An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 1.10

I froze.

The knock at the door came again.

Almost reflexively, I sunk onto the Other Place, and stared around the room. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Well, out of the ordinary by the standards of a twisted bare-concrete-and-rust madness dimension, at least. I could see it was hazy, or possibly misty on the other side of the dirty glass of the window, but nothing was staring in at me.

I should probably answer the door, then.

Perhaps it was the men in black, come to recruit me into a sinister conspiracy which found unnoticed parahumans and used them as secret deep cover assets away from the public eye. I was about to be whirled away into a world of intrigue and politicking, and would also coincidentally get to leave Winslow and get secret agent tutors who would teach me everything I needed to know for my new role. And so would never see Emma, Madison or Sophia again.

Though the men in black would probably actually also be the women in black, because any sinister conspiracy which only recruited men was probably not too interested in me.

And was also pretty stupid for passing over half the population, so I wouldn't want to be a member anyway.

I opened the door outwards, and came face to face with a horrifying walking corpse which seemed both frozen and burned. I flinched and gasped, and then remembered that I was still seeing the Other Place.

That was probably a bad habit. Forgetting that I was still looking into a twisted version of the real world where everything was decayed and horrifying was, all things considered, something I shouldn't be doing. I should see if I could find a way to only see it with one eye at a time, or see both it and the real world at the same time, or something like that.

Returning to normalcy, I saw the person at the door was, in fact, Sam. She was almost certainly not a secret agent for the New World Order or whoever your cabal de jour was. Even if – I inwardly sighed – she would probably look better in a black suit and mirrored sunglasses than I would. We might have both had scabs on our wrists, but she didn't have marks on her face and was prettier than me on top of that.

She was also looking at me funny.

"I'm a little… uh, jumpy," I said, biting my top lip. "Sorry."

"Yeah, I saw you freak out in meditation," she said, shrugging. She had her thumbs hooked in the waistband of her bottoms. "Uh…"

"I haven't been sleeping well, and I dozed off because it was all quiet and I had a nightmare," I said, quickly. Perhaps a little too quickly.

"I wasn't actually asking that," she said, flicking her head. The motion seemed more appropriate for someone with longer hair, and looking more closely I could see that her short cut was a little rough around the edges. "I was actually going to ask – well, the rest of us are hanging out in the rec room. Are you doing anything?"

Well, I'm making monsters with my mind which only exist physically in a creepy hell-place which exists parallel to the normal world, I didn't say. Sorry about the one which almost attacked you in the meditation class – oh, did I not mention that? "Sure, nothing really," I said. "Just reading."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, you're another one of those ones," she said. "Come on, then."

It turned out that one of the rooms along our corridor was actually a rec room, with sofas, a television in a protective cabinet, and some old magazines stacked in a corner. The walls were a clearly-chosen-to-be-calming shade of blue, and the plaster was cracked up near the top. Sam collapsed down next to Leah, while I took a seat next to Emily. Kirsty wasn't present.

"… but telenovelas are funny!" Emily insisted, continuing the conversation I'd heard on the way here. "So much overacting!"

"You're the only one who speaks any Spanish," Leah said, her head resting on the soft arm of the sofa.

"Not enough to understand them," Emily said cheerfully. She flashed an impudent grin at me. "Taylor, yeah? Come on, we should totally watch one and make up our own dialogue for it! It'd be even better than knowing what was going on!"

"Uh," I began intelligently. Of all the things which I had expected someone to say to me, that hadn't been one of them. Emily looked younger than me, and was certainly acting that way. "What's going on?"

"Sam and Em are arguing over what to watch," Leah said, yawning. "I think Sam must've gone off to grab you to get support or something. I don't really care. I'm so bored I'm okay with anything."

"You could at least have backed me up," Sam said accusingly.

"Could have, but that would have taken effort," she retorted.

"You're a terrible friend," Sam said, lips twisting into a pout.

Something flashed across Leah's face, too fast for me to catch it. She covered it with a frown. "Look, I see you're trying to get me to throw a cushion at you, but I'm not going to fall for it! They're mine!"

"So terrible," Sam said, shaking her head. "Anyway!" she began, flicking through the channels. "Today, we have a choice of Emily's Spanish thing that no one understands, an episode of some historical drama thing where… uh, the women are all running around in petticoats, something which seems to involve men in suits in Las Vegas, adverts, more ads, music channel, music channel, country music station… okay, I think we've gone into the radio stuff." She started heading back down the channels.

"The petticoats thing can't be too terrible," I suggested. I thought I recognised it as one of the endless stream of Pride and Prejudice remakes, and it might have been one of the better ones.

"Seconded," Leah said quickly. "Wasn't that Jane Eyre?"

Oh, apparently it was, we found after watching a few minutes of it.

"Is it always this… boring?" I asked, after a suitable period.

"Stupid historical dramas? Yeah," Emily said, a little sulkily.

"No," I said, waving my hand. "I mean all this. Like, at the moment, we're just being left alone and," I shrugged. "I guess I never really thought about what happened in here until-"

"… until you wound up here, yeah," Sam said. "Same here."

"I think it might be because none of us are really severe," Leah said. "Like… well, I know we're all going to be out of here soon?" she turned it into a question, glancing at me.

"Yeah," I said. That surprised me. Or were they not counting Kirsty? She wasn't here. Maybe she had an appointment or something. Or was sitting in her room as I had been. She probably wasn't making monsters with her mind, though, I thought and shivered. "Just being watched because," I held up my wrists, silently. "But it just seems dull. I don't think the books I took with me will last weeks."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Leah said, perking up. "Someone else with books! I'll trade you for anything. I've been bored out of my mind. I ran out of new books weeks ago and the library here is trash."

"You also ran out of my books," Sam drawled.

"You only brought three, and I'd read two of them already. You barely count as a book-source," Leah said playfully, prodding her in the arm. "You're totally inadequate as a bastion of bookishness. Your literary lack is legion. Your wordliness is… um, woeful. Your… text-ness is terrible. And so on and so forth because I'm running out of alliteration."

"Text-ness?" I asked. I couldn't have stopped myself for a million do… okay, I could have stopped myself for a million dollars. But I couldn't have stopped myself for – like, ten or so.

"Leah has caught worditis," Sam said. "It may be terminal."

"I've had it for years," Leah said dismissively, flapping a hand. "Have you read anything by Claire Golding? I don't suppose you have her new book with you?"

I shook my head. "Sorry," I said. "I got it for Christmas, but I already finished it, so I didn't bring it."

Leah crossed her arms. "Damn," she said. "Well, what did you think of it, anyway?"

"Not her strongest," I admitted. That was putting it lightly. It had been a chore to get through the second half of the book. Sarah had spent most of the time feeling sorry for herself. I didn't read books to follow people moping about how they couldn't change their situation. I got enough of that in real life. "I think she's losing her edge. The Falling Petals wasn't great, either."

She frowned at me, too-thin lips pursing. "Really? I liked The Falling Petals. I think it was certainly stronger than Leftmore Willows. Have you read any Umberto Eco?"

"Is that an author or a series?" I asked.

"That would be a 'no', then," she said. "I'd lend you one of his ones in return for any books you have, but they didn't let me bring in 'In the Name of the Rose'." She smiled, wrapping her arms around herself. "I guess the Diabolicals really are everywhere."

I didn't get it.

"Ignore her," Sam said. "Hit her with a rolled up newspaper if you really can't stand the constant references to books." She sighed. "Someone got the paper in the café this morning before me. I'm feeling news deprived. When this is over, can we go to a news channel and see what's happening outside these walls?"

It was strange, sitting there with them. Not because I was sitting around in my pyjamas with three other girls I barely knew, watching a drama. No, it was strange because it somehow managed to feel comfortable. Leah and I talked quietly for a bit about books, and I found out that my musical tastes had almost nothing in common with either Sam.

I'd almost forgotten where I was, when a bleeping went off Emily excused herself, to return with a paper cup of water. She shuddered as she swallowed some pills. "The aftertaste is yuck," she said, pulling a face, drinking more water. "Worse than the last lot. They put you on anything yet, Taylor?"

"Not yet," I said. "I think they mentioned sleeping things, though. But," I sighed, shoulders slumping, "I guess I don't like the idea of having to take pills."

There seemed be a lot of sighing going on. It wasn't a surprise. The air here tasted a little stale, in its medicinal clinicalness.

Emily shrugged. "It's not like it's a big deal," she said. "I'm just in here for a few weeks while they switch my meds." She rolled her eyes. "Again. Which means I wind up here while they phase me over and keep an eye on me while the new lot builds up in my system or however the hell it works. I just hope this new lot doesn't make me feel as sick. And, you know, actually works all the time. Like, I was totally glad that the last lot didn't work properly, because it made me feel like shit all the time and honestly? I was feeling so bad that being crazy didn't sound like such a bad deal." She shook her head. "So, what, do you lot know each other already?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

Leah looked me up and down. "I don't think I've seen her at school," she said to Sam. "Arcadia?" she asked me.

I shook my head. "Winslow," I admitted. And it was an admission, even as this confirmed my suspicions about them. Arcadia High was the other big school, on the other side of town. It was the nice school, with the expensive facilities and the brand new swimming pool and presumably even teachers who gave a damn, if their budget stretched that far. Winslow was not the nice school.

"Ah," Sam said, stretching out before curling her legs up on the sofa. "Makes sense that you didn't look familiar." She sighed. "This is my first time in this place," she said, folding her arms. "Worst. Christmas. Ever."

"I got wobbly in the run-up to Christmas because I wanted to let myself pig out a bit over the holidays, but I was over my target weight and so I-" Leah screwed her eyes shut. "No. I was stupid and made everyone worried and," she sighed, "ruined everyone's Christmas. And I got everyone at school another talk about the dangers of being too thin, so I'm probably going to get stick for it."

"There are a lot of them," Sam said.

"Really?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. I hadn't thought of that. I thought everything would be better at Arcadia, and said that.

"Could we not talk about it?" Leah said quietly. I hastily apologised, feeling like a brute. I didn't want to talk about why I was here, so why would other people?

"I'm home-schooled," Emily said, with a sigh. "My mum doesn't trust the schools because she's with the Movement. Like, even before my head got funny, she was all 'they won't teach you the right things' and 'they'll just mean you come into contact with the wrong sort of boys' and things like that. And now she's also all 'if you went to school, the stress would make your condition worse'."

I have to say, at least to me home-schooling sounded kind of appealing, and said as much.

"Trust me," Emily said darkly. "It isn't."

An hour or so passed peacefully, before the tannoy went off.

"Taylor Hebert, you have a telephone call at Reception. Telephone call for Taylor Hebert."

I excused myself, and headed straight there. There was only one person who was really likely to call me. Sitting down on the cushioned chair by the telephone, I took the call.

"Taylor?" asked my Dad. "Hello. How're you holding up?"

"Dad," I said warmly. "I'm… I'm doing good, I think."

We talked for a while. It was good to hear from him. I'd only seen him yesterday, but it seemed much, much longer. In the time since he'd dropped me off, I'd worked out how to control my powers and how to see into the Other Place, and also how to make and control the creepy monsters. I'm not sure that was what they'd meant when they said that the psychiatric hospital would help me, but the boredom did seem to be giving me reason to improve. We talked of nice, cheery, mundane things, and I told him that I'd met the girls in the same section and they seemed nice and the woman who looked after us and she was nice and my psychiatrist and he was nice and everything was… nice. Although…

"Dad," I asked. "Why are you calling now? Shouldn't you be at work?"

"Everyone got sent home early today," he said, sighing. "There's another Movement march tonight, and the police are busy cordoning off the area and clearing the place. The company shifted shifts around, so I'll be working this weekend. No one wants anyone around the place when everything's tense after last week."

I inhaled sharply. "What happened last week?" I asked. "Dad? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Taylor. It's not really important so-"

"Dad, they're shutting down the place for a march," I said, trying to keep my voice down. "That's not something that isn't important."

"A mob went for one of the workers' buses over at Filkmore, and… well, they were immigrant workers and there were some deaths," he said reluctantly. "On both sides. And there have been more attacks. I'm… well, you shouldn't be worrying about it. I'm fine, and the police should have everything in hand. Don't think about it, Taylor."

