New chapter! New Arc! Woooo~!!
…I was super excited to write this chapter. The interludes were fun, but fuck were they emotionally draining. From Claire's death and daddy-flashbacks to that chapter. This actually starts moving the plot forward again, with real, solid character development and stuff.
Rend 3.1
3:06 AM EST, Thursday, April 14, 2011
For a second, everything froze as Lisa's words echoed in my mind.
"I… I found them. Fuck. Taylor, you… you need to get here. Now."
All I could think, all I could say was, "Shit."
Lisa laughed shakily, like she was trying to keep calm. "Yeah. Yeah. Shit is right. Look, just… get here. Please."
"Lisa, what happened?"
"I… I can't. They're alive, but… you really need to get over here," she said. "I… I'll text you where we are. Just click it and it should open a map and tell you how to get here. Taylor…" She paused, and I waited for her to continue. "Just… make it fast."
The line went dead.
I turned around, staring into the dim room where the twelve people I'd met sat on the floor.
It had been a test, Lisa said. I had to act the way a leader would. Be assertive. Act like I was in charge, because the person who does is often the one who ends up there. Be ready for everything.
She told me what to say: that I had to prove myself as the one at the top, and accept no quarters. To let them know exactly who had killed their leaders, their fighters. To let them know that there was a new order coming into place.
I'd been a bundle of nerves going in, fretting over what I had to do, how I had to present myself. That girl attacking me had given me exactly the feeling I needed, though. That feeling of tension and anticipation from adrenaline running through my body. The same feeling I'd had when I'd confronted Bakuda.
I'd held onto that. Channeled it. Wove it in with the confidence that I'd learned I had from my friends.
And it had worked.
I'd worked this group from attention and fear to respect. From wariness and distrustful apprehension to acceptance. And it had felt fucking awesome.
I'd established myself, said what I needed, and then gone to leave, with them hanging on to my every word.
Until… until this call.
My phone buzzed in my hand, with a text from Lisa. Following her instructions, I opened it and then clicked the location she'd sent me, opening the map. Which then offered to provide me with directions from where I was to wherever Lisa was.
I hit the 'okay' button immediately, and swiftly moved to the hall and then out the front door of the restaurant, not paying any attention to the old, wizened man who'd initially stopped me from entering.
The phone said it would take me twenty minutes walking.
Yeah, no.
Lisa had been acting frantic and wanted me there now. And it had something to do with Sayaka and Ayame.
Lisa and I had split up, after leaving Bakuda's apartment building. She'd taken the tablet, insisting that she work on finding the twins while I dealt with the upper group of the ABB. Her power would be the fastest way to find them, and handling both simultaneously gave us more time to deal with everything afterwards.
But… something had gone wrong.
I started running, my feet pounding the pavement. I didn't notice how fast I was going. Didn't care. My friends needed me so I needed to be there. It was as simple as that.
It felt like a long time, an eternity as I followed the instructions of my phone until I reached my destination. But it could have only been minutes, instead of the hours I had seemed to experience.
It sprawled out in front of me, a two story building surrounded by a ten-foot concrete wall. The paint on the sides of the building was peeling, revealing whitewashed brick. What I assumed was the front gate had almost completely rusted through, still hanging likely only due to the rust itself freezing up the hinge and holding it in place. All of the windows were barred, with most only being small slats.
I walked though the gate towards the entrance, reaching the heavy door. I could feel a person standing on the other side and with a huff, I pulled the door open, waiting to see whoever would be on the other side.
"'Sup."
I blinked. It was that boy. The ren-faire boy. Uh… "Regent?"
He nodded, smirking. "That's me." He turned and motioned his head down the hall which matched the outside decor. "Come on. TT's down here."
He walked leisurely, like he had nothing to worry about. I envied him. Our footsteps echoed loudly in the barely-lit hall, bouncing off of the walls and back to us.
"Heard you killed Oni Lee and that bomb bitch," he commented. "Nice. Wish I could have seen it, but I was kind of asleep. You get it." He laced his fingers together and put them behind his head. "At least, I was until Tats got us up." He looked over at me. "No worries though. It's all good. Hearing what you did to those two was more than enough."
Being around him felt… weird. Like something was missing. Like he said the words, did the actions, but had no feeling behind it. No emotion. No personal investment.
I felt a person's presence enter the area around me that I was now even more aware of, up and to the right. Two more were closer, more to the right than in front.
Regent and I kept walking and then turned into another hallway. Lisa stood there, in her Tattletale outfit, ten feet away from us and biting her thumb's fingernail.
