Looking around in satisfaction, Taylor nodded happily. She'd spent several hours cleaning the entire warehouse floor, pushing all the debris into one corner and stacking it up inside some drider-web baskets she'd entertained herself figuring out how to make a few days ago. They held several cubic yards of material each and seemed more than strong enough to be loaded with tons of scrap and carried around without the slightest hint of breaking. It had made the whole exercise fairly straightforward if time-consuming. And now she had a large expanse of empty concrete with nothing getting in the way other than her tables and experimental stands along one long edge, and she'd also finished repairing the roof once the recent heavy rain had shown a few spots she'd missed. The warehouse was as dry as it was ever going to get, pretty secure absent some really serious effort, and surprisingly warm due to the thick brick walls.
The tunnel entrance had also been fully cleared out, so she could go up and down the stairs without any obstructions, which was much more convenient. She was debating working out some sort of door for it, as the one that had apparently once been there had long since vanished, only the rusty stumps of hinges left embedded in the brickwork. For now she'd improvised by webbing several massive lumps of cast iron something-or-other together to form a barricade that was probably on the order of three or four tons in weight, and large enough that she could cover the place where the narrow stairs emerged from the floor. With it on top of the hole nothing larger than a cat was going to get in or out through that opening, but she could easily move it herself when required.
So as a place to work undisturbed her warehouse was pretty close to perfect. And sufficiently isolated that she hardly ever had visitors closer than several hundred yards, and that was quite rare. The homeless guy that time had stayed in the place he'd found for two days, then left again and she hadn't sensed him since then. That was the last time anyone had come anywhere near that close to her knowledge.
She wondered where he'd gone and hoped he was OK. And that the cash she'd left had helped.
It upset her to know there were so many people in the city that were homeless and living on the street, but it was a difficult problem to solve even if anyone honestly wanted to. Which, sadly, an awful lot of people not in such dire straights apparently didn't from what her dad said, and her mom had as well in the past. She knew that the dock workers and quite a few people in the general docks area helped out when they could, but many of them didn't have a lot left over either.
But she did have some ideas that might bear fruit in that direction eventually. It was something she was still thinking about.
Sighing faintly, she turned to regard her workspace. She'd made use of some of the ex-Calvert's confiscated funds, although very cautiously as she wasn't entirely trusting of whoever it was that Tattletale had found to launder the money. The girl herself, who was right now with her team in their hideout right on the edge of Taylor's range, was probably reasonably trustworthy she thought. They'd spent some time talking while the blonde was vacuuming Coil's money out of every account she could locate, and setting up all the other things that needed to be arranged before she escaped out the tunnel Taylor had told her about. It had been pretty impressive watching how she persuaded the two mercenaries outside the door to basically switch sides, although the rather terrifying amount of money she'd offered them had certainly helped a lot.
Even so it had been down to the other girl's Thinker-aided rapid talking that had done the trick in the end. She'd also seemed completely sure that neither of the men would betray her, and Taylor hoped she was right. But so far nothing had apparently gone wrong with the plan they'd worked out, and from her occasional trips to monitor various people around the city, it didn't seem likely that it would. Both the mercenaries who'd been paid off seemed content to wait for their trial, which was very likely to result in a stiff fine at worst, then just keep to the bargain and vanish. Along with several million dollars each, more than enough to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives.
So that potential hurdle seemed to have been cleared. And having split the funds two ways after clearing it through a whole series of moves Taylor still didn't quite follow, it had ended up with some organization run by someone called the Number Man, who was apparently the go-to person for completely untraceable financial services. It sounded very dodgy to Taylor, but her new acquaintance swore blind that the services provided for the rather steep fee were totally reliable and trustworthy. She claimed that even heroic organizations used the facilities provided by this mysterious person, since it gave a level of anonymity that the normal banking system completely lacked, important if you happened to have a secret identity. Even the tax people seemed to have no problem with it which sounded weird, but it looked like as long as they got their cut, they didn't care in the slightest where you got your money from or how.