"I have a lot of time to think," I said. "I'm bored more than anything at the moment. Though," I cleared my throat, "I talked with my psychiatrist – I said I met him, yes. He was nice, and he doesn't think I need pills at the moment." That wasn't quite true, because he just said he didn't want to put me on them yet, quite apart from the fact that he was a monstrous spider-man in the Other Place, but that was what Dad would want to hear. "So we're going to just be talking for now."

"That's good, that's good. And talking about talking, Taylor, I think you should-" he began, and trailed off. He paused. "Why didn't you tell me about Emma?" he asked, slowly and painfully.

I paled. I was glad I was sitting down because my legs felt like jelly. "Tell you what?" I managed, knuckles whitening around the telephone.

"I know, Taylor. I found out from the cops," he said. "I… I meant to only ask you once you were back home, but the conversation just led into it and then I was sure that if I didn't ask you now, I never would."

I sighed. "I thought it was just a falling out at first," I said, trying to move away from the topic. He didn't need to know everything. "Maybe she was upset because we didn't go to summer camp together, I don't know. Maybe that was it. I sometimes wonder if I said something to her which… which I don't even remember, but really hurt her. But she'd met new friends and didn't want anything to do with me and," I swallowed, "that hurt. But we'd fallen out before, and I thought if I just… waited out, we'd be friends again. And then… she didn't try to be friends again. I don't know. Maybe I did get her angry in some way. And things had got better before Christmas! She wasn't talking to me, but she wasn't doing bad stuff."

"You should have told me," he said.

"It was girl stuff," I protested. "And," I paused, "if I'd told someone, I was afraid they'd just get worse because I'd be a tattletale."

"How did you manage to keep it quiet since last summer?" he asked.

I took a deep breath. "Summer before last," I said weakly. "Oh-nine."

There was an awkward silence. "Is… is there anything else you want to tell me?" he asked. I could hear the distress in his voice, knew how horrible he must be feeling, and my heart went out to him. I really wanted to tell him, I really did. About what I was seeing. About what I could do.

I could tell him everything. I could talk to him. I could join the local Wards, the group which looked after young parahumans, and they could get me moved to Arcadia, where all the other Wards supposedly went. The Protectorate, the US government cape organisation, hired every parahuman they could find. If you didn't want to be paramilitary or your skills weren't right for it; why, there were lots of civilian fields you could work in. There were Thinkers on all kinds of committees in the federal government, Tinkers kept society working, and… well, they were the most employable ones, if you didn't want to go for the military or join a Parahuman Response Team.

I could do things. Make things better. I wouldn't even go out and fight crime, because I was a Thinker, and even before I worked out what I could do with those strange projections in the Other Place, I was pretty sure I had a psychometric power. I could be… like, some kind of psychic cop-assistant, investigating crime scenes and telling people 'He didn't die here. The body was moved'.

That was depressing, in its own way. I mean, yes, sure, I'd be helping people, solving crimes and helping find killers. But that would mean I'd spend every day at school not letting people know what I was – all the Wards were capes, parahumans who concealed their identities – which seemed to be to be a very lonely life. Working day and night with people who you could never go off duty with, never show your face, never let them really know you.

And if I was using my powers to solve crimes, it would certainly be something which would mean I couldn't go maskless, even when I was old enough to leave. A Tinker who just worked on making those new 'smartphones' could be just another person, but an investigator who could solve crimes no one else could would be a target. No wonder so many people ended up working directly in the Protectorate, where you could relax with other people like you. The mask and cape – usually not literally a cape nowadays – set you apart.

I didn't want that. I'd spent the past year with no real friends, and the idea of my adult life being like that was soulcrushing. Maybe – maybe when I was out of here, I'd go look at the Wards, see what they were like. If they could get me away from Winslow, it would be worth it. But it'd be a big step. Once I told the Protectorate and they'd confirmed it, I'd be on record. Even if I turned down the offer, which you could do, and went back to my normal life, things wouldn't be the same. What if some supervillain stole the list of names? They might try to hurt me or Dad – or try to recruit me and threaten Dad to get me to work for them.

I wouldn't let Dad get hurt because of me. He was safer off not knowing. Not until I was sure that was what I wanted to do.

I could think about it later. Pretty sad, how trying not to get depressed about how the world sucked and I now at least had something which would guarantee me a job as an adult had just managed to lead into further dark thoughts. Wonder if that was a special Thinker power in its own right? The ability to find the downside of any given situation?

Or maybe I was just feeling blue because I didn't want to be here at all. Hearing him speak, hearing him upset because he'd obviously found out about what had been going on from the police or something, and had been bottling it up, not saying anything while I was in hospital – I wiped my suddenly runny eyes.

"I miss you," I said in a choked voice. "I want to be home."

"And I want you to be home, kiddo," he said, his voice breaking up too. "Just… just concentrate on getting well, okay? Don't think about school or anything. I promise, I won't bring it up again. Just… just please please please talk to your therapist person or whatever the professional term for it is. When you're out of that place, everything's going to change, I promise."

"Okay," I said faintly. I couldn't see how he could promise that, but I wanted to believe it so hard.

"I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Every day. I said I would, and I will. I love you."

"Thank you," I whispered. "I love you too."

After an awkward bit where neither of us really wanted to put down the phone or hang up, we managed to mutually stumble towards ending the call. I put the phone back on its hook, and sighed.

"Was that your dad?" one of the nurses said, coming over to shoo me away from the seat by the phone.

"Yes," I said, blotting my eyes on my sleeves. "Just feeling a bit homesick now."

"Poor girl," she said warmly. "Still, it looked like you were enjoying talking to him at first. That's nice. It's good to have family. Too many people here don't get any calls at all."

And I could even have believed her platitudes, if I hadn't checked the Other Place, and seen her corpulent, bloated form, which pulsed and trembled with every heartbeat. I had no idea what that meant, but somehow it made her words ring hollow. I made my way back to the rec room in Wilson, and slumped down, hugging a pillow.

That night, I dreamed that I was being torn apart. That I was fractured and broken within the rusty iron locker, surrounded by dead caterpillars, and everything that made me me was seeping through the cracks in my mind and body. My life crawled away from me, along with my mind, and I scrabbled in the filth and grime, trying to pull them back into me. I was a porcelain doll in a cold dead universe which hated me, and I was bleeding out.

I reached out, and wilfully impaled my hand on one of the spikes which was already slick with my own blood. The nail-stigmata piercing my flesh, I broke it off, and screamed as I stabbed the life trying to escape me. I pinned it to the ground, and it wriggled, like a trapped insect. I had to get it back in me. I had to.

I woke in the Other Place, whimpering to myself. There was iron growing on the walls, coating the bare concrete like a scab. I was sinking into the red-black oil, and it was sinking into me. It smelt of the locker. Panicking, flailing, I managed to return to normalcy, and lay in this dark room – God, I wanted to be home again, back in my own bedroom! – curled into a ball on the bed.

In the end, I managed to cry myself back to sleep, and didn't dream again.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chrysalis 1.x

Ten of Wands

A damp, cold clinging chill permeated the city, painting halos around every light and leaving the pavements slightly slick to the foot. It had been raining earlier, and it felt like it was going to rain again tonight. Stepping out of the 24-7, Jamelia Chriswell shivered and tugged her jacket around her. Breath steaming in the winter air, she headed back to the car.

"It is goddamn freezing out there. Gotta be in the twenties," she complained to her partner, clambering into the car and dropping an energy drink in his lap. She dropped the carrier bag in her footwell. "Nice and pre-chilled for you."

Her fellow officer grinned up at her. "You're a life saver," Robert said, breaking the seal and chugging it. He winced. "Urgh. I hate working nights."

"Join the club," she said, fastening her seatbelt. Outside, a few cars were passing along the late night streets, but the sidewalks were nearly empty. Only a few stragglers were out in the cold and wet. No one sensible wanted to be outside when the weather was like this.

"I mean, I don't even like how this crap tastes, but I need it to keep awake," he continued, taking another mouthful.

She peered at the dashboard. "Yeah, I knew it. Twenty-six outside." She shook her head. "I hope those Patriot idiots are freezing. The overtime'll be nice post-Christmas, but couldn't they have found a warmer night to get everyone called up? Anything come in over the radio when I was out?" Jamelia asked, looking around over the parking lot. She blew on her hands, and held them over the heating grills.

"Disturbance over on Twenty-Fourth and Clayton," Robert said, running a hand over his short-cropped hair. "Low priority, but I said we'd check it out." He winked. "Said you were dealing with someone who wanted to complain that someone's dog had pissed against his car."

"Har-de-har," she said, fastening up her seatbelt. She took a thankful bite into a chocolate bar, and swallowed. "Okay, then," she said. "Did they say what it was?"

"Sounds like a few old drunks setting fire to a car," Rob said, starting the engine.

"At least it'll be warm there," Jamelia said.

"Hah. We can hope. They're probably just doing it to be taken in to the nice warm cells."

She shivered, running her fingers through her hair. "Kinda get where they'd be coming from."

The police car pulled smoothly out of the parking lot, onto the damp streets of Brockton Bay. They drove down, headed towards their destination. This was far from the worst part of the city, but it certainly wasn't the best either. The way one might describe it was 'tired'. Paint flaked from buildings which had been decorated in better days, and periodic patches of darkness interrupted the sodium glow of the street lamps, vandalism or ill-repair leaving a light extinguished.

From behind the barred windows of electronics shops, cathode rays blared into the night's darkness. There weren't any rare, expensive flatscreens on display. Those products of parahuman-run factories would be locked up safely, if those shops even had any to sell. They probably didn't. Such consumer goods only appeared in the elite boutiques on the Boardwalk, and this was definitely not the Boardwalk.

In the distance, the roar of a crowd could be heard. The Patriotic rally. There was a certain pattern to it, a distinct cadence. It would rise and fall, almost like the waves which washed the dirty decaying port to the east.

"At least it doesn't sound like open war has broken out," Robert said jokingly, eyes loitering for a moment at the warmth of a Chinese take-out shop. The owner caught his eye for a moment, looking welcoming, but he continued on.

Jamelia grunted.

On Nineteenth, a gaggle of uniformed twenty-somethings staggered down the sidewalk arm in arm. They were singing, loudly and drunkenly. Some of them were carrying brown paper bags which obviously had alcohol in them; others had carrier bags filled with mixers and snacks. Even as the two police officers watched, one of the women threw up into the street, to jeers and cheers alike.

"Want to do anything?" Jamelia asked, nose wrinkling.

"What, against that many drunk soldiers? Not on your life," Robert said heatedly. "Just tell control about them and let the Army deal with their drunks."

"Yeah, best all around," she replied, reaching out for her handset. "Control, this is Chriswell. We have approximately fifteen – that is, one-five – 390s heading south-east along Nineteenth… currently at the intersection with Brameer. Look like they're Army. Can you 10-5 this to their base and tell them to go pick up their drunks? We don't have the manpower to handle them and are currently on the way to a disturbance on Twenty-Fourth and Clayton."

"10-4, Chriswell," came back the crackly voice over the old radio. "Please stand by." There was a pause. "Okay, will do. Continue on your current assignment. Army will be notified."

The car continued along its way, leaving them behind them. "They're not bad kids, probably," Robert said, the traffic lights painting his face red. "We're all young once."

"I didn't say anything," Jamelia said.

"My kid brother's signed up. So did I, before I came here. Only job we could get. No wonder they go a little wild. It's probably the first time in their life they've had spare cash to burn. I know I did some dumb things when I was in the army."

"They're a bunch of drunk idiots. So much for our last line of defence. It's a waste of taxpayer money. They're being paid to do pretty much nothing, just in case an Endbringer shows up."

"Heh. Probably going to get hell from their officers," Robert said, grinning paternalistically. "We used to get hell whenever someone in our platoon gets picked up from town on charges. That's gotta be… what, three squads?" He accelerated away from the lights. "They're prob'ly gonna wish we picked them up. They'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for that. Hell, for that many, they'll be finding all-new messes for them to clean."

They sat in silence for a while, as shops gave way to cheap office space and rented buildings. It started raining lightly. To their left, a truck was being loaded by tired-looking Asian women parked in front of an industrial-scale laundry. The lights were still on in several of the office blocks, and Jamelia wondered for a moment what they were doing in there so late, when half the city seemed to be deserted because of the rally. But whatever they were doing in there, they were doing it quietly and not-obviously-illegally, so it wasn't her problem.