She looked up as soon as she heard us, visibly relieved. "Thank god. Okay. Um. Regent, you go back and keep looking out, okay?" she said.
He gave a two-fingered salute and then turned to go, but paused and turned back, reaching in his pocket.
Pulling something out, he tossed it to me. "Here. Figure you might want this back." It was my original knife. From Monday. "I was just holding it onto for you." Regent grinned. "Oh, and… good luck."
Good luck?
With that final cryptic statement he turned around, walking away back in the direction of the door.
I looked down at the switchblade in my hand, and then simply put it away in my pocket before turning to Lisa.
"What is this place? And where are my friends?"
She grimaced. "Brockton Penitentiary. The Bay's first prison. Abandoned back in the seventies, but apparently now used by the ABB. There were others being kept here, but we already got them out." Lisa took a breath. "Taylor. I… I want you to know that I didn't mean for this to happen. And… and no matter what we had done, it had already happened before I even met up with you."
Those two people I could feel hadn't moved an inch, only two meters away in front of us. A cold feeling started spreading through me. "Lisa, where are they? Where are my friends?"
"Look… just, just… fuck. Here." She stepped forward and grabbed hold of the metal handle of the door right next to us. It creaked open slowly. Ominously.
There was no light in the room, and I had to step inside to see, my eyes adjusting to the darkness almost instantly.
I froze.
Nothing ran through my head.
A single beat. An infinitesimal second.
And like a dam had burst, a million different thoughts cascaded, poured through my mind.
The first one I truly registered and latched onto was shock. Sayaka and Ayame, two of my best friends, sat curled up at the back wall of the cement room, the former wrapped around the latter like a drowning man clutching a raft for life, practically naked.
Ayame's bra was out of place underneath her shirt which barely covered her, the hem clearly having fallen down only due to gravity. Her shorts and underwear down around her lower legs, her ankles. Sayaka's own shirt was torn in half, her bra the same. Her shorts were in place, though the button on them was undone, broken.
In front of them, only feet from me, were black, charred… things, scorch-marks and a darkness burned into the cement floor. I ignored the unknown objects in the face of far more important matters: my friends.
I stumbled forward, moving towards them and then falling down on my knees barely half a foot away.
They stared at me blankly. Their eyes tracked my face, saw me, but were empty. Lost.
Sayaka swallowed, and I immediately focused on the action. "Taylor?"
Water started gathering in my eyes as I reached out towards them, but hesitated when I was about to touch them and pulled back, unsure of how they would react.
They made the choice for me, Ayame slipping out of her sister's arms and practically falling against me. Sayaka followed her sister's lead. I could feel them shivering against me, and I knew that it wasn't because they were cold.
It was pure relief. Comfort. Happiness.
I… didn't even need to see them to know. I could just tell.
It was like they were two bright flames that were so much dimmer than they should be, than what I was used to.
My hands bunched in their shirts as I held them tighter.
I didn't need to ask what had happened. I lived in fucking Brockton Bay.
The state of their clothes, the empty dullness of shock, the little amount of blood, everything pointed to one conclusion.
I wanted to scream.
You read stories in the paper about things like this. Heard it on the news. But actually happening? To someone, to people you knew?
You never expected that. Never considered it.
So when it did happen, you were left lost, adrift, not knowing what to do next. That was where I was.
But right then, the twins needed me, so instead of thinking about it anymore, I pushed away all of my other feelings, the ones that wouldn't do any good right now, and focused on my own relief at seeing them. My own thankfulness at the good parts of the situation: They were alive, and they were with me.
We were there, on the floor, for at least fifteen or twenty minutes. I didn't really know. Time didn't particularly matter, and the moments between breaths and shivers blended together. At one point Lisa left, and then came back, but other than that the time was spent in silence, spent simply holding my friends and focusing on their relief and slowly growing tiredness.
…They were going to fall asleep soon.
Calmly, gradually, I drew back and stood up, carefully pulling Ayame up with me by her armpits until she was standing, allowing me to fix her clothes as much as I could. Sayaka followed her sister up, hugging herself and her shirt together.
I looked back at Lisa, and noticed she had changed from her purple and black catsuit back to the T-shirt and jeans she'd had earlier, but with her hair free instead of in the braid.
"They went home and brought the car back. I can drive," she said quietly.
I nodded, and felt a pair of hands search for and grasp my own on either side.
The first step forward was mine. Saya followed, and then Aya. We made it out like that, stepping and shuffling step by step, past the carbonized masses, through the door and the halls, and out of the abandoned building.