Which admittedly did match some things her dad had said in the past about how the world had changed since Parahumans first turned up. It was still kind of strange even so. Whatever, the end result was a discreet ATM card along with a set of details of how to access the accounts set up through various means, statements of taxes paid, balances, and everything else you'd expect from a perfectly normal bank account.
The sum in those accounts was rather unnerving. More money than she could currently think of means to actually spend, in fact. Not without going out and buying a couple of airliners or something…
It had made her dad nearly faint when she'd shown it all to him and explained what had happened. After which he'd laughed rather oddly, spent some time explaining why it would make him a lot happier if she'd avoid upsetting the political balance of the city on a whim if possible, then congratulate her on a job well done. If only accidentally.
Certainly they had no real money worries any more, although he'd pointed out they'd need to be very careful not to let anyone see them spending a lot of money they couldn't explain the source of, regardless of how well-hidden the tracks were. Which she'd fully agreed with, being more than able to work out for herself all the wrong sorts of attention being careless would attract.
So in the end she'd flown around a few isolated ATMs as Vespa and acquired a fair bit of cash, making sure not to withdraw too much at any one of them and spreading it out over a few days. She'd also ensured that the cameras on the machines had been accidentally obscured by bugs of one sort or another. If anyone checked they might find the coincidence odd, but it would probably be hard to pin down what exactly had happened or who was behind it. Possibly she was being a little over-paranoid but why take silly chances? Half of the money had gone to her dad for household expenses and the like, including upgrading their terrible internet to something a little more modern, which had been done yesterday. The rest she kept for her own use.
And in front of her were the purchases she'd made, including a reasonably nice laptop similar to, but higher spec than, the one she'd seen in the used computer store a few weeks back. She'd also bought some good quality folding tables, several more very cheap phones, two of which she'd given to her dad as well, lots more notebooks, and various other useful things. He'd taken her into the city and back in his truck to retrieve the tables as they were awkward to manage single-handed even if the weight meant nothing to her now, but the rest she'd picked up herself.
Reaching out she opened the laptop and turned it on. As she did so, half a dozen far too large to be normal spiders jumped from her shoulders onto the table, their abdomens glowing different colors. Taylor was very fond of bioluminescence and was still experimenting with it quite regularly, and adding it to quite a lot of the hybrids she'd been fiddling with.
These spiders were some ten inches across the legs, and mixed black widows, wolf spiders, jumping spiders which she really liked, paper wasps mostly for the flight, crabs for the low temperature tolerance, and limpets for the incredibly boosted exoskeleton strength which she was still steadily improving. They were tough enough that you could probably run them over with a bulldozer and only mildly inconvenience the creatures.
They were also definitely a lot brighter than spiders normally were. She still wasn't entirely sure how she'd achieved that, but the things were smart enough that they were clearly watching her with as much interest as she watched them, while there was something not that far off an actual, if rather basic, mind in there somewhere. She could feel it.
And they could feel her, but didn't seem to have any issues at all with her controlling them. As far as she could tell they actually found it comforting somehow. Which was yet another thing her power was staring at, but it should be used to that now.
Like all her other creatures these had enlarged far more than they should have been able to while merged with her, and she'd also noted with interest that merging multiple species together even without combining them with her also made the resulting creature gradually enlarge over time, although more slowly and apparently to a smaller degree. These ones were probably as large as they were going to get from what she could sense. She had a lot of notes on ideas to see if she could dial the size up and down on purpose but it was yet another thing she hadn't so far got around to. There were a lot of those and the list didn't seem to be getting any shorter as time went on. Which was good in a sense as it meant she had plenty of work to keep herself busy with.
Taylor was interested to see if the hybrid traits would breed true, but that would take some time to discover. She didn't have any plans to breed them in vast quantities either, as that might cause… minor problems… but she could certainly find uses for a fair number. They were more than strong enough to be useful all over the place, had incredibly good senses, and were large enough to interact with human-scale things fairly easily. Such as the laptop keyboard.