No, her problem was straight ahead. Three burning cars sat in an otherwise empty parking lot, ablaze. The street lights had been broken and the windows of one of the buildings next to the lot were boarded up, so the fires were the main source of light. Hooded youths were gathered around the fire, warming themselves. There were discarded things which looked like both spray and beer cans around them. More importantly, a prone shape – a body? – lay just at the edge of the fire light.

They looked like gang members.

"Control, we have three 11-24s, vehicles are on fire," she said into her handset. "Possible Code Purple. Multiple 10-66s around vehicles, I can see six. They're wearing hoodies, can't see any masks on them. I think there's a person on the ground. Could just be drunk, but we're going to check."

"10-24. Play it safe, Chriswell."

"10-24, Control," Jamelia put her handset down, and found Robert staring at her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's probably nothing," he said awkwardly. "They're a bunch of gangers who set some abandoned cars on fire in the cold. And there's a bunch of them and they're just young. Can't we just ignore this? Go for something that matters."

Her eyes widened. "It's someone who's totally out of it at best. And they're skinheads," she said in contempt. "What if that's some poor kid who just happened to run across six of them?"

"It's probably just one of them drunk after setting the car on fire," he grumbled, unfastening his seatbelt nonetheless and checking his pistol. "If you're wrong about this, you owe me something warm and full of sugar."

Outside, a fine drizzle continued to sleet down from the skies, keeping the floor slick and visibility poor and sapping all warmth from anyone exposed. The weather was getting worse, but honest, proper rain would be better than this undecided downpour, almost closer to mist than rain. In the distance, a car alarm wailed. The two cops turned on their flashlights. Raindrops danced in the beams.

"Hey!" Robert yelled out, letting his flashlight sweep over the scene. There were chalk markings on the ground around the cars, although in the rain and in the glare of the fires, they were obscured. "What's going on here?"

"Fuck off!" one of the hooded figures yelled back. That one sounded young and female.

"It's the cops!" another one said, this time male.

"I don't care if it's the fucking queen of England," the woman –the girl – retorted. "She can fuck off too."

"Who's that on the ground?" Jamelia shouted, squeezing her pistol tightly. There was a bit of her which wished she had more range time. There were six gangers and if it came down to violence – her stomach clenched, and the shake in her arm made her flashlight dance. She didn't want to die.

One of them made an oinking sound, and her knuckles whitened. She forced herself to breathe. To stay calm. "Who's that?" she asked again, her light pooled over the prone figure.

"Just one of us, piggy!" the loud-mouthed girl shouted back. "Go off and hassle some actual criminals."

"Like those slanty pocs down towards the docks," another one called out. "They're all criminals anyway. We're just keeping the place safe from those shits."

Grumbling, though, the youths dispersed into the darkness. Advancing, she checked the prone figure. Up close, she could see it was a Asian man, with blood running from an open cut on his forehead. He looked bruised and battered, and had a prominent black eye. She raised an eyebrow at her partner.

Robert looked vaguely embarrassed, but shrugged.

Despite his injuries, the victim was conscious. "They're gone?" he asked, speech slurred from what might be a bitten tongue. "I... not move and they stop... kicking, but…"

"Yes, they've gone," she said.

With a wince, he pulled himself to his feet, and immediately doubled over, groaning. Between the two of them, the two cops managed to lead the man back to the car.

"Okay, sir, we're just going to have to check you to see how hurt you are. Can you tell me your name?" Jamelia said, while her partner talked to the control centre.

"Jim Lee," he replied with a strong accent, sitting in the car out of the rain.

"And your current address?"

"11003 Seventeenth. I live in Flat 21c."

She noted that down. He seemed responsive, and didn't seem confused. "Are you married? Do you have children?"

"Not married. Not anymore. One daughter, lives with ex-wife."

"What is your daughter's name?"

"Xiulan."

"Can you advise if we have an 11-40?" her radio asked.

His eyes were responsive and dilated normally when she shone the light in them. He was bleeding from his scalp, but it looked like a shallow cut. "Do you want us to call for an ambulance?" she asked the man.

"No. No, I... I'm fine," he answered. "No ambulance need... for me. My car! My wallet! Go arrest them!"

"11-42, according to the victim. No signs of a concussion," she said, a tad dubiously. "Mr Lee, are you sure that you don't…"

"Fine!"

"Confirmed that the victim doesn't want an ambulance," she said into her radio.

Robert approached her. "I'll take his statement," he said. "You check the scene."

"It's wet out there," she said.

"Yes?" He shrugged. "Heads or tails?"

"Heads."

It was tails.

Grumbling, Jamelia headed back out into the cold and wet. At least it was warm around the cars, and as long as she kept upwind she didn't have to breathe in the fumes. The falling water hissed as it touched the hot metal of the burning vehicles, and she swept her eyes and flashlight over the nearby buildings.

A stylised shape was painted in white onto the abandoned office block that backed onto the parking lot, fresher than the rest of the graffiti that tattooed it. It suggested a little girl holding a red balloon, and sprayed under it was-

RIP ENID EMILTON​

-in crude capital letters.

Jamelia's nose wrinkled in contempt.

Three years ago or so, there had been a nasty incident where the five year-old daughter of a prominent figure in the Patriot Movement had been killed in a fight between Chinese and Japanese gangs. It hadn't been a political thing. She'd just been caught in the crossfire and hit by a stray bullet. It happened.

Except most of the children caught in random crossfires weren't so pretty, blonde and photogenic, didn't have parents who had lots of Movement contacts and press support and certainly weren't such a convenient martyr.

Come to mention it, almost all children who died in such a manner didn't have the initials 'EE' leading to local skinheads taking her as a cause celebre, either.

She shook her head in disgust. It was pretty clear what had happened here. Some poor bastard got beat up, his car set on fire, and now this graffiti? Yeah. It was just another bubble in a city which was set to boil. She'd been on the scene when that mob had set on those Asian workers down at the docks, where people had died. And a week ago, Lung, the parahuman leader of the Bomei, burned down several warehouses in the docks owned by companies linked to the Empire-88 and the Iron Eagles. And then there had been the shootings, up in the northern parts of the city…

The gangers here had been looking for revenge.

She doubted that the skinheads here had even known that the man they'd attacked had been Chinese, rather than Japanese. They probably thought every Asian in the city went around as part of one big gang, if they cared that much. Jamelia had worked the street beat long enough to know that it was laughable that the Chinese-Americans who made up the White Lion Association and the local branch of the 14K Triad would want anything to do with the first generation Japanese refugees who named their gang for their 'exile'.

She worked her way along the wall. More gang graffiti. Most of it looked recent, and it was all done in a similar style. There was that recurring runic theme these racist groups seemed to love, tugged straight off the front cover of a heavy metal album. Some of it was actually pretty artistic, by the standards of some of the crap she'd seen scrawled on walls, which suggested they'd had time to work here.

She reached the edge of the building, where it led over to the next lot and a still-active building, and glanced down the alleyway which separated the two. The other building had been freshly painted in the past few months, but had still managed to gather a thinner layer of spray-paint. Patches of off-grey marked areas where some of the larger or more obnoxious gang marks had been painted over.

Trash cans littered the narrow alleyway, their contents split over the ground. The entire place smelt vile, and she was just about to go when something caught her eye.

There seemed to be a shape lying behind one of the overturned bins. It just caught the light for a moment, but its shape brought dreadful imaginings to mind. Jamelia swallowed, and shone her flashlight over it again. Yes, it looked sort of like a body. In a bag.

The rain was getting heavier. The buildings on one side of the alleyway were only a single storey, and the rain bounced off the metal roof, making a racket which drowned out the noise of the city.

"Rob," she said into her radio, holding her flashlight between her shoulder and cheek, "back me up. I've got something suspicious here."

He arrived, and a little bit of her took schadenfreude in the fact that he, too, was now out in this heavy rain. "Look," she said. "There."

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I see it."

Side by side, they advanced, lights dancing over the graffiti-covered walls and the filthy floor. There, a split-open bag disgorged used condoms and old razors; here, old broken beer bottles lay in gleaming piles. It seemed like this alley had been used for tipping junk from the entire block. Those empty noodle cartons looked like they'd come all the way from the Vietnamese takeaway they'd seen on the way in.

"Hey, is that door open?" Robert asked, shining his light at the fire escape of the open building. It was slightly ajar, propped open with some trash. It didn't look like it had been broken into.

"Sucks to be them," Jamelia said, trying not to breathe too deeply. Stepping closer, she swallowed, the scent of rotten meat so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. There was a dark stain around the suspicious bag, a leak from some small tear in its black plastic. Reaching out, she nudged it with her foot.

Like a dam breaking, it split open entirely in a flood of half-cooked noodles and raw chicken. Maggots crawled in the rot and filth, squirming in the sudden brightness.

Jamelia gagged, but mixed with revulsion was relief. It was just a normal black bag filled with normal trash. No body. It had been nothing but a trick of dim light and overstrained plastic. She laughed nervously to herself. She was just jumpy.

"Shit, that stinks!" Rob said, snorting nervously along with her. "Wow. That… fuck, I thought it was… man, don't scare me like that."

Something fell on his head, and he flinched. Feathers drifted down from above.

Jamelia flinched back in instinctual shock, and then blanched as the thing in the pool of light made itself clear. The half-eaten pigeon stared up at her, its dead eyes wide open and its organs spilling out. She looked up in slow horror, and caught sight of the dark shape on the low roof. Something black and horrific and utterly inhuman lurked in the shadows. A single drop of drool drooped down from its mouth, and splashed at the edge of the light, steaming in the cold.

It growled, a deep bass rumble that shook the guts. It was not a very loud growl. It didn't need to be. It was coming from a mouth which could swallow a man's head whole.

"What the fuck!" the man beside her snapped, scrabbling to draw his pistol. In the rain, he lost his grip on the handle, and it went flying. The clatter in the filth of the alley was almost lost.

Jamelia simply froze. The canine, reptilian shape was much bigger, much more than any real animal should be. There was something about its teeth, which glinted in the low light, which screamed to her that if she stopped moving, she might survive. And there was something almost human about the way its arms bent. Something handlike about the claws that grasped the edge of the tin roof.

The next minute was a gap in her memory. One that started with adrenaline and panic, and ended with her sprawling in a filthy, soaking-wet alleyway. She'd lost sight of Robert, but she'd also lost sight of that thing. Groggily, she pulled herself to her feet, and noticed she'd kept hold of her handgun.

She'd emptied it.

She didn't remember firing it. She slotted in a fresh magazine, and worked the slide.

"There she is!" she heard a young-sounding voice shout, and she whirled.

And everything went black.

It was somehow darker than a powercut. It was a darkness which went beyond a lack of light, a darkness which numbed every sense. Jamelia screamed and didn't even hear her own voice. Pistol in hand, she opened fire wildly on instinct. She couldn't hear the bark of her weapon, or see the flashes. All she felt was the reassuring kick. It was the only thing which told her the rest of the world still existed. And then it stopped kicking and she was left in nothingness.

Something hit her, hard, in the stomach. She flailed in the darkness, trying to protect herself, but whatever it was grabbed her wrist, spun her around, and kneed her in the small of the back. Red pain danced across her vision, and she was almost glad of it, because it was a respite from the nothing. Someone held her, someone strong, and she was sure she screamed when they delivered a breathtaking punch to her kidneys.

Whoever they were, they were strong, fast, and knew exactly how to take down a person who couldn't even see to fight back.

She barely felt the tape around her wrists.

Light re-emerged, or perhaps the darkness fled. Either way, she found herself staring into the face of death, and tried to kick and scream. She couldn't shout, because there was tape across her mouth and her legs were bound together. The white skull under a black motorcycle helmet just stared back.

"Ow, fuck, fuck, fuck you Grue," a white figure on the floor behind the skull-faced man managed. "There's always one who freaks out and..." he gasped for air, "… and starts shooting wildly."

"He's only bruised," a blonde girl Jamelia hadn't noticed before said, stepping out of a patch of shadows. They seemed barely deserving of that name; the shadows of the alleyway, compared to the terrible blackness of the darkness, seemed faded and grey. Still, they were enough to conceal someone in an almost skintight costume of blacks and purples, who wore a Grecian theatrical masque which left her lips exposed. "Aren't you glad we insisted you get that armour in your costume, Regent?" she said teasingly. "Although if you'd made it thicker, you won't have that nasty bruise on your collarbone."

