And so ends the Causal Arc! Thanks for reading everyone, drop a like and tell me what you think!
E.L.F
_________________________
The ocean was hungry.
The Warp.
I had to remember that, no matter how strange it was. It had a name. This ocean of threads and currents that I could almost feel like an almost physical thing had a name. It had a few names. Entire civilizations risen and fallen knew what it was. It was something that had existed long before I did and would continue to exist a long time after I was gone.
Forever.
It was hungry.
According to Ulthwé, that was the natural state of things after it got fucked up a bunch once upon a time. There was a lot more to that history lesson, believe me, but that's what it boiled down to. There were wars. There was death. And there was some utterly fucked up
shit that got reflected onto this mirror of reality so hard it cracked. The Aether, the Empyrean, the Immaterium, the Sea of Souls were all names it used to have. Some still used the older versions, but I was told it was no more correct than calling a dried riverbed a river.
There was only The Warp now.
I was learning a lot of things lately.
I turned to the right and inwardly marveled at how I could actually tell there even was a right in the Warp. I mentioned before that the ocean seemed to be a directionless location. Think of it like being in the middle of the Atlantic, several hundred feet below the surface. Deep enough where you can't look up and see sunlight on the water, just darkness. Nothing below you. Nothing to the right or left. There were only the currents.
And the sharks.
I keep making ocean metaphors. That is not going to help me remember. Then someone drops you a rope with a flashlight tied at the end. You might still not know where the fuck you are, but at least now you have a point of reference.
That was the lance of bright, golden
unlight left behind by Scion.
I turned back to the shining melody of the Infinity Circuit and fell into the cool gray. I avoided touching anything, or
anyone and resolved to just wait. I didn't have to wait long. Ulthwé coalesced before me quickly. She was a shining light fading into the pale image of a very tall, thin woman with an elaborate five part braid swinging down to her knees and wearing robes covered in what I now knew to be runic designs. The most prominent
rune looked a bit like an eagle carrying a drop of water in its beak when looked at one way and the hieroglyph of a crying eye when you blinked.
She tilted her head demandingly.
"Still there," I said. "Dimmer, but it feels wrong
. Like it's making me physically ill somehow."
That flashlight from earlier? It was great and all, but I could deal with it not being made out of radioactive uranium. Maybe that was unfair. I understood why Scion felt like he had to pull that out given the mega storm threatening New Delhi, but at the same time I was not comfortable with the fact that his solution made me feel bad. The only thing that kept it from being petty to the extreme was that on top of everything else I had done to myself, that had
not helped. It had
really fucked me up.
It would do that to the unprepared, apparently.
And you are certain you have never seen the like? She asked, sending a brief image of a skeletal machine made out of an abyssal black metal, holding some kind of device in its hands glowing with sickly green lightning.
It didn't look like anything I wanted to meet in a dark alley.
"Never," I confirmed. And then because I couldn't help myself, I asked, "Friends of yours?"
She glanced away, a corner of her lips curling even as she flicked a dismissive finger. I could almost hear the scoff. I remembered seeing something like that machine from the other souls in the Circuit, locked in battle with what I now knew to be the Eldar. I wasn't completely ignorant, but I could play at it just to annoy her. Yes, it was petty. The woman was dead. She still had the hole a spear, or maybe a large caliber bullet, had made at the base of her throat. Let's just say our first impressions of each other weren't great. She was dealing with what she saw as a 'mon'keigh' child, and I was dealing with an asshole.
The other ones I saw, the insect-dinosaurs? Hadn't come up. I wondered if avoidance of the subject was on purpose. I could see not wanting to talk about the aliens that killed you or your friends. I just wasn't happy knowing there were things out there that wanted to kill
me.
Old acquaintances, she sung with a hint of distaste.
They do not concern you.
So the avoidance
was on purpose.
"So you asked about them because you just felt like it?" I pointed out.
I asked to be thorough. What use is there in pursuing irrelevant information?
Then why did I feel like it wasn't as irrelevant as she was making it seem? I didn't have enough information to challenge that right now, so I ducked my head. I could feel my ears twitch backwards and I waved my fingers in an expression I'd seen her make before. It was something like grudging acceptance. A common enough expression she displayed around Farseer Vernasse.