The blue sedan Grue had driven me home in sat outside the gate, and instead of separate myself from the twins, I managed to open the rear right door with Sayaka's hand still in mine. I nudged her towards the seat and she sat down, sliding over and letting me sit down similarly, also sliding over as Ayame stepped in.
She looked over at the door, and closed it herself, immediately putting her head on my shoulder and scooting closer. Saya simply gripped my left wrist with her other hand holding it in what I knew was reassurance.
Lisa got in the front seat, and glanced at me in the rear-view mirror before turning the key and starting the car, smoothly pulling away from the curb.
I didn't pay attention to our surroundings. It passed quickly, streetlights blurring as they flickered past the windows. Soon enough, Lisa pulled into a parking lot, next to a nice apartment building I didn't recognize.
She turned off the car and got out, shutting her door and then moving to open the one on Sayaka's left.
Saya released my hand, her left going back to her torn shirt to hold it together, while the right reached out to the door to steady her as she stood up on shaky legs, wincing on the first step.
For a moment my emotions flared again, but then I pushed them down. Not then. Later. But not then.
Ayame had lifted her head when the cooler outside air had entered the car, allowing me to extricate myself as she followed, gripping her sister's arm once she'd gotten out. Lisa shut the door and led us towards the building and up two flights of stairs. Only then did I hear the sound of a car locking, the normally loud sound dull, and understood why Lisa had waited.
We arrived in front of a door, Lisa pulling a different key and unlocking the deadbolt and then the knob separately, opening it and letting us enter first. I let the twins go in front of me and they seemed to run on automatic as they slipped their shoes off, but then were soon lost for what to do once they'd stepped onto the wooden floor.
Lisa stepped around them, not bothering with her shoes. "I'll get a bath going. Um. If you can follow me?"
Sayaka nodded silently, leading her sister in trailing after Lisa as they went further into the apartment and turned into a hallway that I assumed led to bedrooms and the bathroom.
I took my own shoes off, and walked forward towards the living space I could see around a kitchen area and small dining table.
Falling onto the couch, I put my forearm over my eyes, blocking my sight. Lisa and the twins were moving around twenty-two feet behind me, the sound of running water audible from the hall.
After a few more seconds, Lisa broke off and I heard the sound suddenly quiet as she closed the door and milled around doing something in other rooms for a minute before returning to the hall and walking towards me. Once she reached the couch, she bent down and started removing her shoes.
My self-control finally broke, all of the emotions I had pushed back for the past forty minutes rushing through me.
"Lisa."
She froze at the sound of my voice. "T-Taylor?"
The lines rose, and I didn't even try to fight it, feeling them crawl and crackle over and through everything, the room, the furniture, Lisa, me.
"Why? Why?" I asked, my voice thick. "Give me one, one fucking reason, why I shouldn't call this all off right now."
"Taylor…" she said, her words wavering. "You… you can't…"
I could sense the worry in her. The desperation. How shaken she was. The fear.
Whether it was of me or for me I didn't know.
I moved my arm away from my eyes, and she froze as soon as she saw them. I knew they were glowing. Bright blue, with shifting shades like the embers of a fire and that unearthly violet ring. I knew how unnerving it was to other people. But right then, I really didn't fucking care.
"What happened?" I asked, hoping, praying against all logic that all of my thoughts and assumptions had been mistaken. That maybe what I thought had happened hadn't. That it hadn't gotten that far.
She swallowed.
"What happened, Lisa?" I repeated, my own worry and anxiety rising, running through me. "How far did it get?"
Lisa looked she was at a cross between breaking down and being sick as I stared at her. "All the way," she mumbled, so quietly even I couldn't hear.
"What?"
A tear dripped down her cheek as she said exactly what I was afraid to hear. "All the way. They were raped, Taylor."
I lost control, not even fully aware as I pulled out my combat knife, flipped it around, and stabbed it up to the hilt into the table in front of me. Not even through a line, just driving it straight through the solid inch-thick wood. "FUCK!"
Lisa flinched as I shut my eyes, both my hands curled into fists in front of them. My eyes felt like they were burning, heat and wetness rising easily until it overflowed. My jaw was clenched so tight it hurt.
"You… you need to know," she whispered. "… they triggered."
I moved my hands and stared at her, completely uncaring of the tracks that had to be on my face. "What."
Lisa rubbed her arms. "They triggered," she repeated. "Those black things in the rooms with them? Those were bodies. That's all that's left of the ones who did it. They tore them apart and burnt them to charcoal in seconds."
For a moment, I was silent, my thoughts going to dark places. "Good," I finally said, though the effect was slightly ruined by how I sniffled and then wiped at my eyes.