She moved one of the glowspiders in front of the keyboard and stretched out its front four legs. Another one put a leg on the touch pad and two more on the buttons. A little practice showed that they could operate both without any problems, but she ended up adding two more spiders on keyboard duty, each covering part of it, which rapidly let her manipulate the keys with absurd ease and very high speed. Synchronizing all the legs was trivial, to the point that she didn't even consciously think about what she was doing. She had to adjust the keyboard settings to let her type as fast as her spiders were capable of, but it worked, which pleased her a lot.
Satisfied she had a good method to take notes faster than writing them down by hand, she nodded happily. "OK, guys, let's get on with it," she told her spiders, the ones not operating the computer turning to look at her with apparent interest. "I really have to come up with names for you lot too," she mused, examining them. That would take a little thought…
Spider one through six seemed a touch silly, she though as she unmerged from Vespa II, who was nearly as big as the original Vespa now and had just about finished her growth phase. The hornet sat on her hand and looked at her, while she looked back. "I guess you're going to want to make a nest fairly soon," she commented to the insect. It was perhaps a month away from when they'd naturally begin laying eggs, although by now she knew enough about how her arthropods worked that she was sure she could either speed that up or delay it, but right now she had other plans in mind.
It was time for her to try something she'd been thinking hard about from pretty much the moment she'd found out what her powers could do, and what she could make them do by dint of not taking no for an answer.
That original deep link with Vespa had been completely accidental, and had baffled her own power to the point it still didn't seem to have the faintest idea what had actually happened. She'd held off on trying to replicate the feat for several reasons. One was she was still a little reluctant to take the agency of a living thing away like that, even an insect. It was, on the face of it, a rather silly reservation to have; insects generally had short lives and people randomly killed them without a thought, and there wasn't all that much actual mind in there anyway. But… Taylor had a much, much deeper insight into arthropod life than probably anyone and she couldn't help feeling a little guilty when she thought about it.
On the other hand, she'd completely subsumed a significant number of creatures by merging them into both herself, Vespa I, and Vespa II. Wasn't that basically the same thing only more so?
Perhaps. It still felt different to her, though. She could unmerge them without any issue and they were basically completely unharmed, albeit somewhat enhanced, which if anything you might consider a good thing if you were so inclined. Admittedly a lot of people wouldn't be so inclined, not being entirely happy about wasps the size of your hand or spiders that could fist fight a cat, but a lot of people were weird like that. The point was they still had their minds, or what could very loosely be termed that. Especially in the case of things like limpets or worms which were about as close to organic machines as she'd so far come across. They were mostly hardwired instincts and quite basic functions, from what she could tell.
Crabs, spiders, hornets… they were a step up. Still nothing close to anything most people would call intelligent, even very loosely, with a few exceptions like jumping spiders, but they were much more than just a few neurons running a biological robot. Taylor couldn't explain it properly to anyone, even her dad, although she'd tried. Without being able to do what she could, it was almost impossible to understand.
Her glowspiders were a huge step up in mental ability, vastly outstripping even the brightest jumping spider, even as she didn't know quite how she'd managed the trick. It would take more experimentation. The more she played around with doing this sort of thing the more she was coming to understand the fundamental underpinnings of how she did what she was doing, and how arthropods and all the other creatures actually worked. It was already at the point that she could not only mix aspects of other creatures under her purview into a single creature with ease, but she was starting to be able to extrapolate from one or other aspect into something entirely new. Her early experiments with bioluminescence had set the stage for this sort of thing, which had let her come up with the armored exoskeleton, and the better eyes, among other things. Those had mostly been built on preexisting substructures she'd modified extensively, but the latest exoskeleton, the one she used for the glowspiders, had been redesigned completely from scratch.