Ulthwé went still. Her eyes were wide.
"What? Did I get it wrong?"
No, she hummed. I could hear the buried note of what I was finally beginning to isolate as wonder in her voice.
You did not.
"I do learn, you know."
The Farseer said as much, she sung hesitantly. She stared at me in a wide eyed expression I didn't know how to parse.
You are...fifteen years old. The weirdness morphed into her customary frown.
I see now.
"Glad someone does." That got me a look I was infinitely more familiar with; exasperation. I gave her a tight smile in response. Of my two teachers, I preferred Iyanden. He actually wanted to teach me and seemed concerned about me as a person. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but he never talked down to me and vetoed any idea that seemed dangerous. Ulthwé taught, but not much else. I had no illusions that she wouldn't toss me to the wolves in a heartbeat where Iyanden might at least regret it. "...I want to go further, in the Warp."
Further? Her frown tightened.
You would risk yourself.
"Whatever Scion did, it's keeping them away." And by them, I meant daemons. The big ones. That was another long story. A really long story. "Minimal risk, so long as I do not stray too far. And I can find my way back."
Why do you wish this?
I hesitated. Asking for permission, and justifying it, was an odd feeling. For years, I had gotten used to doing things by myself because Mom was gone and Dad wasn't there. The past year and a half had taught me that adults in authority were at best unhelpful. The less said about my peers, the better. Dad wasn't here, but that wasn't his fault. Piggot wasn't here, and that wasn't her fault either. Iyanden was focusing on my recovery. Vernasse was keeping me contained. There was only Ulthwé. And I wanted to ask
someone for permission. I needed to.
I didn't trust myself anymore.
She seemed to catch herself asking again, instead deliberately raising a questioning eyebrow.
"I thought I saw something of an ...anomaly."
Ulthwé stiffened.
Explain.
I gathered my thoughts. Detailing the Warp was always going to be one of those things. I was going to have to use a water metaphor again. "Like there is a, not a hole, but a drain?"
A drai - Her note cut off abruptly.
Go. Report what you find.
"Know what it is?"
Ulthwé considered me, an odd quirk to her lips.
Perhaps. Only one way to be sure.
"Right," I drawled. "Fine. I'll try not to get eaten or something."
Some expression flickered through her bright, pale hazel eyes at that. I thought it was halfway between fear and resignation, but I may have been way off base.
Yes, she began slowly. The image of that massive crack in reality, the malevolent Eye flashed through my mind. I could feel the shadow of a burning, greedy grip closing on something inside me. Ulthwé became light as she retreated deeper into the Circuit, her last words lingering.
Please try.
I swallowed, hard.
I could reach outside of this place. I had a living body I could return to. The Infinity Circuit was a haven for the dead. It was their afterlife. It protected them, as best as it was able. We did not know what would happen if I died. Would they linger? Would they fade? Would they move on? Because if there was something about me that was making this all possible, then maybe I was being too glib about the risks.
But Ulthwé said to go.
I bit my lip as I reached out and pulled away. It was a smooth shift of perspective and I was out among the currents and threads of the ocean once more. The Warp. Scion's golden lance shone brightly in the churning abyss. I imagined it stretching all the way across the galaxy like the light of the Anathema. Catching my own thought, I winced immediately. I shouldn't call him that. Maybe the dangers of the galaxy they lived in justified some of what I learned. Maybe.
It sounded like something out of a dark, three AM, nightmare. A nightmare that was too close for comfort. I imagined my storm over New Delhi devouring the planet, engulfing the solar system as its very own Eye of Terror.
All because of my pride.
The warning still rang in my soul.
Something moved towards me, but when I turned my attention to it, it shied away. I smiled what was probably a grim smile as I moved forward and saw the rest scatter. New Delhi had broken something in me I think, just as it had awakened something else.
I didn't know what it was.
I gathered the power that came too easily to me as I crouched down, and then I
moved. I ignored the drifting threads that brushed against me. Now was not the time to be caught up in possible futures.
The anomaly was just like how it appeared last time. A weird drain looking ripple in the Warp where it looked like the natural currents were disrupted somehow and partially obscured. I slowed to a crawl as I approached it.
