, and her back ached in response. But she kept walking. She was surviving. That was enough. In some ways her situation now was better than it had been… before. At least she didn't have to go to Winslow anymore.

The supermarket, a dingy chain store with as much personality as a piece of stale bread, was mostly empty. Few people went shopping on Friday morning in the middle of a cold snap.

The ones who did were still enough to disorient her.

"I want to greet you with a cheery 'welcome to supermart' because I need this job and I'm one slipup away from being fired," the old lady by the carts called out, her voice cheery. Her lips didn't match up with what her voice was saying, and she kept speaking long after her mouth stopped moving.

Taylor smiled, though she was sure it was a cold, brittle thing, and nodded. She took a cart and pushed it down the closest aisle, her back and side protesting at the new pressure every step of the way. It would be worse, taking the groceries home. But she would be alone, so she was looking forward to it.

"I want you to think that I hate ham, but really I just want you to feel bad," someone said on the next aisle over. Her voice was soft, and she sounded uninterested.

A can clanked on a shelf. "I'm asking why you didn't tell me this last week, when I suggested a big ham for the party, though what I'd really like to ask is whether you're trying to make me hate you with all this shitty passive-aggressive bullshit." He sounded nice, and even the swearing had a gentle, questioning lilt.

Taylor picked up a few boxes of dried pasta and tried to ignore the argument. Not that she could. That wasn't how it worked. She tried to move on, to get out of hearing distance, but that just put her close enough to another person talking loudly enough to be understood, whether she liked it or not.

"Please don't cry, I don't know what to do when you cry, I don't know how to make it better," a woman said quietly, her voice muffled. "I need you to know that I love you and that you'll get better. I need to believe it myself. It is true. It is."

Her phone squawked something mercifully unintelligible in reply. Taylor pushed her cart faster, though as overheard conversations went that one wasn't so bad. Sincere people were easier to listen to; they didn't preface everything they said with 'I want you to think' or 'I want you to believe'. It made them less disorienting to listen to. Too bad there were so few of them around. If everybody just said what they meant without thinking about it, her power wouldn't be so difficult to hide.

"I want you to think about having a game night tomorrow at our house," another woman said as she pushed a cart around a corner. She was set to pass right by Taylor, and a young teenage boy followed along behind her. "I think it would be good for you to introduce me to your friends so I can make sure they're good influences, but I won't push too hard because you're going through the rebellious phase everyone warned me about."

"Sure," the boy muttered as they passed her, but that wasn't it. It was never that simple. "I'll invite all of my friends, and by that I really mean only the two who won't make you flip out."

Not terrible. Today wasn't terrible. She managed to go down three whole aisles in blessed silence. Frozen pizza joined the pasta in the cart, followed by a few single-person frozen meals that looked good. She could only carry a few bags, and by now she knew what she needed to last two people a week, but there was some wiggle room. Light foods, in terms of weight if not necessarily calories. Things that could be saved and parceled out and reheated.

She made it all the way to the cash registers before another unwelcome conversation reached her ears.

"I'm telling you that I'm sure you'll be fine, but inside I would like nothing more than to watch you die screaming," a young man said casually to the cashier checking out his items. "Filth like you shouldn't be seen in modern society." It wasn't hard to figure out what his reason was for feeling so sadistic, given his pale skin and the cashier's dark complexion.

"Your total is thirteen dollars even, just please go away," the cashier said with a smile. "I want you to think that I hope you have a good day, whatever keeps you happy long enough to forget about me."

Taylor got into line behind the racist and quickly brought all of the food from her basket up to be scanned, ignoring the growing pain in her back.

"I'm asking whether you will be paying with cash or card, and I'm wondering what's wrong with you that you wince every time you lift something?" the cashier asked calmly.

"Something about my spine, according to the doctors," Taylor responded.

"What?" the cashier said.