"Fuck… ow, ow, ow, fuck you, Tatt," the boy – yes, he was just a boy, only in his mid-teens from the voice – gasped. "That was way too close to my head. Fuck you."

"Tell you what, I'm not up for that, but if you ask nicely, maybe Dr Bitch will kiss it better? And maybe a little more, if you're going to keep on playing up how hurt you are."

"Enough," the skull-faced man in black said. "What do we do with her and the other one?"

The blonde shrugged. "She wasn't expecting to see us here. That means she was here for another reason. Patrol?" Her eyes flickered to Jamelia. "No. She was responding to another call. But with the rally going on, they won't respond to her failure to check in for quite a while." She smiled down at the officer. "Imagine what could happen in that time, before your buddies show up. All alone, in the hands of some wicked criminals."

Jamelia kicked and struggled, but she was trussed up like a fly caught by spiders.

The girl leant in, squatting down by her. "There's no point being like that," she told Jamelia. "We're not going to kill you, and you're not going to get free. You really might as well settle down. It'll be easier for all of us, you included." The girl gave her a sunny grin. "After all, you don't like being out here, sent out to do the scut work with no backup, right?" she said. "I guess everyone else was too busy to help you. They were busy watching those good patriotic Americans down by the docks march up and down and shout about how anyone who isn't like them should go back to where they came from."

"Funny thing, isn't it? You don't see many of them with Native American heritage. They mostly seem to be pretty pale. Sort of like the 'where they came from' themselves is Europe. They don't seem to mention that, do they? Especially when all those guys you work with parrot the same kind of thing, and they don't even bother trying to hide that they think that all 'real Americans' look just like them. They sent you out here, and of course they didn't say anything about it, but the way he looked at you didn't feel too good, did it?"

The girl's grin widened. "Hey, remember how your partner totally has sympathies that way, too?" she added, with casual afterthought. "Not really a surprise, is it?" She leaned forwards, and tucked a pigeon-feather behind Jamelia's ear. "He sent you into the alleyway first, didn't he? Out in the rain, while he talked to your witness. Wonder if he left anything out of his report." She patted the older woman on the head. "Nah, that's probably just vile insinuation from an untrustworthy criminal," she said. "I mean, it's not like he's done anything else that would suggest that he'd rather be off marching with the Patriots, right?"

"We'll leave them in the bathrooms in the building, out of the rain," the skull-faced man said. Behind him, a monstrous hound growled, and Jamelia stopped moving, trying to not even breathe. There was another figure standing back there, beside the hound. How many of them were there?

"And I bet your bosses are going to cover up what we took from there," the blonde continued, heedless. "Hey, I wonder who runs this place? What's worth taking, out in some run down office space? Well, I guess we're just like them, eh? Neither of us want news of this nice little toy getting out. So please don't think of it when you're tied up, 'kay?"

"We'd do worse, but Grue is a softie," the white-clad boy said, clutching his shoulder. His costume was almost as dirty as she was, from his fall in the alley. He hefted a sceptre he held in his uninjured arm. "I'm not going to enjoy this," he said, the grin on his face putting lie to the statement.

Then there was only pain, followed by the relief of blackness.

...​

Just another attack by powered criminals, the after action report said. A minor parahuman gang, called the Undersiders. No police casualties and no other violence involved, so it was low priority.

When Jamelia asked around once she got out of hospital, she was told that the gang had stolen hard drives from the premises. The safes had been opened with the passwords, and emptied. It was suspected they were working for hire, carrying out industrial espionage.

When she asked again, more forcefully, she was put on compassionate leave and was booked in for a psychiatric evaluation.

...​

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Arc 2 – Namakarana

Chapter 2.01

It was the howl of the wind against my window which woke me. Groggily I massaged my eyes and reached for my glasses, clambering out of bed.

The weather was vile outside. I couldn't tell if the sun had risen or not. I checked my clock again. 6:14 flashed at me. Well, it wouldn't be up, but it should have been getting light. It could have passed for midnight. It didn't even have the decency to be a dramatic thunderstorm. It was just relentless rain, apparently trying to conquer the land in the name of Poseidon.

I blinked, tugged my glasses down to the brink of my nose, and shifted my vision to the Other Place. Oh. It was raining blood. How wonderful. I stared out through gore-covered windows, barely able to see through the layer covering the dirty glass. The coppery scent crept in, just at the edge of my perception. Now, what on earth did that mean?

Probably nothing good. Well. That was a pretty shitty omen to start off any day, but it was particularly bad for the day of my evaluation. My chance to get out of here, to be free, for the first time in seventeen days. Two and a half weeks. Almost two-thirds of a month. And now that I'd thought that, I'd completely ruined any chance of getting back to sleep. I could feel butterflies in my stomach. And I quickly dropped out of the Other Place, in case that metaphor was literally true in that place.

At least I'd slept well. I was now on sleeping pills and they really helped. I simply felt better now I was getting seven hours rest a night, minimum. Usually more, because I was finding myself going to bed early simply because I was bored. And I wasn't remembering my dreams, either. I may have still been dreaming, because I often found my covers twisted around my legs when I woke, like I'd been trying to run, but I didn't remember them and that was good enough for me.

Of course, now I'd be thinking all day about how it was raining blood in the Other Place. That had been something I really didn't want to see. It was the smell which was the worst bit. When I was looking out through the glass, I could convince myself that it was just like something on the television. But the coppery ironness crept up on me, reminded me that it was as real as anything in the Other Place – and wasn't that a question?

I couldn't believe it was raining blood out there just because I was nervous. That made no sense. And I really didn't want to think about what else could be making something like that happen.

But if I was going to get up, it was time for my self-imposed exercise regime. Even if it was cold. And it was cold. I glared out at the weather, quietly cursing it for waking me up. And being cold. But I couldn't change that – well I almost certainly couldn't change that – and if I was going to get up, I had to follow my routine. I had to get in shape. If I'd been stronger, maybe I could have fought the Emma-Sophia-Madison-demon thing. And the diet in the canteens here was horribly unhealthy. I half-suspected it was designed to keep the patients feeling too bloated to think of acting up.

Grumbling to myself, I began the first of many sit-ups.

When I was done, I was aching all over, and had almost managed to put what I'd seen out there out of my mind. Of course, as soon as I thought about how I'd put it out of my mind, I was thinking about it again, which wasn't the most helpful thing my mind could do. But I couldn't do anything about that.

Wait. Yes, I could. I took a deep breath, shifted my senses to the Other Place, and frowned. This had just been something I'd stumbled on in the past fortnight, when I'd been practicing – okay, playing around – with my power. It still wasn't easy. So, what would I need to do for this? What kind of construct would I need to build?

I would be affecting myself, so I looked over to the dirty mirror. I'd found it was easier if I just copied what I saw, rather than starting from scratch in my imagination. After a moment's concentration I exhaled, and my twin from the mirror stood in front of me. She was drenched in blood – it was all she was thinking of – which made her look sort of like Carrie. Her expression was locked in a grimace like a... no, it actually was a theatrical mask, like one of those Greek ones, made of some pure white material. It was untouched by blood, apart from two dribbling streams coming from the corners of the eyes. It made her look like she was crying in fear.

I breathed in and then out, long and slow, and she flinched, masked face darting from side to side. Good. The construct hadn't fallen apart, like a few I'd tried. She would be able to sustain what I did next. I built iron chains around her, trapping her so she could barely move, and then her shape blurred as I inhaled her. She swirled like water down a plughole, and I felt the worry just drain away. I was smiling when I was done. Good. I couldn't let my worry ruin things for me today.

I changed from my sleeping-pyjamas to my going-around-during-the-day pyjamas, and then realised I really should have a shower. Gathering my things, I headed for the bathroom. I was in luck; waking early meant that I didn't have to wait for it.

The shower may have been vaguely patronising in how it was clearly designed to stop us from doing anything but going in and pulling the 'on' lever, but it was warm and I had it all to myself. My missing fingernails were starting to grow back, but I still had to wear latex gloves because they weren't meant to get wet. The pink of new skin was everywhere on them, but at least they weren't infected. I had to keep an eye on them, though. I'd hate to lose a finger.

By the time I was done, I could hear other people stirring. I dried myself off, and went to grab breakfast from the canteen. Just a small one. Hopefully this would be the last breakfast I had here, and it wasn't nice enough that I wanted to relish it. The toast tasted like cardboard in my mouth. It was bad enough that I flipped to the Other Place, but that just managed to add a metallic taste to the cardboard. I went and groaned in the bathroom for a bit, but didn't actually throw up, so I just returned to the common room in Wilson.

Sam and Leah were awake, sitting next to each other on the couch. It looked like they'd picked up breakfast already, but were eating it through here.

Sometimes I sort of thought there was something going on between those two. I wasn't sure, though, and they'd tried to talk to me about boys – which had been a pretty short conversation, because I didn't have much to say beyond 'Boys don't seem to be as bad to each other as girls'. It confused me, but it'd be really awkward to pry, so I did my best to ignore it."Nervous?" Leah asked, half-turning to look at me.

I nodded mutely.

Sam nodded at me, looking over the top of today's paper. She had managed to get one of the copies from breakfast today. "Don't muck this up," she said. "If you come back here in tears, it'll be really embarrassing."

"I'll try not to," I said, smiling weakly. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to." I paused. "Not that I want to be rid of you, but…"

"Oh, spare me that," she said, stretching. "I've got an evaluation next week too, if my next lot of blood tests pass. If you're out, then I'll have someone to talk to." She winced. "That'd be nice. It was Leah making herself ill that… uh, got me wobbly. So pass it and we can meet up weekend after next or something."

That was life in a short-to-medium-wing ward, from what I'd seen and heard. There was a pretty constant flow of new faces. Emily had left a few days ago, and there were two new girls, Tori and Henna, who'd come since I'd arrived. "I wonder when Kirsty has her next evaluation?" I said.

Sam looked back up from her paper. "Who?" she asked, distracted.

"Kirsty. Next evaluation?"

"Who?" She frowned, a blank expression on her face.

I stared back just as blankly. "Kirsty. Scars on her face. Worse than mine. In Room Four."

"Oh! Her." Sam blinked, still looking somewhat blank. "No idea," she said. "I don't talk to her."

"I can't recall a single conversation I've had with her," Leah chimed in. "Just the…" she traced lines on her face, and winced, looking at me. "Sorry," she said quickly, "at least yours are just sort of… pink. Not like hers."

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. No, Kirsty didn't talk to people. She just stayed in her room. I hadn't seen her in any of the sessions, either. I'd signed up for quite a few, because – dear God – the boredom was the worst thing in here. And it also meant that I appeared to be keen and willing and taking active control of my wellbeing and everything else that Hannah, as the wing supervisor, said we should be.

I'd set myself the goal that I'd be out of here as soon as possible. And if I managed it today, it'd be just seventeen days.

I was fairly proud of myself for that.

I looked at the clock. "Well," I said, "about two hours to go. I… I think I'm ready. I just want it to be over and done with."

"Oh dear, no!" Leah said, frowning as she looked at me. "You can't go to your evaluation meeting looking like that!"

"Like what?" I said, confused.

"Like that!" She stood up and she put her too-thin hands on her too-thin waist. "You're coming with me, and I'm going to brush your hair properly!"

"They don't let me have a hairbrush or a hairdryer," I protested. "I know it's not that great, but it's the best I can manage."

She grinned at me. "Not the best I can do. Let me go ask Hannah for them."

I smiled back. It was strange. I'd missed this kind of thing so badly. Emma and I used to be like sisters. I hadn't had any real friends for a year and more.

"Technically, it's not breaking the rules," she added. "After all, I'm the one who's using them. So I won't even get in trouble." She paused. "Hopefully."

Yes, that was the worry. Because I was one of the patients in the wing marked in my files as a suicide risk, there were little perfectly normal things which they didn't let me have. But hopefully I'd be out of here soon.

And when I was out of here, I'd be able to keep proper notes on what my powers could do, without having to be worried about nurses reading them and getting worried about legitimate observations. I couldn't trust them not to read anything I wrote. I was sure they read my homework. Especially some of the science homework, where I'd got help from one of the nurses. I just knew, somehow, they'd misunderstand perfectly innocent and accurate records like 'Dr Samuels is bloated – rotting flesh around lips. Strong smell of alcohol mixed with gasoline. Blood stains on fingers'.