In retrospect some of the changes she'd made to their brains to increase the processing speed, which had worked remarkably well, might also explain the increase in processing power, although that hadn't been directly the goal. She made some notes on the computer as she thought this, still studying the hornet on her hand. That could be investigated more later. Right now, she had another goal in mind.
"I have to repeat what I did," she told Vespa II, lifting her hand to look directly into the hornet's eyes, her own antennae dipping to touch it. "I have no idea how to undo it, and the only thing I can think of is to do it again and watch what happens. It might give me the clue I need to figure out how, or if, it can be reversed. So for what it's worth, I'm sorry about this. I promise I'll be gentle."
It made her feel better about the whole thing even as she thought in a sense it was completely ridiculous.
They might only be bugs, but they were still alive, and they were, in a sense, friends of hers. She didn't want to see them hurt unnecessarily. It was, she supposed as she examined the hornet, like people who had pet pigs, yet still ate bacon. Suppressing the slight sensation of guilt she still had, she concentrated, trying to replicate the feeling she'd had in her bedroom that time over two months ago. Reaching out with her power, she felt her connection with Vespa I, then the one she had with her second hornet, looking for how they differed. At the back of her mind her power was watching closely, feeling fascinated and slightly bemused, as if it wasn't sure any of this would or even could work. Despite the ample proof she'd given it time and time again.
Taylor didn't give up, and no superpower that belonged to her was going to tell her what she could and could not do with it. Not if it didn't want her quite annoyed with it.
So far that seemed to have done the job, she thought with an inner grin in one part of her awareness, which seemed these days to have far, far more parts to it than it used to…
'Right, then… I think I need to do this…' Pushing harder, she forced her power's connection to the hornet into new pathways, feeling the usual sort of resistance that meant it wasn't convinced this was how anything was supposed to work. As she was doing that, bearing down harder and harder in her mind, she was simultaneously watching from outside so to speak, observing part of herself with another part of herself. She wasn't quite sure how she could do that, but she could, and the exact mechanism wasn't nearly as important as the fact it worked.
Even if her power really didn't have the vaguest idea how either and seemed mildly horrified that it did.
She really had to find out how other Parahumans made their powers do what they wanted one day, she thought with yet another part of her mind that wasn't currently occupied. That part made some notes with the spiders, as it had been doing the entire time, so she could go back and check later. She was quite curious whether she was doing it correctly, but whatever, she got the results she wanted even if she had to threaten the thing at the back of her head sometimes before it gave in.
Which, admittedly, was happening a lot less these days. She nearly had it housebroken.
The mental resistance grew, but she persisted, pushing in just the right way that whatever it was that was blocking her desires from coming into existence shivered and started to creak. This was how it normally went, and all she had to do was suddenly push there like this and…
The familiar mental snap of her ability throwing its hands in the air and giving up came, causing her to smile.
And suddenly she had the same connection to Vespa II as she had to Vespa I.
It worked. Not only that, she saw what she'd done, and how. Kind of.
Comparing the connections, she saw that the one to her original hornet were of the same type but of a different level. Again, it was very hard to put into English. But the end result was that while both deep connections, which she decided to put down as a level two connection versus the level one which was the basic control and sensing level she used with everything else, functioned in the same essential way, the original one was somehow… more complex. A level two and a half, perhaps. Undoing the level two was possible, she could see how, and proved it by promptly reversing the process. It took some effort and she had to smack her power quite hard in a couple of places to get it to unstick, but it worked in the end. As did redoing it.
But the first deep connection to Vespa I? That was much more recalcitrant for some reason she didn't quite understand. After a fair amount of time and effort she finally decided that, in essence, she'd accidentally 'locked' the connection when she'd made it, and now she couldn't quite work out how to unlock it. Taylor was sure it was possible but it would take a lot of thought and some more experimentation.