Nothing immediately jumped out at me. Wasn't sure if that said anything or not.
Here goes nothing.
I stepped within. At first, nothing changed. I cautiously explored, but found nothing. I was beginning to think that what I thought was an anomaly was just the Warp doing Warp things. Ulthwé probably knew that and this was some
overly elaborate lesson about assumptions and ignorance. I sighed, about to give up when my foot stepped on something. Something hard. Something that didn't shift the moment I thought about it.
Solid.
I held my breath as I stepped
out of the Warp into a glowing tunnel. The dimensions seemed infinite, expanding across a
horizon and reaching upwards to a sky of scintillating light. Where the
fuck was I?
Spooked, I turned right back around and dove into the Warp. I reached for the nearest currents, seized the closest threads and forced them to part. I projected myself just like I had over New Delhi, but instead of a sprawling metropolis I found myself on a barren rock. It was covered in fine, razor shards of gray-white sand as far as I could see and pockmarked with craters. The sky was a midnight black with a large dominating yellow star. A moment of panic saw me shift my location in a blind leap. I looked for something I recognized.
I froze when I found it.
A blue and green ball, hung like a marble in an expanse of dark space, covered in the white wisps and swirls of clouds.
I don't know how long I just stared. I traced familiar coastlines anyone could find on a globe. At some point, I had sat down. I don't know what took so long, but right there sitting down on the surface of the moon, it finally began to sink in. Everything. About galaxy spanning empires and threats. About entire worlds being discovered and lost.
Aliens.
About how little I really knew.
Back in the Warp, Scion's golden lance still shone right above New Delhi.
The cool gray of the Infinity Circuit seemed different when I returned. It hadn't changed, just my perspective. Like before, Ulthwé coalesced before me. Unlike before, I think I saw her for what she was.
A ghost.
What did you find? She sung softly.
"A tunnel," I said. "A very
large tunnel made out of light on the dark side of the moon."
A tunnel, she repeated with a song of wry amusement. Her eyes were bright. A vast image pressed into my mind of an extensive network of pulsating light as if there was a heart beat and I was seeing the map of a circulatory system. Then the image shrunk and shifted, traveling down a vein until the viewpoint emerged from a glowing portal held between an arch of elegantly crafted Wraithbone. The words flashed into my mind.
The Webway.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Feb 17th, 2011
1:07 AM
The only thing Director Emily Piggot wanted right now was a few stiff drinks in bed and a complete and total erasure of the past month and a half. Better make it the past three months just to be safe.
It would mean she would have never even
heard of the name Taylor Hebert.
"I am not telling you this to be difficult, or because I am not on your side, Mr. Hebert," Emily said. It was a bald faced lie. She was
absolutely trying to be difficult, and the side of a grieving recently triggered father at a very high risk for doing something stupid was not one she was eager to take chances on. "It is your right to be there as her guardian. But I need you to consider not just what your options are, but
Taylor's."
Danny Hebert winced. The green eyes his daughter inherited were lined with exhaustion and constantly shifting, seeing something only he could see.
"I should be there when she wakes up," he repeated stubbornly. "Not some - "
"Government employee?" Emily finished for him.
He gave her a sheepish smile, squeezing on the blue stress ball in his fist. "I was going to say law enforcement."
"I know," she replied dryly.
In the end, he caved thanks to the timely arrival of Heberts' parahuman liaison. It wasn't everyday a Director had to make an emergency request for a new one because your previous had been
woefully unfit. To the tune of a bullying campaign ending in
Maelstrom. Kemper was something of a lucky break. The woman seemed competent, but time would tell if she wasn't just a stop gap on the way to this all blowing up in their face. Emily may not like most people, but she did understand 'not making things worse.' Even if a lot of the shit she had to deal with in her job left her with both hands tied behind her back.
She rolled her shoulders, checked the manila folder one last time, then opened the door to 621. She was greeted with a severe temperature drop as the plastic over the blown windows struggled to hold back the winter's chill. Someone had robbed a few offices of their lamps to replace the broken ceiling lights, designs ranging from art deco to a sunflower. A heart monitor made quiet, fast beeps in time to the pulsing light in Hebert's chest as her assigned Nurse gingerly removed the IV. He was an older gentleman with a neat salt and pepper beard. Emily glanced around the room for a moment, and spotted the whiteboard with the name 'Derrick' scribbled in blue after the stenciled 'Hi! Your nurse today is:'
There was a ghost in the corner.