It was very unfair.

I had concluded that probably meant that either he had a drinking problem which he was trying to cover up, or had killed someone in a drink-driving accident. Or possibly both. I wasn't sure what the rotting lips meant. Maybe something romance-related, like 'he's lying when he says he loves his partner' or 'his lips are rotting because he's a habitual liar'. Or possibly just mouth cancer. But I was just guessing there.

That's what a notebook which I could actually record my observations in would help with. There were some elements of shared symbolism – for example, another girl in another wing who also had anorexia had shared symbolism with Leah – so if I could keep a list of shared elements, it could help me work out what each thing meant.

Stupid useless obtuse power which didn't give me straight answers.

My evaluation was at 10:15, and apart from the fact that I'd spent the hour beforehand feeling sick to my stomach with nerves, I was feeling ready. My hair was washed and dried and brushed, I'd spent time in front of the mirror making sure I didn't look crazy, and I'd practiced some of the questions that Sam and Leah had been asked before. I wasn't sure what this entailed, but I was about as ready as I could be.

I had set myself some ground rules for this meeting. No looking into the Other Place. No wool-gathering when I was meant to be listening. No breaking down into tears or anything like that. I was going to be on my best behaviour. My dad was waiting for me, and I didn't want to let him down.

"How are you feeling?" he asked me, just outside the room where it was going to be. That was the first thing he said.

"Nervous," I admitted.

"You'll be fine," he said. He was trying to assure me, I could tell, and checking the Other Place I could see that his fires were damped, wavering and flickering in a fretful way. In the fire, I could see images, dancing like ash. Putting them together, most of them seemed to be him, staring into space. I thought he'd been missing me. I'd been missing him too.

"I'll try to be," I said weakly, returning my vision to the normal. He gave me a hug, and I hugged back.

"Good luck," he said.

Going into the room, Dr Vanderbough was there, and Hannah, and a few other people I couldn't remember the names of or didn't recognise. There was one of the doctors who I'd seen around the place, a woman in a neat black suit and glasses who looked like an administrator and who was probably there from the school trying to get me out of here ASAP if she wasn't from the Men in Black, and a few others.

I sat up straight. I was careful to look attentive and smile. I was a perfectly well-balanced and normal girl who had just happened to have a nervous breakdown when locked in a locker filled with fermented tampons. Which, when you thought about it, was a perfectly natural and understandable reaction.

Honestly, I was pretty surprised I wasn't more traumatised by it. I think I would have been, if it hadn't been for the thing with the insects and the nails, which sort of made mundane things look rather less meaningful, and also gave me something else to focus on. So what if I had nightmares? I could live with them.

I'd considered what would have happened if I hadn't got superpowers from that experience. That would have been, like, possibly just the worst. Wow. That would have been just terrible. Emma and co almost certainly wouldn't have done it if they knew they were going to give me psychometry and the capacity to make invisible monsters which obeyed my every order.

Well, they had done it. And here I was now. It was just as well I was a good person, I thought to myself. If I was as bad as them, I could probably make their lives very unpleasant and they wouldn't even know it was me.

So they had better not try anything again.

"So, Taylor," Hannah asked. "How are you feeling?"

I put on my best brave face. "A little bit nervous," I said. "But generally better apart from today and," I spread my hands, "this whole thing."

"That's good, that's good. And don't worry, it's okay to be nervous. We're just going to have a talk – I've already showed them my notes on your progress… which is very promising, by the way. So, shall we get started?"

…​

"And… well, that's about it," Dr Vanderbough said. "I don't believe she's at any immediate risk to herself, and so she can be safely discharged."

I wasn't listening to that conversation. Well, okay, clearly I was. But I wasn't listening to it in any normal way. I'd had my talk, and then they called my dad in. I was waiting in the anteroom, eating biscuits one of the nurses had left me and drinking hot chocolate. The chair was quite comfortable, even in the Other Place where it was overstuffed and slightly warm to the touch. Considering the weather, I didn't mind a little extra warmth. The blood-rain in the Other Place had thinned, and most of the liquid coming from the sky was now water. I couldn't bring myself to be curious about it, though. Not when I had other things to think about.

I looked very normal staring out of the window, especially if you couldn't see what I was actually staring at. A pair of little eyeless china-doll cherubs, holding up a cracked television screen. I'd sent an angel made of barbed-wire with a CCTV camera for a head into the room to observe where my dad was meeting with the doctors and staff to talk about my future.

With a little experimental fiddling, I'd even managed to get the TV-screen to show me the normal world, rather than the Other Place.

Actually, now that I thought of it, that seemed like a very promising development. I had just shown it was possible to see things in the normal world, while in the Other Place. So maybe I could overlay the normal world on the Other Place, or have the normal world shown on my eyelids, so I could change between the two by opening and closing my eyes?

Thoughts for later. This was what I needed a notepad for. Right now, I had a meeting to spy on.

"So she's better?" my dad asked.

Dr Vanderbough pursed his lips. "We believe she doesn't need to be an in-patient anymore," he said cautiously. "As I said earlier, I would strongly recommend that she have regular meetings with a therapist for at least a few months. She improved notably when I put her on some mild sleeping pills so she was getting proper amounts of rest – she was having nightmares every night, and the hallucinations seemed to have been contributed to by that. Ideally, her doses should be lowered so she doesn't become dependent on them. They should only be a short term measure."

I didn't like the sound of that. I liked being able to sleep. Also, I was 'better', because I'd never gone crazy in the first place.

"She's going to need you through the next bit," Hannah said, folding her hands on her lap. "Here, things are stable and calm. She may find it more difficult in normal day to day life. The return to school will be especially stressful."

"I've observed she has trust issues," Dr Vanderbough says. "She doesn't open up to anyone. I've had to coax every little step we've made out of her. I'm fairly certain that she's telling the truth about the bullying, with no more exaggeration than would be normal. A long-term, systematic bullying campaign like that would explain several things I've noted about her. It's a very normal reaction, but it's getting in the way of her recovery. She seems to care about you – she talked about you fairly frequently. You're going to have to be a solid place for her to stand on, someone who won't judge her for what she tells you."

The betrayal stung. How dare he tell my dad I had trust issues? What gave him the right? He'd said that things in that room were between me and him, and then he'd gone and – how dare he! That nasty man-spider, worming his way in to…

… huh. A bit of self-awareness caught me. Wow. That chain of thought had been outright paranoid.

Maybe… uh. Maybe they had a point.

I slumped down, cupping my hands over my mouth, and tried to control my sudden hyperventilation. So he thought that the way I had no reason to trust anyone, adults or children, was getting in the way of my recovery? That was ridiculous, surely. But why… why hadn't I told my dad I was being bullied earlier? Why hadn't I tried harder to get help from the school?

Oh, I had my reasons. I had plenty of reasons. He couldn't have done anything. I didn't want him to worry. I was ashamed. I'd tried to tell the school earlier, when it had been less bad, and it hadn't helped. If I told on those three now, no one would help me and they'd just step up the bullying, so I'd just tough it out until I graduated and could go off and leave them behind. All part of the familiar litany of reasons which I'd repeated again and again.

At what point had the reasons taken over from trying to do anything?

Well. He knew about the bullying now. And I'd bet anything that the school did, from the police and him kicking up a fuss. In a twisted way, I had leverage now. After all, if they let it go on, and I really did kill myself, they'd be in deep PR shit. I wasn't going to do that, of course. I'd never been suicidal. But they didn't know that. And I had my collection of notes on the bullying, all those records of phone calls, and a diary of events.

At the very least, I should let my dad know about the existence of the diary. That thing with the locker… that was a step up. Way, way up. I could have died from that. I still didn't have full feeling in my hands. I'd never thought Emma would do something like that. Adults might want to shrug off name-calling and stealing my stuff as childish things. They couldn't shrug off this kind of thing. Especially men, I bet. I'd just have to say 'locker full of used tampons' and they'd be freaking out.

I didn't think they'd try to kill me, but I hadn't thought they'd do something which could really hurt me right up until they did. It wasn't paranoia when they might actually be out to get you.

The door to the meeting room opened, and my dad was the first one out. He was smiling widely, in an open, relieved way which managed to make me feel guilty about how much he must have been worrying. I rose, and forced myself to smile back.

"It's good news?" I asked.

And there was just a little bit of me which pragmatically pointed out that if I owned up to some things which didn't matter, it would be easier to keep the fact that I was a parahuman from him. I'd really be protecting him from that. He didn't need to know I was a more bizarre Thinker/Master mix than anyone I'd been able to find online. Not yet. Not until I was sure I wanted anyone to know. I couldn't let him be threatened by people who might want to use me.

Compared to that, telling him the truth about the bullying would be nothing.

One small step at a time.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.02

As I dressed, I realized how strange it felt to be wearing normal clothes again. It was funny – I'd found the constant pyjamas to be infantilising, another sign of how little we were trusted with our own safety. And sure, they were, but they were also kind of comfy. My jeans felt itchy and tight by comparison.

I said my farewells, and left with a bag full of pamphlets and advice leaflets. I'd scribbled Sam and Leah's mobile numbers on one. I didn't have a mobile, while as Arcadia girls they probably had Tinkerfab smartphones, but at least I might be able to contact them once they were out of there. I hadn't expected to make my first sort-of friends in years in a psychiatric hospital, but I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that the place they kept crazy people was less crazy than high school.

It was still raining as I walked out the door, so Dad sprinted for the car and brought it around just in front of the entrance. I still ended up soaked getting my stuff from the hospital to the trunk.

"I only just got into these things," I said to Dad as I dried my glasses on my top. "Guess I'll have to get into my pyjamas as soon as I get home."

He grinned back, and frowned. "How are your hands?" he asked.

"Better, better," I said. I peeled off my left latex glove, showing him my hand. "They're not oozing any more. One of the nurses in the hospital was seeing to them, and she said the main thing now is keeping them dry and clean, and I need to keep on taking the antibiotics." I tapped my ring and little finger with my thumb. "I can't feel that very well, and those two fingers are a bit stiff, but I have hand exercises which are meant to help."

"Mmm," he said, and paused. "Are you hungry?" he asked carefully.

I was. I hadn't had much for breakfast because of the nerves, and it was now mid-afternoon. I'd packed as fast as I could, but there had still been paperwork to do and talks about what to do if I had any suicidal urges and so on. "Yeah," I said. "Just… please, nothing with fries in. They served them way too much in there."

"Does Italian sound good?" he asked hopefully.

"Pasta with proper toppings that isn't just mac-and-cheese? Yes!" It sounded really good to me.

He started the engine. "That's good, then. I'm pretty hungry too." He shook his head. "Wish the weather had let up, though. The forecast said it was going stop by noon."

It was early afternoon, but the weather had barely cleared up at all. The sky was iron-grey, and I could barely see the gas stations and fast food restaurants by the side of the road. Their light was masked by the rain which hammered down against the car. The windscreen wipers were working full out. Dad was taking it carefully, and I was glad of it. I'd hate to get out of a psychiatric hospital and immediately wind up back in a normal one – or worse.

Of course, he always drove very carefully. No matter what.

Static hissed as I flicked through the stations.

"… love hurts, I'm telling you, but sweet babe~, what can you do? But I say
"listen, it's simply the way that liberals try to shut down anyone who speaks against them. She's calling me a bigot, but she can't deny the facts, and those facts say that Japanese immigrants are involved in mass people-smuggling operations, and have ties to the sex trade. They're a criminal influence and
"what will you do if your loved ones fall ill? Without health insurance, you could suffer an unexpected illness and
"Florida Man gave a public statement saying 'Sure, he was a real smart bad guy, but then I remembered that his power was all about bein' smart and nothin' about being immune to ma shotgun and so
"casualty reports from Dubai are still coming in, but they're already over ten thousand. Almost the whole city is flooded, and even from up here, you can see the bodies in the flooded streets. It almost looks like Venice from a distance, but then you see the fallen skyscrapers and the damage to the…"

My dad reached out and firmly turned off the radio. "Don't channel-hop, Taylor," he said evasively. "Either find some music or turn it off."

I frowned. "Dad," I said cautiously. "What was that talking about casualties?"

He said nothing.

"Dad?"

He sighed. "The Leviathan attacked Dubai last night," he said. "I didn't pay much attention to the news this morning, but… it's bad."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah." He sighed. "There's always that little bit of guilt from being relieved that it was nowhere near here," he said, knuckles whitening around the steering wheel.