"Oh, card," Taylor corrected herself. "Sorry." He hadn't asked the last part. She heard it, but he hadn't asked. "Lots of people ask about my… injuries. I assumed you would too." A crappy cover-up, but better than him thinking something was amiss.

He nodded sagely as he scanned the last of her groceries. "I'm saying maybe that means they care, but I think in this pit of a city it's more likely they're sizing you up as a target."

She shrugged her shoulders. Whether he had said all of that, cynicism included… She wasn't sure. He spoke fast, she wasn't watching his lips to see any potential disconnect, and sometimes people talked just like her power did.

She swiped her new credit card on the reader, did it again when it didn't register the first time, and carefully put it back in her pocket. "Thanks," she muttered as she took her groceries. Money wasn't a problem. The medical bills took up most of her earnings, the parts the insurance didn't cover, but she made a lot. Nobody knew just how easy it was to deal with their individual problems, and she had a steady stream of customers. She made more in an hour than her dad made in an entire day's work.

But as she took the groceries – heavy together, despite all of her careful planning – and began the Herculean task of carrying them home, she found it hard to care. All the easy, legal money in the world wouldn't help her with her other problems. Not with her back – stupid car accident – not with Danny, not with pretending to be normal…

An ice pick dug into the space between and slightly below her shoulder blades, and an irritating crick formed in her ribs as she walked. The urge to pull her arms back and crack her back – and chest, as weird and gross as that was – was strong, but it would be agonizing and fix nothing. The need to crack her back would return in mere minutes so long as she was carrying anything even moderately heavy. Like popping her knuckles but infinitely worse for her health.

She pushed forward, as she always did. The pain was different, much more internal than the many minor hurts she knew best, but it was pain all the same. At least there were no taunts to go along with it. Emma, Sophia, Madison… they were in school right now. Trapped in Winslow.

She was supposed to go back there next month. The 'medical emergency, sole caretaker' excuse wasn't an official exemption. It was something Blackwell barely acknowledged. The school had even called their home phone once to report her absent.

By next month she would have officially dropped out of high school, so it wouldn't matter. Danny didn't want her to, but at this point he didn't have a leg to stand on. Between the bullying and his inability to walk more than five steps without a dizzy fit, he couldn't make her do anything. He hadn't even tried. Just insisted on homeschool until she could get into another high school, which was part practical and part insultingly wishful thinking.

Homeschool, yes. Another high school, no. She would out herself as a cape within an hour in any school. And then the consequences of the outing would come.

She made it home without dropping her groceries once, a feat that felt as significant as climbing a mountain blindfolded. The TV was on in the living room, and she saw the dishes had been washed.

"I'm home," she called out. Putting the groceries away was yet another agony, but she couldn't stop moving. Not before she was ready to collapse on her bed for the rest of the day. She wasn't supposed to be stressing her back at all, Doctor's orders, but somebody had to keep their house supplied and it wasn't going to be Danny. Not with no car and no ability to go anywhere on his own two feet.

He didn't say anything – maybe he was asleep – but she could hear the TV. Not loud enough to make out individual words. That was good.

Some of the most terrifying things she had ever heard came from voices on the television. Things that she wished she didn't know. Things that made it impossible to go to the Protectorate, or any heroes at all. All those press conferences… Each one a terrifying morass of insights.

Nobody knew what they were doing. Brockton Bay's PRT Director disliked parahumans. She saw them as tools to be used but never trusted. Assault was a former villain. Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Sophia had killed before. The local heroes were barely holding a stalemate with the local villains. Medhall was racist to the core. Kaiser was its CEO.

All of that would have been enough to drive her right out of the city, if she was able to leave.

If she didn't know too much about the rest of the world, too. National press conferences were a thing… She had only watched one. One was enough to give her nightmares about secret organizations kidnapping her whenever they pleased. Like they did to people to make Case 53s, even as they pretended in public that they had no idea what was going on. They could mutate her, wipe her memory, make her disappear… She didn't know what was stopping them. Eidolon, Alexandria… They were all in on it, she had heard it from their own voices.