But overall she was very pleased with her results. Making and breaking the level two connection to Vespa II didn't seem to cause the hornet any problems at all, and having yet another body to work with when she connected like that felt as natural as her first hornet had. And still did, to the point it would probable feel weird if she wasn't connected to Vespa I.
Rereading the notes she'd spider-typed during her experiment she nodded a little to herself. One last test to make. Reconnecting to the hornet, she flew it down the tunnel, and headed away from the warehouse back to the agri store. Her original hornet connection seemed to have made her power decided she really did have two bodies in two different places at the same time, she'd concluded after a lot of thought. It explained why she seemed to be able to use her power through either body with the same range in each case, regardless of how far apart they were. Some tests with both super-hornets outside the city hadn't so far found a maximum range to that link, although so far she'd only moved them a little more than fifty miles apart.
Even so, just like during her initial tests, there had been no change to the link in the slightest, so it seemed quite plausible now that there was no upper limit as such. Which was both extremely odd and very useful indeed, with some fascinating implications. Implications which would require more than just Vespa.
And to her delight, Vespa II worked just the same. It didn't take long to leave the tunnel near her house, and she could feel hundreds of thousands of familiar bugs inside a mile and a half diameter sphere centered on the hornet. Somehow she was able to individually identify each and every one of them, most of them ones she'd been sensing through for weeks now. Flying higher, she orbited her neighborhood, looking down on all the buildings and streets and parks from a few hundred yards up. Cars moved around, people were walking here and there, or in their yards cleaning up after the winter, the sun was shining through the clouds and showing spring was well on the way…
Yeah. This had real promise indeed.
Grinning to herself, she looked at the other insects she had in her library, which was quite substantial by now. She still lacked some creatures she really wanted, because it was too early in the year yet to acquire most of them. Mantises, dragonflies, some species of ant, quite a few beetle variations; all of those would be available quite soon. She had some dragonfly larvae at home in a tank already, having retrieved them from a pond in a local park. She was waiting for these to develop into adults, and was planning on taking another few trips into the countryside when it warmed up a little more looking for the rest and anything else that seemed useful. And there were all the exotics at Mike's story to investigate too once she ran out of locally sourced lifeforms of interest.
Which would take a while, because there were an awful lot of them, especially when you started looking at the marine environment.
And she'd hardly even begun to look at nematodes, and barnacles, and all the other little beasties her power seemed fine with. Leaving aside the things she was sure it should be fine with but for some reason wasn't quite. Yet. It would learn…
Whether it liked it or not. Although, that said, it mostly did seem to like it, it just found the whole thing weird beyond belief and kept complaining that none of this should be possible. So she had to show it how.
Overall it was a hell of a lot of fun, though, and she had no regrets at all. Getting powers hadn't been fun, but the end result was pretty much worth it. Although snapping Sophia's arm like a twig had certainly cheered her up and made her think that the scales were probably a lot closer to balanced now despite the powers outcome.
However none of that was really important. She had other more immediate things to concern herself with than a bully that with luck she'd never have to see again, considering how upset the PRT seemed to be with the little bitch. Right now, she had science to do.
As she started bringing Vespa II back, she was also making notes on other aspects of this whole process to investigate, while thinking about how to go about that. One thing that she wondered about was, now that she could make and break a level two link successfully, could she make the link and still have the creature thus linked go about its business more or less normally? Or would she have to do everything manually, so to speak?
With Vespa she was operating the hornet as if it was the body she was born with, which was much easier than by rights it should have been, but there were some benefits she could see to having the linked insect remain autonomous for the most part. If she could set things up so that she had a creature that acted as another node for her power but was otherwise just going about life normally, it would reduce the number of things she needed to personally involve herself with. Even though her multitasking ability appeared to be functionally limitless, she still didn't necessarily want to be driving lots of random creatures around to that level if she didn't have to. Certain things they needed to do she wasn't totally keen on experiencing up close and personal, even though her less intimate linkages would already allow that if she wished for everything inside her range. On the whole she'd so far tended to mostly just sense through them, not micromanage them, which at the moment a level two link seemed to enforce. When linked to something else at that depth, that creature was her in almost every way that mattered. Was that in fact necessary?