Another Endbringer attack. Yes. My dad was right. There always was that little frisson of guilt when you heard that you'd been spared an attack by one of those… one of those things.

There were three of them. They'd appeared in the nineties, one after the other. The Behemoth had come first, tearing its way out of a volcanic eruption, then the Leviathan had risen from the Pacific Ocean in a giant tsunami, and the Simurgh had descended from the moon in a total eclipse over Europe. They attacked a city each, every year, ever since each of them had appeared. "Endbringer" was synonymous with disaster, with calamity and death. Sometimes they could be driven away, but they always caused left devastation and mass death behind.

I'd never known a world without them, but I was old enough to know that they were why everything was getting worse.

Could that be why it had been raining blood when I'd woken up?

But Dubai was… like, almost on the other side of the world, somewhere in the Middle East. Would it really have that much of an effect? Well, I guessed the only way I could find out was to pay close attention to the weather in future. And start to worry if it started raining blood again, which was a perfectly natural reaction.

I blinked. Oh, I was feeling concerned about that again. The construct which had been trapping it must have fallen apart. They did that after a few hours at best. Some of them only lasted seconds, if I made it to do a specific thing. I'd managed to make one which had lasted over a day, but that had been hard. I had to be incredibly precise when mentally constructing it to stop it falling apart with time, and have you ever tried holding a very detailed image in your mind while adding more and more complexity to it? It's really difficult.

"So, how's work?" I asked, both to distract myself and break the awkward silence in the car.

My dad glanced my way briefly. "Things have calmed down a bit," he said. "It's still simmering a bit, but… well, I mean, it's tense, but that's better than it was. Right until some idiot does something stupid again," he muttered under his breath.

I pretended I hadn't heard that. "I meant that thing you were talking about last time you called. You know, the thing you said you couldn't talk about?"

"Yes, I… uh, still can't really talk about it. Talks are still ongoing, and I can't even tell you because there are some people who really wouldn't like some of the things which we're talking about."

I blanched. "… it's not illegal, is it?" I asked.

"No. Much as some people would like to stop us from…" He winced. "Uh, can you forget I just said that?"

"Said what?" I said innocently, even if I was already starting to put things together.

"Good girl," he said. "I mean, uh, thanks Taylor."

My dad was with the Dockworker's Union, and just like pretty much everything else in the city, it was suffering. The ships just weren't coming in. From what he said, he spent his time trapped between the companies who just wanted to fire everyone and bring in new workers for a fraction of the cost and the more radical elements of the labour movement.

His sympathies, I suspected, lay with the radicals. He approved of the cooperatives and workers' associations which had become a feature in the inner cities. Sometimes, I wondered if having to support me was stopping him from really throwing himself into it. I knew he worried about money and how stable his job was.

But just up ahead there was a stark reminder that things could have been a lot, lot worse for us. By the side of the freeway, sprawling over an abandoned industrial estate, was a shanty town. Some people called them 'new Hoovervilles'. I guess it was because they really, really sucked. Shanty town made more sense as a name, though.

I tried not to stare out at the mobile homes extended into permanent shacks and the abandoned factories and office blocks cannibalised into squats. The taller buildings looked like they'd contracted some kind of skin condition, their windows haphazardly boarded over or barricaded up. Everywhere, corrugated iron and blue plastic roofing channelled small rivers down onto the already sodden ground.

The government hated these places, I knew that much. They were hives of gang activity, the ideal spot for ramshackle drug-labs or whole armouries of unlicensed weapons. There were squat clearance operations – I'd heard people on the news complaining that too much money was spent in road-and-housebuilding programmes and not enough on getting rid of these places – but more always sprung up. When areas of the city were abandoned or empty, it wasn't hard for people to break into a building and start living there. And since there simply weren't enough jobs to go around in the Greatest Depression, there were more than enough homeless people willing to break the law to get out of the weather.

Up in the rainy sky, I thought I could see the lurking shape of an insect-like government Tinkerfab helicopter. No doubt it was loaded up with sensor equipment which didn't care about the rain. But I only saw it for a moment, and then it was gone.

If the sight of the shanty town was bad in the real world, it was worse in the Other Place. The entire place was cloaked in an oily fog, blowing downwind. When the car drove through it, it smelt like burnt tires and stale sweat and misery. And as for the scabrous buildings which bled rust into the red-tinged rain, as for the half-alive slimy slug-like trailers, as for the shuffling figures I could see with my perfect vision in the Other Place… well, the less said about them the better. But I wanted to get away.

We drove on and left the shanty town behind.

…​

I'd regained my appetite by the time we got to the Italian place. It was in Brockton Bay proper, fairly close to the Boardwalk. As we parked, dad and I pulled a face in unison. The rain still hadn't let up. The walk to the restaurant still left us pretty damp, but we got a table close to a radiator. Inside, there was a slight smell of wood smoke, and swing playing faintly in the background. The slow drive meant we'd missed the lunch crowd, leaving us in a mostly empty restaurant.

I was glad that that there weren't too many other people around. I was going to be saying some things I didn't want overheard, and it was going to be hard enough to admit some of them without looking over my shoulder every five seconds.

Just in case, I checked the Other Place. The restaurant was reassuringly bland by the standards of that world. Yes, the wood panelling was cracked and splintering revealing raw concrete underneath, and yes, there was a low level of filth everywhere, but there were no mysterious bloody stains or toxic cloying emotional clouds. I winced as the off-tune music scraped against my nerves, but it was just noise and there was no mysterious screaming. I should probably check the food when it arrived, but at least I had no reason to try to talk my dad into going somewhere else.

"Taylor?" I looked away from the window, to my dad and the waitress. "What do you want to drink?"

I blinked, and quickly scanned the menu. "Uh… just water, please," I said.

"There's no reason to skimp," Dad said after the waitress had left. "This is a treat."

"I just felt in a water mood," I said. "I didn't feel like anything sweet."

He nodded. "So…" he began, and then didn't say anything. We sat there in mutual awkwardness for far too long. 'I'm not crazy'? Would that be a good thing to say to break the conversational silence?

"It's good to have you back," he said eventually.

"Thank you," I said.

Oh God, what was I meant to say? Was I just going to admit it? Should I wait until the food had come? But I was hungry and what if he lost his temper when I told him some of the things I had been keeping from him? To avoid having to talk, I hid behind the menu, reading it like my life depended on it.

The waitress returned with my water and Dad's Coke. "Are you ready to order?" she asked. "Do you want starters?"

"Taylor?"

"Uh… no starters." I didn't want to delay the main course. "Just a main for me."

"Okay," my dad said. "So…"

"…yeah. I'll… um," I scanned down the list, "I'll have the spaghetti alle vongole," I said, and paused. "Uh, unless… how much garlic is on this?"

"Oh no, we don't put too much garlic on here," the waitress said.

"Then, yes, the vongole."

"And you?"

My dad pursed his lips. "Um… I'll just have the carbonara."

"Great!" She took the menus. My cover was gone. I'd have to talk and I was dreading it and I was working to try to hide the way my stomach was churning. I couldn't do it. I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't come clean. "Anything else?"

"Uh," I said. "Where are the bathrooms?"

She turned and pointed. "Just take that passageway over there, and there are signs. Ladies are on the left."

"Thank you," I said, standing. "I'll be back in a moment."

The bathrooms were acceptable, and I shut myself in one of the cubicles. Sitting down on the toilet, I hyperventilated into my cupped hands. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn't do it. I also needed the toilet for real, so I did my business and then stared at myself in the small mirror over the sink.

"Pull yourself together, Taylor," I told my reflection, trying to talk myself into it. "What's there to be afraid of? He knows you're being bullied. He knows that Emma, Sophia and Madison were doing it. You're not going to be admitting to anything he doesn't already know."

"If he knows how long it was going on, he might do something stupid," I answered. "I don't want him getting in trouble. You know he gets angry and tries to control it."

"And you don't think he won't do it if I don't tell him?" I pointed out. "At least this way I can be honest with him. If I come clean, he'll trust me more and we- I might be able to stop him getting too angry. After all, that's the big thing. He already knows. I can't keep it a secret anymore. And I bet he's been worrying and worrying about it ever since he found out."

I sighed. It made sense, I just didn't want it to. When it came down to it, I was ashamed. I didn't want to look weak, like I couldn't do anything. Even though I couldn't have done anything to stop it, for all the years it had been going, for all of high school.

I shifted into the Other Place and glanced around, noting the snow that dusted the broken and cracked sink in front of me. Snow. Hah. So someone used this sink frequently for cocaine, I guessed. I leant forwards and took a tiny sniff. Yes, the snow smelt of dependency, need, and a desperate hunger for something which wasn't food. I shook my head.

It was so easy to make the construct from my secrecy, my fear of telling, all those years of bullying. I just had to think of it and pour it into my breath.

And the product of this concentration looked like me. It looked very much like me. It was me without the scars. Not a monster; just me. And – God – I could read my own expression so well. She was scared. She was trying to be strong, but the fear and apathy and relentless oppression had got to her, so she was just trying to walk through life and not be noticed.

Then I noticed the staples around the edge of her face and the redness around her eyes, and realised that that expression was just another mask, locked onto her face. It was too rigid to be a real face.

A morbid thought struck me. This construct, if it worked like I thought it would, might well be able to force people to not tell things with as much strength as I'd felt about not wanting to tell about the bullying. That was scary.

Maybe I shouldn't tell after all. Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do. It wasn't like I could make a difference. And I didn't want to worry him. I'd made my mind up, but having just made this construct to help pluck up the courage, maybe I shouldn't. After all, this couldn't be natural.

Or maybe the construct – Madame Secret, I was going to call her – was just affecting me too. I gritted my teeth. No. I was going ahead with this.

It was hard to trap her. Very hard. She was strong, perhaps the strongest construct I had ever made yet, and she fought to slip out of her binds. Worse, she attacked back, with waves of apathy, waves of fear, waves of I-shouldn't-be-doing-this-there's-no-need-to-make-a-fuss. A chain snaked around one arm, pulling it tight against the wall, but as it dived to weave around her arm she managed to wrench the arm loose from the wall, uncaring that the bone audibly snapped.

This wasn't working, I thought. I was on a fool's errand. I should just give up and – I exhaled, sweating, no! That wasn't me. I could feel her hammering my mind and I swayed, my vision momentarily greying. I clenched my teeth, panting, throwing everything just into holding her where she was. And I was losing. She dislocated both arms to get free of the bond around her shoulders, and wriggled like a squirming insect out of the chains on her legs. One desperate last attempt got her around the throat, but she was breaking that too.

This wasn't working. She was just too slippery. I needed a new approach. I glared at her, and two bloodshot eyes glared back at me from behind her mask.

I laughed, a small giggle escaping my lips. It all made sense.

I let go of the chains and she rushed in towards me, fingers twisted into claws. And then I exhaled a cloud of rusty butterflies right into Madame Secret's face. They tore her mask off, and all of a sudden the resistance stopped. I took the chance to trap her tighter than a fly in a spider's web. She was weak, compliant as the chains trussed her up tight. I tried not to stare at her face, because she had no skin under the mask which now lay on the filthy floor. There was just red muscle and fat and the gouges from where the staples had been, weeping blood.

I'd cut her open, exposed her raw, bloody core, and now she was helpless.

Yes. I could tell my dad. The freedom was wonderful. I stooped down, and picked up the fallen mask. It was, and wasn't real. I could feel it, but it felt fizzy, almost like froth on a milkshake. I glanced from it to Madame Secret, and back again. And this – this was interesting. A mask of secrets. I could see that it wasn't alive, wasn't aware like she was. I focussed and let the mask flow back into me, leaving the greater construct still intact. Yes, I could make constructs which weren't beings in their own right.

I inhaled Madame Secret, and then returned to the normal world and checked my appearance. I washed the sweat from my face, and adjusted my hair.

"Are you feeling fine?" my dad asked. I could hear his concern.

I coughed, and tried to look embarrassed. "There wasn't much fibre in the meals in the canteen," I muttered, looking away from him.

He coughed. "Well. Uh. That won't be a problem now you're back home," he tried.

It looked like it had worked. "Yeah, I'll be glad to be home in my room with my bed and my books and…" I groaned as a realisation hit me.

"What is it?" my dad asked.