Caduceus was eyeing it, murmuring under his breath. "That's not creepy at
all."
It
was creepy, and had been worth about seven pages of additional paperwork for independence.
Assault had made a joke about Hebert's family power being the ability to bury people in paperwork.
On a completely unrelated note, he had console duty for the next month.
"How are we looking?" Emily asked as she pulled up the chair and sat into it heavily. It was the typical hospital visitor's chair, blocky and hard. Suitable for holding weight but little else. For a moment, she fantasized being in her nice, comfortable, overpriced office chair.
Christ, it was one in the morning. She should be thinking about her
bed.
This job was killing her, she thought.
The medical Striker snapped up a clipboard. "Everything looks good. Numbers are within expected range given her history. I don't foresee any problems."
"Excellent," Emily said with a sharp smile. "Now tell that to the ghost."
The cape blanched. "...are you serious?"
"Yup," Derrick replied, popping the p. He placed a careful bandaid on Hebert's wrist and began to wrap up the tubing. "Independent."
Caduceus floundered for a good twenty seconds before he found his balls.
"Hi, Taylor's ghost," was his cringe inducing opener. "I'm Caduceus and I'm a cellular time manipulator. I - uh," He made a pained expression. "Reverse time on a micro scale, can only do organic material. I can heal her." He gestured to the girl on the bed and rushed through the rest. "DoIhaveyourpermission?"
The ghost opened its pale eyes. Caduceus froze under the hard stare.
"Demonstrate." It said simply.
His mouth worked for a moment. "O-okay. Um."
He turned to Emily.
"No," she said.
"Just a cut - "
She stared him down. "No."
He turned to Derrick. The nurse took one look at the cape's pleading expression and let out an explosive sigh. "Be right back then."
The ghost's very aware gaze followed the man out of the room. There was nothing comfortable about the projection, which meant it fit Taylor Hebert's repertoire perfectly.
"You refuse yourself as an example?"
"Manton limited," he replied. Hebert's construct raised a questioning eyebrow. "Ahh, power doesn't work on myself, only others...I'm explaining things to a ghost," he said as if having an epiphany.
The man was an idiot.
It hummed in response.
Derrick returned, blue gloves on his hands as he ripped open the small plastic casing of a hypodermic needle. Then he stopped, glancing down at those same hands. He tore the left glove off.
"Habit." He braced his hand on the tray attached to the bed and easily located a vein on the side of his wrist. When the needle withdrew, it bled profusely. He showed it off, wiping at it with gauze.
Caduceus laughed before reaching over, making sure everything was in the construct's line of sight and then pinching the man's wrist between two fingers for a moment. Emily saw the construct's eyes narrow at the small distortion accompanying Caduceus' power that appeared and disappeared in the blink of the eye. "All good."
Derrick swiped the area with the gauze again, then squeezed at the loose skin there. Not a drop of blood emerged.
"How does this ability work?"
"Uh?" Caduceus blinked. "Reverses time on a micro scale…?"
"How?" It stressed the word.
"By what means is the skein of time reversed? That will determine what effect it will have on my charge. Micro-wormholes linking past and present?" Every word saw Caduceus' eyes behind his green visor grow wider.
"A merge of alternate timelines? Infusing energy to reverse entropy?"
Emily blinked.
Shit.
The
fuck kind of projection was this?
"I -" Caduceus knuckled the side of his face for a moment. "Okay. I am aware of the cellular makeup of organic material I touch," he said carefully. "When I use my power, I can see the effects of aging, cumulative damage and injury on a timeline, going backwards. I chose when to stop the reversal."
The projection blinked slowly.
"How easily you use what you do not understand…"
Because that's what Taylor Hebert needed. A mouthy ghost projection.
It rankled.
Because it was true.
They knew the 'what' of parahuman abilities. The 'how' of it were mainly educated guesses made after testing by people with degrees in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology… but even then sometimes they threw up their hands and gave their best guess.
And there was nothing for the
why?
They would use it. They had to.