If those men hadn't died, I would have searched until I'd found them. From there… I don't know what I would have done. I'm not sure I want to know.
Lisa finally moved from her position to the left of the couch I was on and sat in a chair to the left of her, perpendicular to the couch I was no.
My thoughts swirled, twisting and looping until finally arriving on something important. "When? When did it happen?"
"Just before you killed Bakuda," she said softly.
My eyes widened in shock at her answer, before shutting tightly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!"
"Taylor. You couldn't have…"
I glared at her, feeling the tears starting to come back. "Yes, I could. If I hadn't gotten caught in Bakuda's stupid fucking trap, if I'd tried to find them first instead of that fucking bitch–"
Lisa shook her head. "Bakuda would have still gotten you. You couldn't have found them without any information, and everybody was told to point you towards her or die. You'd still have gotten trapped."
"But after!"
"No. You couldn't have found them, Taylor. You got lucky finding out Bakuda's actual location on the first try. But those men would have had no idea where two specific girls were being kept. Bakuda was holding a lot of people captive in different places in the Docks, not just your friends. You would have had to search every single possible building. You never would have found them in time."
More tears gathered in my eyes in frustration –not yet running over, though–, and I hated how much sense she was making. I wanted to hate her for it, but I couldn't.
"Do you know what Bakuda was doing?" Lisa asked. "She was collecting every single Asian in the Bay and implanting bombs in their heads. If they didn't do something she wanted, they died. If they failed her, they died. If she just wanted them to, they died.
"If Bakuda had died any other way, if she'd been captured and gotten a single chance she would have set every single one of those bombs off. You saved so many people by dealing with her the way you did."
"But at what cost?" I asked, at the edge of crying. "Lisa, I don't know if you noticed, but two of my best friends got raped."
Her lips twitched like she was trying to control herself, but the bottom one trembled, betraying her. "I know. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but there was nothing you or I could have done."
"If I'd called you right after getting the tablet…" I started.
"No. You can't do this. You can't play 'what if'. You'll destroy yourself. I… I know, trust me," she said, fighting her own sadness. "And even in that case, it's unlikely that we would have found them, because I also used information from Bakuda's computer, and we wouldn't have had that."
God. Why? Why was everything going to shit so fast? This week. This entire fucking week. Three months of peace, of a normal life, and then this. Where did it go wrong?
"…Lung. If I hadn't–"
"Taylor! Fuck, stop it! If you hadn't gone out that night, Lung would have killed us. Me. If you hadn't fought him, he would have killed you and us. Do you really think that would have been any better? Leaving your friends and dad behind because you died?"
I swallowed, thinking of what that would have done to everybody around me, how that would have absolutely destroyed Dad. "…no," I mumbled.
"So stop it. Please," she pleaded, worry and turmoil running throughout her, all directed at me. "The only thing we can do is move forward."
And immediately, my thoughts went to all of the things I had to still deal with. Coil. The other gangs. All on top of–
"The ABB," I ground out, my thoughts circling right back around to where this conversation had started.
Lisa's eyes went wide. "Taylor. No. You can't just throw away and abandon leadership of a gang. Especially the one you just took over."
"Fuck that! And fuck them! As far as I'm concerned, that–" I pointed back towards the bathroom where the twins still were, "cancels out everything."
Lisa shook her head. "We can't. The ABB is the only thing keeping a power vacuum from occurring and making everything worse. And yes, it would be worse. What happened to them will happen to even more women –and men– than it did before if the E88 get in here. With control of the ABB you can stop that."
"But there could be others like the ones that did that to them! In 'my' gang. Fuck, there probably are, aren't there? What about them?" I asked angrily. "You going to say we can't do anything about that, too? Just leave them alone and let them get away with it? Because that's fucking bullshit, Lisa."
She looked hurt. "No. I wouldn't do that. But Taylor, this is exactly the reason why you should take control. You can make those judgments. You can deal with people who do things like this. Make an example out of it. Make it clear how you won't accept things like rape anymore."
"And what about everything else I don't like? The drugs? Prostitution?"
Lisa shook her head. "Prostitution is a valid business. We can stop forced prostitution, stop the forced sex-trade system Lung was running, but prostitution in general is something that you can't stop, only try to control. If we don't regulate it, somebody else will, and we can't have that. That and the opium distribution."
My emotions roiled, and I wanted to argue, wanted to say that was completely unacceptable, but I didn't.
In a moment of clarity I realized it was late and I was way too emotionally compromised right then. I couldn't think clearly at all.