I winced. "Nothing really," I admitted. "Just remembered that I think I forgot to trade books back with Leah. I think I still have some of hers and she has some of mine." And she had come off rather better for the trade, I didn't say. I had thought I read quickly before I met her. I had been quite soundly disabused of that by her ability to finish a 300 page book in an hour or two.

"So… it seems like you, uh, met some people in… that place," he said. "That's good."

"Yes, it was," I said. I took a breath. "But I wasn't nervous about that," I said. "I was nervous because… well, I've been trying to get the courage to tell you something. I've probably been trying to do this for a long time, but now? Now, I think I can do it."

"Are… are you sure?" he asked.

I nodded. "As ready as I've ever been," I said. "More, really. But… uh, please, don't interrupt me. At least not at first. I'm afraid that if I stop, I might not be able to go on. And it might be a bit jumbled up."

He played with his napkin, and swallowed. "Go on," he said.

It was easy, with what I'd done to Madame Secret. I knew I couldn't have done it before. I would have choked up.

"It started… probably after I got back from summer camp in '09," I began. "I mean, I'm not sure if there were some things I'd missed. I still hadn't got over Mum dying when I went off, and I'd offended Emma or something beforehand. I don't really remember, and when I tried asking, she just said she didn't want to hang around with a loser like me anymore. But there had to be some reason, right?" I sighed.

"I don't know. I do know that when I got back, she didn't want to hang around with me anymore. She'd found a new best friend – Sophia – and they'd make fun of me. And that hurt, but… I thought it was going to get better. You know? Like, it still hurt because Emma had been my best friend, but I tried to hang around with other people and I tried to see if we could make-up or something."

"I don't know how they managed it, but it just ended up that I wasn't someone that 'cool kids' talked to, or hung around with. I'm not even sure how it happened myself. There wasn't a single point where everything changed. Everyone just drifted away from me. And the pranks were starting. Like, one day I found all the lead from one of my… you know, those clicky pencil things? All the lead was gone. I had to keep my pencil case in my bag at all times. I had to go and get one of the locker-room lockers, rather than a hallway locker, because they have better locks and," I laughed bitterly, "look what that got me. If I'd had a hallway locker, they're so bad I could probably have just broken out from the inside. You can open them by kicking the door hard in the right place, everyone knows that."

"But yeah. If I didn't watch my bags, things would go missing. People wouldn't get out of my way in the corridors and I'd 'accidentally' be pushed over. But the worst thing was the whispering. The name-calling. And… well, Madison – she really joined in early last year – just did stupid pranks and got me laughed at, and Sophia is just plain mean, but Emma knew all my secrets. She knew how to make things hurt. And…" I felt my eyes begin to burn, "and I was so lonely, because no one was really talking to me and I couldn't do a thing to stop it. No one who found out cared enough. And most of it was 'just' words. Notes in my locker. Slipped into my bag. Sent to my email address. Spoken behind my back. Spoken in front of my back. As if I just didn't matter one little bit."

"I'm… sure the words were very bad," my dad began, and I couldn't let him finish. I just couldn't. I didn't want to hear that from him.

"No, that's the thing, Dad," I said softly. I rubbed my fingers against the cold side of my glass, looking for the right phrasing. "You probably… like, got in fights at school when you were a kid, or something like that?"

He shifted slightly uncomfortably in his seat. "Well, yeah, that kind of thing happens."

"That's a boy thing. If they'd… like, got me near the bike sheds and started punching me, then there'd have been bruises. And I could have at least tried to punch them back, which – God knows – I really wanted to sometimes. But pretty much everything was just words," I said bitterly. "Words behind my back, or in front of it. Words and little petty things which hurt. Anyone who cared what the popular kids thought didn't want to hang around with me, and…" I shrugged, "well. Never enough proof for anyone to listen to me. And it didn't help that I'm so freakishly tall and… and have no figure worth speaking of and aren't pretty either. All of those things were things which make me a target. About the only way it could have been worse is if I was fat."

"You are pretty," my Dad protested, unable to hold his tongue.

"I'm not," I said, crossing my arms protectively. "Emma is pretty. She does modelling. Sophia is all athletic. Madison is 'cute' and has boys trailing her like stupid puppies. I'm just a beanpole." I sighed. "I had told a teacher. Mrs Bellinghausen. And she talked with them and they said they hadn't done anything and nothing came of it. And then she went on maternity leave and as soon as she was out of the picture, things got worse because I was a tattletale. Because there was never any proof, and no one cared. Just words. Just excuses," I almost snarled.

I sighed. "And then just before Christmas, things got better. They just left me alone. They ignored me. I was happy to be ignored, you know. And because of that, there were people who were willing to talk to me. I don't know if they told other people to let up on me, or whether those others had just been afraid that they'd be targeted like I was. Things were getting better." I paused. "And then right after Christmas. Wham. Guess they just wanted me to let my guard down."

"So that's about it. I made sure I made notes on it all. Back home, in my room, I've got a diary of events. There's much more than I can summarise here."

There was silence, broken only by the rain outside and recorded swing playing in the background. My dad was pale. "Taylor, I… I didn't know," he said.

"I know," I said sadly. "I didn't want anyone to know. It… it was so hard to tell you this." He didn't know the half of it. I'd had to cut the face off one of my inner demons to do this.

"I should have known. I should have noticed how… how for two years, you weren't talking about Emma all the time. How you never went around to her house. How she never called. I was just a… just a terrible dad. I should have seen."

Yeah, you should have, I thought. Of course I didn't say that. Dad had almost fallen apart after Mum had died, and he still hadn't been all there at the beginning. And I'd been hiding it from him. It wasn't fair to blame him when I'd been working so hard to keep secrets from him.

I guess that's a useful talent.

"So what are you going to do?" I asked in a small voice.

He sighed, resting his head in his hands. "I don't know," he said. "I… I don't know."

The arrival of the food was a welcome relief.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.03

I dropped my bags on my bedroom floor, and flopped face-first onto my bed. Home, sweet home. A bedroom which wasn't an institutional cell, carefully designed so I couldn't hurt myself. A bed which was soft, and didn't have plastic sheeting covering the mattress.

It was great.

I lay there for a while, torn between the need to unpack and the desire to just lie there.

"Taylor? Can you come through here please?" Dad called from just outside my room, making the decision for me. I pulled myself off the bed with only a minimum of grumbling.

"What is it?" I asked, poking my head around the door.

He looked very awkward. "Here," he said, handing a candy bar to me. "I got this for you."

I blinked. "Uh," I began.

"What's the matter? I thought you liked them," he said.

"I know, I only meant…" I trailed away. "Thanks, Dad," I said, giving him a hug. "Thanks for thinking of something like that." I paused. He seemed to want something more. "I think I am better, I really am. The psychiatrist said I probably just had a panic attack in the locker. Things should be fine as long as I don't wind up in somewhere like then again. And that's not likely, right?"

He looked slightly more comfortable at that. "I hope so," he said. "I really do." He paused. "Uh, have you… do you need help unpacking?"

"I'll be fine," I said. "I was… ah, just having a little lie down before I started."

"Don't leave it too long," he said. He massaged the back of his neck. "Anyway, I've taken the next two days off work, and," he coughed, "we'll need to talk about your return to school. When you're feeling ready, of course."

The bottom felt like it dropped out of my stomach. "Yes," I said weakly.

"I'm not going to try to push you back too quickly," he said, "but you do need to think about that."

"I know," I said. I took a deep breath. "I know. I'll… I was doing the work they sent me when I was in the hospital! I'll… yeah, I'll need to see about handing that in. And getting some more." I tried my best to put on a brave face in front of him, but I wasn't having much luck.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"I'd tried not to think about when I was going back," I said in a small voice.

He winced. "Sorry," he said. "But… no, we'll think about that later."

"I know I have to," I said.

"I did check out what'd be required for you to transfer," he said, "but the waiting lists are… well. The person I talked to said that you'd probably have graduated before you got to the top of the list."

"Because they don't want someone like me," I said. The thought of heading back to Winslow had ruined whatever good feelings I might have had. And heaven forbid that Arcadia let me in. Sure, Leah and Sam had been nice enough, but they were just students. God, things would have been just better if I'd applied there for high school in the first place.

"It's not… I did try to explain," my Dad said, reaching out to give me a hug. I didn't try to get away, but I didn't hug him back. "But the waiting list is apparently really long and… it sucks, I know."

"I guess I'll just have to tough it out. Like I have for years," I said.

"No," he said. "No," he repeated, more loudly. "No, no more. You're not going to just sit there and take it. We'll make a difference. Somehow. Even if the school doesn't want to listen."

Yeah, like anything's going to make a difference, I thought to myself. To stop myself from saying that out loud, I instead looked him in the eyes and said, "Dad. Promise me that you won't do anything…" I searched for a good word, "rash." No, that wasn't the right word, but I didn't know what would be.

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "I've been thinking about this. About a lot of things and I…"

"I can't let you get in trouble because of me," I protested. I couldn't. "I can't and I won't. I can just hold on until I graduate. I'll tell the teachers if anything else happens, I promise I will! Just don't… like, go confront Emma's dad or something because," I gasped for air, "because he's a lawyer and he knows all the tricks to make anything that happens look like your fault and… and… and…" I slumped, shaking. "I can't let you do anything that would get you arrested," I whispered.

There was an awkward pause before he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a hug. "There you are, looking after your old man when you're just out of hospital." he said, trying to make it into a joke. "I'm the one who's meant to be looking after you, and I will."

He wasn't joking. I flickered to the Other Place, and he was a blazing inferno. The only thing keeping him in the vague shape of a man were the chains that coiled around him. What would happen if I loosed them? Translated out of the metaphor-logic of the Other Place, that would be getting rid of his control, setting his temper free. That would be a terrible idea to begin with, and even if it wasn't – even if I could see some obvious way to get rid of his stress or calm him down – I couldn't do it. There was no way I was going to mess with Dad's head. It was a line I shouldn't cross.

The heat of his rage couldn't actually burn me, but I still flinched away from it. Mentally retreating back to normalcy, I found him frowning at me. "Taylor," he said, "what's wrong? You didn't used to try to escape hugs."

I couldn't explain why. "I didn't use to do a lot of things," I said bitterly, and then blinked. That didn't really mean anything, as a sentence. Hmm. "I mean, I didn't… I used to do different things. Oh, forget it." I snorted. "I… I just sort of mucked up that sullen teenager comeback, didn't I?"

He gave a weak grin. "Yeah, you sort of did. Want me to help you unpack? And then we can head to the shops. We need food and you probably have stuff you need, too."

I blinked. "Yeah, thinking about it, I do need some things. More toothpaste, a new toothbrush, maybe some pens and a notebook or something. I think I should keep a new diary." I cleared my throat. "And speaking of diaries…"

…​

It was dark outside. Through my curtains I could see the rain falling, lit by the orange of the sodium street lights. I glanced over the spines of the new books I'd bought, but I didn't feel like reading Hopscotch, Foucault's Pendulum, or Messenger 13. Leah had recommended them, but they didn't look quite like the kind of thing I'd normally read, and I was feeling exhausted.

It wasn't just from being out of the routine I'd built up in hospital, or from a cold, damp shopping trip. I wasn't the most sociable sort by short, and having my dad want to spend so much time with me was mentally exhausting. I needed time to recharge my batteries. I appreciated why he was treating me with kid gloves, butit was getting just a bit annoying.

I'd shown him the old diary of the things that the bullies had been doing to me. That hadn't gone well at all. I'd thought for a moment that he was about to explode. He was planning to bring that up when we met with the school to talk about me going back to school. I'd extracted a promise from him that he wouldn't do anything until then.

Telling the truth about things was really hard work, and I wasn't even sure it was the right thing to do. I'd had to beat down Madame Secret again today, just so I could show him the diary, and all it had done was make him even angrier, burn more furiously in the Other Place. I couldn't go a full day of interaction with my own father without having to chain down facets of my own personality in a creepy alternate reality. Twice. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for acting like a normal person?
God, I was so fucked up. Why couldn't I have had some nice clean and simple Alexandria package?

Oh wait, because I got my powers when I was locked in the sort of thing that third world countries might use to torture dissidents, apparently tried to kill myself, and nearly died. It wasn't my fault my powers were like this. Emma, Sophia and Madison were the ones who put me through this. Their fault, not mine. I just had to play the hand I was dealt.