It took her nearly three hours of hard work and more tries than she wanted to think about but in the end, rather unexpectedly, she found a way to modify the link which proved that no, it wasn't necessary. Not completely, anyway.
She was still linked to Vespa II in a very deep way, but she found that by slightly… twisting… the linkage in a direction that strictly speaking had too many dimensions to fit into what she'd thought was real, she could somehow change the process so the hornet's own brain was doing mostly normal hornet things. Gradually releasing her control, she smiled when the insect started moving about in a way that showed it was functioning as if it was simply a common domestic unnaturally enlarged Asian Giant Hornet.
Taylor experimented for a while, finding the right mix of gentle control that let her guide the hornet the same way she did all the other creatures in range. She moved it to her hand and peered at it, smiling as the insect looked back apparently curiously. "Thank you for your patience and cooperation," she told the huge hornet. "You've helped me a lot. I'll make sure I find a good spot for your nest when the time comes."
Merging with the insect, she thought for a while. Then she started making a list of suitable creatures to use as relay nodes for her ability. They needed to be discreet, capable of looking after themselves, but also not too dangerous just in case any of them ever came into contact with people. It was unlikely as she was planning on keeping them underground well out of the way, and she'd sense anyone coming anywhere near long before they could cause trouble, but better safe that sorry.
In the end she decided that the only practical solution was to make something suitable. None of the normal bugs were quite right for the job. She looked thoughtfully at her glowspiders, wondering if they might be what she needed, but in the end she shook her head. Something new then. Similar, because spiders were pretty versatile, but they'd also need extra features.
The solution, as she was coming to believe was often the case, turned out to be crabs. More or less.
She started with a callinectes sapidus, or Atlantic blue crab, one of the more common species in the bay. It made a good base for her project as it was a fairly tough little animal with surprisingly good eyesight, which was one of the things she'd made use of in her study of low light compound eyes. Adding in some jumping spider for even better eyes and high strength legs, bioluminescent organs just because it might come in handy, a touch of crayfish for fresh water tolerance, a little wolf spider because that seemed to make them faster, the limpet-based super-exoskeleton, some starfish for the resilience and regeneration she'd been investigating recently…
By the time she finished she was looking at something rather like a spider with crab claws, and a body shape that let it close its legs into the abdomen to the point it had the appearance of a rock, dark blue-black in color. At full extent the legs covered roughly a foot, and each of them terminated in small grasping claws as well, which were surprisingly dexterous. And of course it could glow in the dark in a whole rainbow of colors, from barely detectable to too bright to look at for a while.
It also had quite impressive fangs and a venom that could probably take down an elephant, but that seemed to be almost unavoidable with her power, which apparently couldn't resist adding lethal options into everything. At least she was able to ensure the venom wasn't capable of exploding, or irradiating anything. Fluorine was nowhere involved as far as she could tell, which was something of a relief. That stuff was kind of dangerous.
But it met her requirements perfectly. It could live in both fresh and salt water without any difficulty at all, would happily subsist off rats or cockroaches or anything like that, had a very efficient metabolism which meant it wouldn't need to eat all that much anyway, and was bright enough to avoid people. Not really bright in absolute terms but for an arthropod it was reasonably smart, although not up to her glowspiders.
She played with the thing for a while, seeing how strong it was, which was ridiculously so, and how fast, which was horrifyingly so. The thing could cross from one end of the warehouse to the other in a couple of seconds at a sprint, which meant it was going better than thirty miles an hour. And it could jump at least twenty feet without even trying. Amusing herself using it to pick up increasingly heavy things she finally decided it was perfect. Dropping the old oil drum with a crash she made it zip back to her and skid to a halt, all eight eyestalks peering in all directions including up at her. It gave the mental impression of being like an eager if rather dim dog, so she folded her legs and sank to the floor, reaching out to stroke its carapace.