"Lisa… I can't. I can't deal with this shit right now," I told her, my thoughts swarming back on the twins. "The ABB, the other gangs, everything. Not with…"
She nodded slowly. "Alright. I can keep things going for a few days. Don't worry about it. Just… focus on everything else, okay? They need you, right now. I didn't find their parents, but I'll keep looking and see if they made it home tomorrow. Well, today."
And then Lisa winced, and I knew what she was going to say even before she said it. "But there's still one thing…"
"Coil," I said, frustrated by how everything felt like it was closing in on me. I couldn't leave the twins alone, not now, but if Lisa's concerns were well-placed –and I'd had no reason to doubt they were– he literally could not wait. He was a guillotine hanging over our heads, ready to drop at any moment.
The things Lisa had told me about his power after I'd agreed to help her… they weren't good.
Probability manipulation, manifesting in a way that she said Coil believed allowed him to split the timeline and take two different actions simultaneously, only choosing which one happened after he knew the outcome of both.
She said there was probably more to it than that, that there had to be some sort of catch because splitting time was ridiculous, but she didn't know.
"Yeah," she agreed. "Coil. The sooner the better. I'll collect everything I've got to make it easier. And… I'll stay here with them. He doesn't know about this apartment. …I hope." She bit her lip. "Fuck. Okay. I'll… be driving around the city. Take them to a park or something, okay? Something he'd never expect. He shouldn't have any reason to suspect anything yet, so as long as we can keep it that way, everything will be alright." Lisa grimaced. "But it has to be tomorrow. I'm sorry Taylor, but even a day…"
I sighed. "I get it. I don't have to like it, and I really, really don't, but I get it."
She nodded, her sadness and own frustration clear to me. "I told you I'd help you with anything to get away from him and… that still stands. But even if you don't get him tomorrow, I'm still with you. I promise, alright?"
I nodded, and she gave me a sad half-smile. Her eyes flicked towards the hallway she'd taken the twins down. "You should probably go check on them. I'll get the guest room ready for you guys. You… should stay with them tonight. If they have any nightmares it'll be better if you're there as something familiar to remind them they're safe. They might flashback if it's just them. But ask first. Make sure they're okay with it. I can pull out the couch for you if you need it."
"Putting those psych classes to use?" I asked bitterly.
"That and experience. Trust me," she said, not reacting to my barbed question. "I left clean clothes for them outside the bathroom door."
I didn't respond, just pulled my knife out of the table, sheathed it, stood up and began walking towards the bathroom. I picked up the clothes off of the floor next to the door and then paused, taking a deep breath.
I knocked. "U-um. Hey. It's me."
A soft "come in" drifted through the door, so I opened it and stepped in, closing it behind me.
Ayame was helping dry Saya's back and looked up as I entered, her eyes still slightly vacant, though I could tell how tired they were and suspected that exhaustion played more than a small role.
"Ah… Lisa had some extra clothes she wanted me to give you," I said.
Sayaka walked over to me, away from her sister, and took them from me, managing to smile slightly. "Thanks, Taylor."
I nodded, Saya putting the clothes on a table next to the sink and starting to go through them and pull things out to put on. I looked away out of politeness as she began dressing, my eyes landing on Aya half-heartedly struggling to dry her hair, and I walked over and took the towel from her hands, helping her as she slumped tiredly forwards against my chest.
Sayaka finished up, bringing the other clothes over to where we stood and handed them off to Ayame. Aya started dressing, pulling up underwear and pajama bottoms and then lifting the medium-sized t-shirt above her head and lowering it once I pulled back from drying her hair.
Both she and Saya practically swam in the clothes, as the shirts reached all the way to mid-thigh on them, but I had a feeling the clean clothes were a much better option than their other ones right now.
Aya yawned as we migrated out of the bathroom towards where I'd felt Lisa moving around a couple minutes ago. The door was open when we got there, revealing a guest room with a queen-sized bed and clean sheets on it.
Ayame didn't even hesitate in drifting towards it, crawling onto the bed and falling against the pillows.
I looked over at Saya. "Do you mind if I sleep in here with you guys? Lisa said she could pull out the couch–"
Sayaka cut me off with a shake of her head. "Can you stay here? Please?"
I nodded, smiling slightly. "Yeah."
I'd slept with them before, as they refused to have me sleep on the floor whenever I was over at their house for a night, alternating between their beds each time I visited, so it wasn't wholly unusual. After what had happened, I could have understood not wanting to be with other people. But it seemed Lisa had been right.