Emily would
never trust it.
"I've
been through the testing," Caduceus said stiffly. "I
am a medically trained professional. It will work."
"It will," the construct allowed and it closed its eyes.
"Are - " Caduceus started hesitantly. "Are we good?" There was no answer. "I think we're good?" Still nothing. "We're good."
"Then let's get this over with," Emily said.
Caduceus approached the bed slowly and when the ghostly spear didn't make a move for him, he reached out and gingerly pressed fingers to the underside of Taylor Hebert's wrist. The distortion that appeared around the girl's body was unsettlingly like the video's Emily had seen of Grey Boy's victims. Victims the cape before her could help, if he could ever touch them. The distortion was a blue-shifted grayish blur that did nothing to hide how startlingly red her blood was.
Her burn wounds reopened as the scabbing and scarring vanished, soaking through the medical gauze, before the burns rapidly began to close. The toes that had been blown clear off her right foot abruptly reappeared as the burns cleared on her feet, traveling up her legs. Her missing fingers similarly found themselves. As the burns cleared her face, Emily knew that behind her eyelids, the girl once more had her father's green eyes.
And Taylor Hebert woke with a gasp.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Feb 17th, 2011
1:44am
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Emily Piggot's voice was the first thing I heard. The woman would never know just how right she was.
I laid there for a moment longer, taking stock. The pain being gone was the first thing I noticed. There wasn't even a hint of it, meaning I had been completely and totally healed. I was in a bed with a partial incline and everything smelled significantly less than I was used to. An attempt at sterility? I was in a hospital. My first thought was 'How was Dad going to pay for all this?' My second thought remembered all those papers we had signed putting me on the PRT's payroll. We
should have health insurance. Did it cover having Panacea heal me? It was Amy, right?
I wiggled all ten of my toes and then did my fingers. Everything was accounted for. Did that mean…? I slowly opened my eyes.
"Woah," I heard someone, a masculine voice exclaim. "Were they like that before?"
Everything was in that same supernatural crisp focus it had been since I came out of my locker. The hospital ceiling was a cream color and the light bulbs directly above me were broken. I had a feeling I knew how that had happened. I swung my gaze around and found Emily Piggot in a chair by the door, an older man in hospital scrubs digging a blood pressure cuff out and another man in a green and white costume with a green visor smiling hesitantly at me.
"Before?" I croaked and swallowed, trying to get rid of the frog. I found Farseer Vernasse in the corner near me.
Thank you, I sent to her along with all of the gratitude I could muster. She didn't exactly smile, but I could see some subtle tension in her expression ease. She became a white mist that flowed back into the spirit stone embedded in my sternum.
"They weren't," Piggot said, an exasperated expression on her face. Her dyed blonde hair was showing a lot of brown at the roots and she looked tired. I fought down the guilt and instead looked back at the cape hero. His costume reminded me of a knight with white armored sections underneath the green tabard. The two twisting snakes around a winged rod were prominent on his chest. His green visor covered most of his face, but was more transparent around his eyes.
"They glow," he said bluntly, but his smile had strengthened. "Don't worry, it's a cool effect."
"You're about due for testing anyway," Emily Piggot said with absolutely no humor. "Thank you, Caduceus. We can get you a PRT escort - "
"I'll take a cab, don't worry about it."
"Mind if we take your vitals?" My nurse murmured to me as he held up the blood pressure cuff. I wordlessly held out my arm. The scratch of my clothes on my skin was almost distracting. It was hard to keep track of time in the Warp, and it wasn't like the Infinity Circuit had a clock either.
"What's the date?" I asked.
"February 17th," Piggot answered.
Felt like longer.
"Thank you," I made sure to say before I had a thermometer stuck in my mouth. After testing my eyes with a penlight, my nurse packed up. He handed me a cord with a bulbous end. It had a big red button.
"The call light if you need anything, alright?"
Piggot stuck around, waiting patiently until it was just the two of us. She lifted the manila folder she held and let it drop with a quiet smack, before heaving herself out of her chair. She offered me her hand and I stared at it.
"Well, congratulations," she said as I shook it. "You did us all a service. If I may be frank, good fucking job on Leviathan."