"Yes, you're very cute," she assured it. The crabspider wiggled its eyestalks in a happy sort of way. "Now, don't worry, this won't hurt." It only took her a moment to make a level two link to it, which caused her to smile widely. If anything it was easier than with Vespa II, possibly because she'd designed her new friend from scratch to this exact end. "See? OK, all we have to do is make a few more siblings, and you guys can go out into the world and seek your fortune. Or at least run around under the city and enjoy life while helping me keep an eye on things."
Within an hour she had a dozen of the crabspiders all scuttling about exploring the warehouse. Looking at them she felt a sense of achievement. It was a good start, and would let her do some things she'd been planning for a while now. Such as fully explore the tunnels, which she'd made quite a lot of headway on already, but couldn't spend all her time on since she had a lot of other tasks to deal with. Her school work was on the whole fairly simple to deal with, and with the glowspiders helping, she could probably increase her reading capacity enormously which was one of the main reasons she'd made them, but there were all manner of other things to do as well as poke around underground.
That said, poking around underground was enormous fun, and kept producing useful results, so she had no intention of stopping. Not to mention that she was finding that the network of caves and tunnels and rivers and all the other things down there was far more expansive than she'd ever expected, or her dad's maps showed. Those were just the easy to access parts… She still needed to fully investigate the huge underground lake, for example, and try to figure out where the old boat had come from. And the river running deep under the city on the far side of Calvert's bunker was much longer than her dad had realized, with hundreds of offshoots and tributaries, all of which needed a thorough exploration.
She'd definitely do it in person in the long run, but scouting it out with her new friends was a good approach to begin with.
So, yes, she had more than enough to keep her occupied and some help wouldn't go amiss.
"Right, listen up, troops," she ordered, all her crabspiders coming to attention in two neat rows in front of her. "Your mission, should you accept it, which you will of course, is to spread out through the tunnels and extend the influence of your leader, that's me, far and wide. Is everyone clear on that?"
Twelve claws lifted into the air and clicked.
Taylor grinned. This was fun. "OK. Go forth and… well, don't multiply, that's only going to cause trouble, but just go forth, I guess. Stay out of reach of humans, they'll try to stomp on you and that'll just get embarrassing, because they might break a foot or something, then just wander around and see what there is to see." She was basically amusing herself at this point since she was pretty much talking to herself. If her dad could see this he'd probably be laughing his ass off.
All the crabspiders saluted her, turned, and dashed towards the exit to the tunnels below. Within ten seconds they'd disappeared down the stairs and were zipping along the tunnel towards places they could get into the rest of the network, one of them remaining local so she had coverage of the docks, the rest spreading out through the city. She might need more later, but for now this would probably do the job, she thought happily as she monitored their progress and steered the creatures to where she wanted them. Once they arrived, she'd set things up so they stuck around that general area, unless she needed them somewhere else.
Satisfied that things were proceeding according to plan, Taylor started packing up. It was nearly nine PM and she wanted to get back and have dinner with her dad, tell him the results of her latest work, then do some reading. Shortly she was heading home through the tunnel, her backpack full of notebooks and laptop, while the glowspiders rode on her armored exoskeleton and seemed to enjoy the experience.
By the time she got home, her awareness had spread over a large portion of the city. And a surprising number of minor criminals were finding their trade interrupted by various random insects at an awkward moment, which was far more effective than most people would think. Or probably realize.
A mugger slapping at a mosquito at a just the wrong time was surprisingly good at preventing a mugging, she'd quickly discovered. Most people seemed to twitch or flinch if a moth flew into their face, or a fly decided their ear was a good place for a really loud buzz. It didn't take all that much if you got your timing right…
As she went to sleep later that night, Taylor was wondering if there was a high score table for crimes prevented and where she'd place on it.