I went over to a desk by the window on the far side of the room and stripped out of my jacket and shirt. The now extremely-populated (and slightly heavy, though I hadn't even noticed) knife harness followed, and then my bra.
If Saya noticed the harness as she got under the covers, she didn't say anything. My shirt went back on and pants came off, placed with my other clothes on the chair by the desk. I kind of wished Lisa had gotten me something to wear for the night as well, but considering she was a bit shorter than me —by two or three inches— and much slimmer, it was unlikely anything of hers would fit me without being uncomfortable.
Instead, I made do with turning off the lights and looking back at the bed, where Sayaka had conspicuously left a very Taylor-sized gap between her and Aya.
I climbed into bed via the end, careful not to wake Aya who was already asleep, crawling to the head where I could get under the warm covers. Once I was settled, Ayame immediately rolled in my direction, instinctively searching out the new nearby heat source while Sayaka just scooted closer so that she could rest her head on my shoulder.
I sighed, and closed my own eyes, resolving to try and get as much sleep as I could in the next few hours.
It was the sense of terror that woke me. It was like a live current running through me, shocking me awake. Aya was shaking, gripping my arm tightly. Her eyes darted around underneath their eyelids.
And then, out of nowhere, she started screaming.
"Ayame!" I yelled, trying to get my voice heard over hers. When she didn't respond, I shook her, even as Sayaka lifted herself up on the other side of me to look at her sister.
Aya's eyes shot open, her breathing short and shallow as her scream cut off, still shaking.
She gripped my arm tighter. "Kurai. Totemo kurai. Itakattayo."
I couldn't understand her words, though I got the general impression from her voice and her feelings nonetheless. She'd been scared. Terrified.
She still was, but it was starting to slowly subside. Saya on the other side of me radiated concern, tinged with worry and her own slight fear.
"Shhh. It's okay. You're safe," I said softly, not quite sure what to do but trying to calm her down.
"Ayame. Anzendayo. Anzen. Teira no tomodachi no ie ni iru. Dare mo kizutsukerukoto wa nai," Sayaka whispered. "…Nero. Anzendesu."
Aya nodded slowly, light returning to her glazed eyes for a moment. Almost immediately, though, her breathing slowed, and her eyelids fluttered closed as she snuggled into my side. Saya sighed, and lowered herself back down, relaxing her muscles.
I closed my own eyes, hoping I could fall asleep again.
I did, in fact, manage to sleep more. It was the light in the room that woke me up, and I instantly noticed the lack of a small twin on either side of me. I pushed myself up, blearily looking around the room. Nothing.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I worked myself to my feet and hobbled over to the desk where my clothes were, managing to get myself dressed without any major incidents.
As soon as I opened the bedroom door, wonderful smells wafted through. Slowly walking through the hallway towards the main room, I was greeted with the sight of a rather subdued Ayame and Sayaka with her ink-black hair fluffed around her head, standing nearly on end, sitting at the counter of the peninsula that bordered the kitchen.
Lisa drifted around around the kitchen, tending to a pair of skillets.
"Morning, Taylor," she said, her back to me as she rummaged through the fridge.
"Did you even sleep?" I asked incredulously.
She turned around and gave me a half-mouthed smirk. "Nope. But I'm used to this by now. Plus, I got to sleep before you called."
Sayaka slumped onto the counter, revealing that the hair behind her head was in just as much disarray as the rest. Aya simply sat there, a haunted look in her eyes. They both felt so tangled. So many different things, but tempered and repressed under a layer of uncertainty and pain.
"I'm making eggs, pancakes, and bacon. You want some?" Lisa asked.
"Please," I told her, moving around and taking a seat so that I was sitting to the left of Sayaka at the counter.
She nodded. "I thought so."
Lisa gave me a speculative look, raising an eyebrow and then moving her head slightly in the direction of the twins. I shook my head. She huffed, rolled her eyes, and turned back around to the stove.
Saya raised her head, propping it up on a fist, seeming more alert and aware than her sister. And she was, to a degree, but I could also tell that it was partly faked. That she was just as uncertain and uncomfortable as Aya.
"I've got some stuff for you after breakfast," Lisa said. "Abou–"
She was cut off by the sound of a phone vibrating. I blinked, and then dug around in my jacket pocket for my new cellphone. Pulling it out, I glanced at the number.
…Oh fuck.
It was my dad. And fourteen missed calls.
I looked up at Lisa worriedly.
"Hey, don't look at me," she said. Well, great. Thanks for throwing me to the wolves.
She grinned as I gave her a dark look. "…I'll just go deal with this," I told her.
Getting down off the stool, I headed back to the guest room, simultaneously pressing the green circle to accept the call.