She couldn't go to the heroes. She couldn't tell anyone what she knew, not when it might bring their attention down on her. She couldn't talk to people without risking somebody noticing her oddness, the way she sometimes accidentally responded to questions they had thought but not asked, the way she paused too long before responding.

She could make money on the internet, where text interactions made her seem normal. People still had their facades there; she didn't have to know all of the things they thought but didn't say. But the internet wasn't the real world, and even there an AI apparently lurked, capable of noticing her at any time. Dragon seemed nice, and Taylor hadn't gleaned much more than her nature from the one clip she had heard, but she had seen so much evil hidden beneath so many heroes… She didn't want to know any more. Safer to assume Dragon was another dangerous thing lurking in the shadows.

The general consensus among those who followed Taylor's online personas most closely was that she was making bank in a safe, legal way and that she had lucked out with her powers. She was a modern success story, an example of a parahuman rogue prospering without conflict.

The truth, if she recorded her own voice and listened to it play back, was different.

"I want to say that I'm… No, I can't do it. I'm terrified, in pain, barely holding myself together, and desperately trying to stay alive and free. I don't trust anyone, I don't know what I'm doing, and every time I go outside I make mistakes that will get me caught if the wrong person notices. Dad is no help, he's barely able to keep himself going, he's not aware enough to help… Nobody is there for me, and I can't ask for help. I can't trust anyone."

She missed lies.

Author's Note: And thus I have learned that language-powers are complicated to portray. Especially this one. There are four layers of complexity (the words spoken, the motive of the speaker, the power interpreting, the reader understanding) that need to make sense individually and collectively for every single line spoken within hearing of the protagonist. I say something, I mean something potentially contradictory with a wealth of uncommunicated context, an alien supercomputer-entity takes both into account and attempts to pass knowledge of both on (as an auditory replacement instead of simple intuitive understanding because Shards are inconsiderate dicks who don't want to be easily ignored), and then on the meta level the reader should be able to understand what Taylor hears while also being able to pick apart the statement to a reasonable equivalent of the original statement and the original intent.

Also, for anybody who wants to know about the setup here, the AU element is this, as implied by the story itself: Sometime over Christmas break before the canon trigger incident, Taylor and Danny got into a wreck. This didn't cause Taylor to trigger, but it did injure them both somewhat badly and total the family vehicle. Danny had some insurance and some help from friends, but it wasn't enough to easily pay the bills when they both ended up with lingering issues. He can't go back to work until the side-effects of his head injury go away, and Taylor needed (and still needs) continued work on her back to get her mobility back.

This completely fucked any chance of Taylor going back to school to fall into the locker trap; she called herself out for a few months, which really only worked because Blackwell didn't mind seeing her gone, and then…

Well, then something happened. Something to push her over. Between dealing with Blackwell, Danny, the insurance company, the hospital, their mounting bills… Everyone was saying things and meaning other things. Danny wasn't getting better. The insurance wasn't doing what they said they would (or what she thought they said they would). She was in chronic pain. There was no bullying because there were no bullies, but the stress just transferred over. At some point it hit a tipping point in a much more subdued fashion.

Then her power decided to be an absolute jerk about how it functioned. All the insight of a reactionary telepath, but no control and so directly overlaid on her senses that she can't even hear the original words. All filtered through a Shard that emphasizes conflict, picking out and pulling up the bad things. Useful enough to keep her monetarily afloat, because she's not stupid, but powerful enough to completely break down the walls of obscurity hiding the world's uglier truths from her the first time she makes the mistake of turning the television to someone important giving a speech.

(And for the inevitable 'what is all-knowing Cauldron doing about this' question: Nothing. Because Taylor is absolutely terrified of getting their attention (and thus won't expose them) and her power offers them nothing they don't already have.)

Next up on Wednesday: Dobrynja asks Saint a question!