Looking at the medical report in front of her, Emily felt yet again that Calvert had got off far too lightly. "You're certain?" she asked, raising her eyes.
Doctor Grant, the Brockton Bay Renal consultant, nodded seriously. "Yes. You have levels of three different proton pump inhibitor drugs in your system that are far too high to be safe, and have been detrimentally affecting your kidneys for, based on our tests, at least four years. None of these drugs are in your medical history, nor are any of them suitable for any medical problem you are noted as having, and the only conclusion we can come to is that someone has been arranging to have them administered to you without your knowledge. Our findings show that your kidney function would be significantly better if the drugs hadn't been involved, possibly to the point that dialysis would be unnecessary, or at worse would be required far less often. They'll have been affecting your digestive system rather noticeably as well."
"How were they administered?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"Most likely through a combination of interference with your normal medication, and possibly via the dialysis itself. We'll have to take samples of every drug you've got to check, but we can't think of any other real possibilities. Adulterating your food is possible but unless you have a personal diet that only you eat, we think it's unlikely since it would also affect other people. Which would have become fairly obvious quite some time ago, considering how many medical checkups PRT staff regularly undergo." He shook his head, looking both angry and worried. "Someone has gone to a lot of effort to induce what I can only consider a very slow murder attempt. My estimate is that you'd have likely hit a point where death was likely in approximately twelve to eighteen months at the outside. Panacea was completely correct when she told you the dialysis wasn't as effective as it should be."
"I see." Emily sighed, rereading the report conclusions. "What are my options?"
"The drugs will exit your system fairly rapidly now we've discovered the problem, but the damage they caused remains. It's too far advanced for any practical conventional treatment, with the exception of a kidney transplant, which itself presents a number of complications bearing in mind your other medical issues. I certainly wouldn't want to go on record as guaranteeing a positive outcome, I'm afraid. We do have some experimental treatments that may have some beneficial effect although it will take a significant number of tests to be sure they're appropriate in your particular case." He met her eyes directly, after glancing down at his notes. "The only other viable option is Parahuman healing."
"Panacea."
"Panacea is your best option, yes. There are others available, although all of them have certain limitations. She has almost none, and is fast, extremely effective, and knows exactly what she's doing. I would highly recommend you consider it. And before you mention it, I am aware of your reservations about Parahuman abilities, Director Piggot. The notes your PRT staff doctor forwarded are… extensive." He held up a hand as she opened her mouth. "I won't get into an argument with you about it, as it only wastes both our time. I am presenting you with the options you have. The decision which to go for, if any, is entirely up to you. All I suggest is you carefully weigh up whether a personal belief is worth your life."
Emily gazed at him with a certain amount of irritation, moderated with the knowledge that he was genuinely trying to help. That warred with her own internal feelings about Parahumans, to the point she couldn't help being somewhat annoyed. Even so, she did her best to remain calm and professional. In the end she nodded. "I will have to consider my options, doctor. Thank you for the information."
"You're welcome, Director. Please contact me immediately if you have any questions, or come to a decision. I would also suggest you need to ask some very probing questions in your own facility."
"Oh, trust me, Doctor, that is already happening." She smiled nastily. "Certain people are finding their life choices have brought them consequences they're not going to enjoy in the slightest."
"Good. Hopefully you can find out who was behind all this and see they meet with the correct punishment."
"I suspect the one behind this has already passed beyond the point I can do what should have been done years ago, but there's always the slight possibility it was someone else," she grunted as she stood. "I very much doubt it though."
"Well, in any case, please don't wait too long to work out how you want to proceed. Time is not on your side." He held his hand out, and after a moment she shook it. "I expect one way or the other we'll talk again fairly soon."
"Most likely, Doctor," she replied with a nod. On her way downstairs she passed Panacea walking the other way talking to a nurse who was with her. She met the teenager's eyes, the girl looking back in a rather too knowing manner and nodding to her. Returning the gesture she walked on, deep in thought.