"He–" I started.
"Taylor! Thank God. Where are you?"
I winced at the sound of worry and panic in my father's voice.
"I'm fine, Dad. Everything's fine. I'm… I'm with the twins." I neglected to say that I wasn't at their house, but there was no point in him knowing that and making him worry more.
"What were you thinking? Going out now of all times!? What if something had happened? If you'd gotten caught up in something or in one of those weird bombs that have been going off?"
…Um. Yeah. Well, about that, Dad. I didn't just got caught up in all of that, but I also killed the one behind it and her sidekick/lackey, who you might know better as Oni Lee. And I somehow dealt with all her bombs too.
Did I mention I'm now head of the ABB? Uh-huh. That happened. This new girl I meant only four days ago is going to help me run it so that Nazis don't take over the Docks.
Oh, right! And I have to kill this one guy who's apparently some sort of insane megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. And he's amoral. So he wouldn't even hesitate to try and kill me just because I'm too unpredictable and would be an obstacle in taking over the city. Cool, huh?
…Back in reality, I wisely kept my mouth shut.
"Look… just, just," my dad stumbled out. "Just stay there. At least I know you're safe there. I'll come and get you as soon as they say it's safe to go out on the roads."
"Okay," I replied, crossing my fingers and praying that it would be at least eight hours before they did that.
"Is everything else alright? You're good?"
"I'm fine, Dad. Everything's okay."
"Alright." He sighed. "I love you, Taylor."
"Love you too, Dad."
"Bye."
"Bye."
I pulled the phone away from my ear and ended the call. That had gone much less painfully than I had anticipated. Turning around, I left the room, heading back towards the kitchen where Lisa was just starting to serve breakfast. As I got to my stool, she scooped a couple pancakes onto my plate, and I reached for the syrup to liberally coat them and begin eating.
Breakfast was mostly silent. The twins didn't say anything other than thanking Lisa for the food, and as much as it hurt to see them like that, I couldn't even begin to think of what to do that could make any of this better. Neither of them asked about their parents, and I got the sense that they were afraid to ask.
…I would have been, too.
After breakfast, they wandered back down the hall towards the bedroom we'd slept in –presumably to sleep more–, Lisa and I cleaning the kitchen and then sitting down in the living room.
For a minute, we didn't say anything, until Lisa broke the silence with an explosive sigh. "Fuck."
She rubbed her eyes and then looked over at me. "Okay. First. We need to talk more about what you did last night. You said you 'killed' the connections between Bakuda and her bombs, what does that mean? How did you do that?"
I pushed my thoughts of the twins aside and focused on Lisa. "Um. Well…. She wasn't always with the bombs she was blowing up, right? And when she caught me in that bubble she didn't have any wires or anything that would have let her detonate the bomb that made it. So I figured she had to have some sort of remote control over each one. And I killed that. If she couldn't control them, they couldn't go off, right?"
Lisa stared at me. "So you didn't just kill the connection between her and the bombs, you killed her control over them. …And de-armed them all by doing that."
I nodded.
The blonde dragged her hand down her face, and I could barely make out a muttered 'What the fuck.' She looked back over at me. "Okay. How did you kill a Gray Boy bubble? I can't believe she even made something like that."
"Well, it's a barrier, right? Like a force-field, or a wall, just different. And I can kill doors and walls and stuff, so–"
"So you killed the bubble," she finished, sounding exasperated.
"Well, it wasn't that easy," I told her. "I couldn't even see the lines for it at first, because I didn't want to. I didn't want to see any of them. And when I finally did see them I wasn't cutting through anything normal. The bubble was just all these folds, twisted and turned in on themselves. Like someone had a sheet of dough and twisted off a little tiny sphere in the center, and then flattened that sphere and made it a loop, and I was running on that loop and had to cut it to get out."
"…you're talking about space-time," Lisa said. "About cutting a four-dimensional manifold that Bakuda managed to separate from the normal continuum into its own isolated segment, in order to fix it and put everything back in place, including you."
Huh. I hadn't thought of it like that. "I think of it more like a weird glass bubble that had me and everything in it, and everything would go back to normal if I got rid of that," I explained. "I mean, normally everything wouldn't be like that, so I just had to kill what was keeping it from being normal."
Lisa sighed. "Okay. Okay. It's your power, if that's how it works then that's how it works. God knows most powers don't make any fucking sense when you try looking too closely at them."
Well, it made sense to me. I just killed things.
"Why is any of this important, anyways?"