That monster would never kill anyone ever again, but it didn't seem to matter. I knew the fatalities for the Endbringer battle were likely smaller than it had ever been, but it didn't seem to matter. I knew New Delhi wouldn't be quarantined. I knew I changed the future. I knew I had proved that we still had hope.
I killed Leviathan by convincing a boy to kill himself. That would haunt me for the rest of my life.
My smile felt like a lie.
"I already broke the news to your father, you can expect at minimum a five billion dollar -" I choked on air. " - share of the bounty to be paid for the Endbringer." I'm a
billionaire? "The President himself has expressed an interest in thanking you personally on behalf of the United States and WEDGDG has been coordinating similar offers from other countries. India is at the top of that list."
My mind spun on an axis.
New Hampshire wanted in on that, with the Governor asking after me and Brockton Bay's mayor didn't want to be left out. Apparently neither did
Legend and Director Costa-Brown. There was some rumbling about maybe a Nobel Prize, a national holiday, and at the end of it, I had to just kind of sit there, overwhelmed. I don't know why I didn't expect it. No one has managed to kill an Endbringer for literally decades and that wasn't for lack of trying. Maybe it was because I didn't feel like celebrating.
"Okay," I eventually managed to say. "Okay." Once my brain started working again, I pinched the bridge of my nose. "That's the good news."
Piggot gave me this wry smile. "That's the good news," she confirmed.
"And the bad?"
The bad news was the manila folder. The first page within said it all.
Manslaughter. Assault with parahuman ability. Kidnapping. Totaling over four hundred charges. My stomach sank through the floor.
Yeah. That was about what I had been expecting.
"If anyone asks," Piggot said in a mild tone of voice. "You got this information on your own without assistance." She turned the page for me.
"A plea bargain," I breathed. I saw Eidolon's name. I quickly put two and two together. "A show trial?"
"Less of one than some might like," Piggot admitted, "You will be arrested, likely held on bail, but we can guarantee a private plea hearing without the media. We're already making the arrangements for the plea deal and we know the judge. The real question is, will you cooperate?"
"Yes," I said immediately. I had little reason not to. Going against this and pitting myself against the government? It might give that part of me that wanted to decide my own future satisfaction, but for what? An uphill struggle for everything ever afterwards? Constantly on my guard? It would break Dad's heart, and
for what? If I refused to take any kind of punishment for any wrongdoing and banked on how useful I was, how would I be different from Sophia? The athlete. The
Ward. I knew what it felt like to be on the losing end of a calculation of worth. Now I was worth millions of people. This was a slap on the wrist, and ultimately what I wanted anyway. To be worth it. To be a hero. I looked down at the paper again.
Manslaughter.
Now I was worth millions.
"I will cooperate," I said softly.
Piggot let out a small sigh of relief. "The Chief Director would like to hear your
thoughts -" I read between the lines. Use my powers. " - about it after you're discharged."
I read through the rest of the pages quickly, trusting my memory before reaching out to the Warp. The papers and manila folder disintegrated in my hands. I brushed the dust off my sheet as Piggot raised an eyebrow.
"Yup," was all she said.
"What would you have done if I said no?" I had to ask. It was pretty risky for her to deliver the news herself. Risky, but it showed her resolve.
"I would have let you walk," Piggot checked her watch. "Then filled out resignation papers."
Both of my eyebrows rose and the woman smiled.
"I'm a government employee," she said. "Not
stupid."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
February 17th, 2011
9:28am
The door finished closing behind me with a tiny click and all of the sounds I had gotten used to with my improved hearing muffled into a dull drone. If 'Need to Know' had an interior design, I was looking at it. I crossed over to the dark wood desk facing the large screen and tapped on the button prompting me to connect to PRT, LA.
"Ah," The Chief Director of the PRT, Rebecca Costa-Brown said as soon as her image appeared. "Right on time."
The last time I saw her, she had been wearing Alexandria's costume with blood trickling out of her nose.
"What have you got for me, Farseer?"
I clasped my hands together.
"Heartbreaker," I said, then took a breath. "Then Nilbog."
In all seriousness though, there is definitely a divide going on a bit. Essentially there are two kinds of people. Those that know Leviathan is dead and those that haven't grokked onto what that means.