"Because I need to know exactly what you can do before I send you into a bunker with twenty-five trained mercenaries and Coil," she told me. "You might have gotten away with just rushing in and taking care of Bakuda without any planning, but you got lucky. Really fucking lucky. With Coil, you can't rely on that. He has all the cards, including the ones we don't know about."
She was worried–
Lisa glared at me. "Yes, Taylor, I'm fucking worried. Because everything is riding on this. If it fails, everything gets worse. The Docks, my situation, your friends' safety, our lives in general… fuck, you could die. And not only that, but right now I've also got two ridiculously powerful Blasters in my apartment who are ready to go off at any moment and could probably level this entire building if they wanted. So yes, I am worried."
She slumped forward, her head in hands, a good portion of her pent-up emotional energy and tension having slowly drained out of her over the course of her rant.
"Feel better?" I asked.
"Yeah. Thanks." Her voice was muffled by her hands, but I could tell she meant it.
I shifted uncomfortably, my thoughts back on the twins. "I'm just… I don't know what to do, other than what I know how to do. I mean, what can I do?"
Lisa looked back up at me. "You can be there for them. You can watch them. Keep an eye out…" Her voice grew thick. "And make sure they don't do anything stupid." She swallowed. "Just you being here is helping. They adore you, Taylor. You should have seen them before you woke up and came out. It was… It was like…" She swallowed again and shook her head. "Just… don't be afraid to reach out."
There were so many things threaded through her voice. Guilt, and longing, and pain, and frustration, and self-hatred, all along with worry and hope. It was so complex.
"But," she said, laughing bitterly, "none of that will matter if you don't live through the day. And I like you, Taylor, so I'd hate to see you die."
I heard something, soft, something I couldn't identify.
Lisa twisted to the left, surreptitiously wiping her eyes as she reached down for her laptop and then turning back once she had it, opening the lid. "So, to keep you alive, here's what you're going to need to know about Co–"
I heard it again. A sound that was quiet, barely there.
"Do you hear that?" I asked, interrupting her.
"What? No. What is it?"
Soft, suppressed sobs under another sound, something that I wouldn't have even noticed normally.
Fuck. I stood up and rushed towards the hall, hurrying towards the bedroom. When I got there, though, the door was open, and only Ayame was there, sleeping peacefully. The other… in the room behind me, where I could hear water running.
I spun around and moved a few feet to the right and then hesitated in front of the bathroom door. I knocked lightly, but there was no response, so I slowly opened the door, Lisa a few feet behind me.
I felt something in me nearly break.
Sayaka sat in the corner of the tub, the shower on as she weakly scrubbed her arms with a sponge. The water around her and draining out of the tub was a light rose, her skin a darker shade.
"Oh, fuck," I heard Lisa say behind me.
Another choked sob came out of Sayaka's mouth as I grabbed a towel off of one of the rods and moved closer to her. Once I got near enough, I shut off the water, though she didn't even seem to notice. I had to take the sponge out of her hand, noticing that the side she'd been using was also tinged pink and that it wasn't just her arms, but her whole front as well.
Saya…
She'd scrubbed herself raw.
I didn't know what I should do, so I did the only thing I could: wrapped the towel around her, and then carefully held her as she kept crying.
Sayaka always acted like she was less affected by things that happened to her than Aya was, when in reality, she was just as sensitive, if not more so. She just didn't like other people seeing her vulnerable, especially her sister. Didn't want them to know how bad things were for her and worry about her.
Even when she needed help the most.
And now… now that had backfired completely. She'd kept internalizing and burying her emotions, ignoring them. Until this had happened. Until it had gotten to be too much and completely overwhelmed her.
Carefully, I adjusted Saya's position and got my left arm under her knees so I could lift her.
Lisa held the door open for me as I carried Sayaka back to the guest bedroom, her crying having subsided by the time I reached the bed. Placing her down on it, I didn't even need to look to know she had fallen asleep again like her sister. I left her with just the towel covering her, unsure if the sheets and blankets would be worse or not with what she had done.
When I left the room I closed the door behind me, Lisa staring at me from where she leaned against the opposite wall of the hall.
Everything was running through my head in flashes, thoughts of my dad, my friends, Bakuda, Lisa, the ABB, Amy, the twins, Coil, the Docks, the Empire. How bad everything was, how it was all balanced on a knife's edge, threatening to fall into chaos.
All I could think was I can't leave things like this.
I looked up at Lisa. "Tell me what I need to do."
A/N: In which Lisa is not a bitch, because QA knows what the fuck she's doing, yo. …And because her guilt-complex around her trigger event is flaring up big time.