I lay back on my bed, and let the Other Place impose itself over my senses. It didn't lie to me like the normal world did. I could see the truth hidden in things when I looked into it. It was horrible, yes, but the normal world was horrible too. At least the Other Place was honest about it.

My room wasn't the worst Other Place reflection I'd seen. Not by far. It was mostly just bare concrete. There weren't any creepy scrawlings on the walls and the metal was mostly intact. Everything was damp and there were pools of dark water on the floor, though, and when I gingerly tasted the water it was salty. Yes, I suppose I had cried in here quite a bit.

Well. That was going to change.

I picked up the remote from the pool of water it lay in, and turned on my television. The cathode ray hummed like a swarm of insects in the Other Place, and I flicked through the channels to leave it on the news. That should give me some background noise and make it sound like I was watching something.

"Paranapiacaba at twelve hundred hours," said the vapid blonde newsreader with the plastic face, smiling with lips fixed into rigid fake-happy curves. "Elisenburg via Merkland and Lvivsaka Brama at thirteen thirty."

The plastic man beside her with lipstick kisses over his sallow cheeks chuckled. "Chamberí at fourteen thirty," he said. "Kymlinge and Stadion Spartak at fifteen forty five, Dachnoye at sixteen hundred hours. And now over to Sasha for the weather."

Hmm, actually, I should change to another channel. He'd probably be a bit suspicious if I just had a 24 hour news channel on.

"At least we're getting paid for this, right? Fuckers better not try to cheat us out of this," said a gaunt corpse in a fancy long dress and wig.

"I used to be on Broadway," the man with fly's eyes standing beside her said morosely. "Shakespeare, Stoppard, proper period pierces. Now look at me. Dressing up in a powdered wig and prancing around to this script written by a bloody hack who thought it would be great to put parahumans in a historical film. Fuck this. So much for artistic integrity. What's next, I'm going to end up as an evil wizard in some film for little kids? I'm going to have words with my agent."

I tilted my head. Well. That was something. I was going to have to go work my way through some films and see if anything else was like this.

But I was getting distracted.

It was time for something I'd been thinking about, ever since I'd found that I could send my constructs to fetch me things. I couldn't test it much in the hospital for fear of being caught, but even there I'd managed to work out that I could recover things from outside my visual range, even on the other side of the building. What I was about to try would be a much more challenging test for my powers.

Carefully, I fetched one of the photo albums from my book shelf, and set it down on my bed. Crossing my legs, I flicked though it. I sighed. I was smiling a lot more in the photos. And didn't have pink self-inflicted scars on my face. I found what I was looking for. The photo was slightly faded, despite being kept in this binder.

"Things could have been better," I told the picture of my mother and a twelve year old me, beaming out through time. "Why did you…" My voice cracked as the things I'd seen in the locker forced themselves back into my consciousness. Had that really been real, or had it just been me, imagining how it might have happened? I'd asked myself that a few times when I was in the psychiatric hospital, and hadn't been able to come to an answer.

I had more reason than most to think it might have been real – after all, my power gave me psychometry. I could see the past, in one sense. On the other hand, what I'd seen had been clear, free of symbolism and twisted imagery. It was just the sort of delusion a near-death experience might provoke, wasn't it?

Did I want to know?

I'd leave that thought for another day.

I'd been thinking about how my power worked. Clearly my constructs could find things which I could see, but there was no way they'd be able to find my mother's flute unless they went and searched everywhere. That just wasn't plausible. I couldn't sustain them long enough to have a chance to find it unless I knew where to send them.

But making constructs wasn't exactly my main power, was it? That was just a thing I did in the Other Place, and that was the real trick I had up my sleeve. And in the Other Place, things left a mark, an emotional residue, that lingered long after the actual events. I could see where someone had tried to kill themselves, sense the despair of the shanty town, and feel the depression coming off some of the other patients.

Maybe a construct could track the trail between the flute and me, to find it. After all, it had mattered a lot to me. I'd already found I could track the books I'd leant Leah, back when I was in the hospital, and they hadn't been anywhere near as important.

I smiled softly to myself. Perhaps leaving some books with her had been an act of accidental brilliance. I could track them back to her, and so check up on her and Sam.

Surely a book would have a lot less of a 'trail' than my mother's flute?

I got up, and sat myself down at my desk. I was going to do this properly. I was going to plan every step out, making sure that I didn't have to make things up as I went. I wouldn't be much good if I couldn't do things that I planned out properly. Opening up one of my new notepads, I dug out a pencil and idly started chewing on the eraser at the end.

I want to find the flute.
-> Searching, use Sniffer for it.

I paused and tilted my head, thinking hard.

Add camera to her, so I can see what she finds. Might need to take a long time, several hours, so reinforce her. Lots of details.
- Big eyes + nose + hands
- Memories of the flute. Integrate them into her. If I feed her my flute memories, she'll know what to look for.
- Bigger head? To hold memories?
- Does clothing matter? Maybe – extra detail. Makes it harder, but more detail = lasts longer.

I kept on thinking, and started to sketch out a labelled stickwoman in the margin. Big eyes, big hands, a long tongue drooping out of her mouth. Cameras on her shoulders. Eventually, I felt I was ready. Closing my eyes, I got to work.

It was hard. Not in the sense that chaining Madame Secret was hard – that was a physically exhausting struggle. This was hard in the sense that trying to memorise a long string of numbers was hard. I kept on forgetting things, losing track of things I'd already added, and my mind wandered. I was thinking about how I'd probably eaten too much when I was meant to be trying to make a hunting-construct to find my mother's flute.

Okay, I'll admit it, I also had to scrap my work a few times when I got distracted by imagining about whether I could make something which could hunt down the bullies and make them suffer. The kind of changes that were made to my design by that train of thought suggested that I could, but I wasn't going to think about that. I wasn't a villain, and sending invisible monsters made of barbed wire and thorns to hunt down bullies was a definitely villainous thing to do. They were the bad guys, not me.

After starting over for the sixth or seventh time, I finally managed to hold the image in my mind, complete. I exhaled, and opened my eyes. A lanky giant with spidery limbs stared down at me with oversized camera lenses instead of eyes. She was bent in half just to fit in my room, and her knees brushed against the roof. Her head was too big for her body, easily the size of my torso. I tried not to flinch, but I couldn't help it. I hadn't quite expected to make Sniffer this large. I checked the chains were secure around her wrists and legs, and added an extra layer for good measure.

The construct snuffled at me, opening its mouth and letting its twisting tongue fall out, tasting the air.

I turned around, and picked up the photograph. "Here," I told the construct quietly. "See this flute. Find it! Do it!"

Sniffer snuffled once, and bounded off through the window, which rippled like a pond which just had a stone thrown into it. I really hoped I hadn't let loose a monster.

Closing my eyes, I made the same set of flying barbed wire baby dolls and flat screen TV I'd made to spy on dad and the doctors. It was much easier than Sniffer – was it because they were less complicated, or because I'd made them before? Either way, it seemed practice made perfect. The screen crackled with static, white and black dancing across the screen in chaotic patterns, before cohering into an image.

That was fast.

I stared at the screen in the Other Place. I could see swirling dark water, filled with floating bits of something which was maybe mud and maybe sand. And yes, half-buried in it next to a discarded shopping cart and an empty beer can was my mother's flute.

I pursed my lips. Those bitches. They'd stolen it, and it hadn't even mattered to them. They hadn't kept it under one of their beds, or hidden it in some secret place, or even sold it to a pawn shop. They'd just tossed it into a pond, or maybe the harbour, and forgotten it even existed. They'd got nothing out of it. They'd done it just to hurt me.

I knew where it was. I could see it. It was on the other side of the screen, almost close enough to touch.

Next step.

"Go!" I told one of the barbed-wire babies. "Bring it to me."

The construct didn't do what I expected. Rather than disappear as Sniffer had, it flicker-teleported over to the screen, and slit it open with a hand, like a knife through a plastic bag. The screen flopped open, but remained showing the image.

No. It wasn't an image.

The doll-face of the barbed wire babies stared expectantly at me.

"You want me to…? I can…"

They stared at me mutely.

I took a deep breath, and stood. I couldn't let myself wonder what I was doing. In one movement, I thrust my hand through the split open screen, into icy water, and felt my fingers close around the cold metal of the flute. I yanked my hand out as soon as I could, and not too soon, because I was barely free when the screen fuzzed back into static. I felt my legs sag. Numbly I staggered back to my bed, the patinaed flute dripping water, and I sat down heavily.

This was my mother's flute. I'd found it using my powers. I'd made Sniffer and she'd made it, and then once I'd found it, the barbed wire baby had turned the screen into a hole in the world.

Except it hadn't been quite a hole in the world, had it? The water hadn't come through. I massaged my hand, the one which had been through the hole in the world, noticing with some surprise that my fingers had started bleeding again.

It really, really stung. The harbour, then - it had to be salt water to hurt that much. I'd need to go clean it off. But first, I switched back to the real world, and waved my hand through the spot where my television-portal had been. Nothing. My hand just waved through normal air. It didn't pass through an invisible portal, or smack a hidden barbed-wire cherub.

So, that hole in the world was a portal through the Other Place. It didn't exist in reality. And I'd made it. I'd already seen that there were doors in the hospital which hadn't lined up properly with the real ones, but I'd never worked up the nerve to walk through one.

I was beginning to realise that the Other Place was more than just some way for me to parse the information my power was giving me. It wasn't just a creepy, informative filter I was putting over the normal world. I suspected it existed outside of my head. It was a place where space and distance – hell, maybe time and God knew what else – didn't quite work properly.

This success had taught me something else too. Most of my powers weren't exactly world-shaking, sure, but I was really flexible. Hah. Out of all the powers I'd read about, maybe I was most like a Tinker. I didn't have real powers in my own right, but I could make things that did.

I wouldn't be punching out an Endbringer any time soon, but I had my mother's flute back. I gripped it tightly as I walked to the bathroom. I'd beaten them at something. I'd do so again.

That night I dreamed I was in the locker once more. My life tried to escape me, and so did my spirit, blackness oozing out from my open wounds along with the blood. I struggled, fought, tried to stop it from escaping me. But it was getting harder and harder and I was getting so tired. The rot was everywhere and it was creeping and squirming over my skin. I was dying. Everything was going cold.

I woke, gasping for air. The clock on my bedside table flashed 03:58.

I didn't get back to sleep.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.04

The morning took too long to arrive. The nightmare of the locker had cut through the sleeping pills, and I couldn't have any more. I just lay there sleepless, listening to the sound of the cars outside. The rain slowed and stopped just before dawn. I felt shattered. Therefore, the only responsible thing to do today was catch up on my rest, with a nice lazy morning as an incidental bonus. Unfortunately, dad knocked on my door around 11am.

"Morning," he said, though I could tell his cheerfulness was a front. "Um… can you please get up and get dressed quickly, Taylor?" he asked me.

I stared at him blearily, rubbing my eyes on my sleeve. "Gneargh?" I managed. Or maybe some other mess of syllables which might be made by someone running on almost no sleep.

"Something's come up at work," he said. "I'm meant to be off today, but… look, it's serious. And not in a good way."

"You could leave me at home?" I tried, trying to suppress an only slightly exaggerated yawn.

"I'm not really… uh, comfortable with that," he said, obviously picking his words with care. "You- you can take books, right? And just stay in the waiting room. But I want to be around you and… look, I just don't want to leave you alone, okay?"

I raised a hand in defeat. "Give me fifteen minutes to get up and dressed and stuff," I said, the yawn I'd been trying to suppress escaping. I tried honesty. "I didn't sleep well. Bad dreams."

My dad looked sympathetic. "Do you want to talk about it?" he tried.

"Not really," I said. "I… I just dreamed about the locker. And then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep." I shook my head. "What am I meant to do? I… I was only in there for like an hour or two. I know that. I've spent longer dreaming of it than…" I bit down on my lip, trying not to shake. "It'll go away some time, right?" I asked. I coughed. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

I stumbled through to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. In the Other Place, the floor was littered with broken tiles, and the light above the sink cast a particularly harsh and unforgiving white glare, which made my face look wan and sickly in the broken mirror.

This wasn't what I'd wanted to happen on my first night home. Fuck. I felt like shit and… God, what was even happening with Dad? He had his really-serious face on. I remembered he'd been talking about the riots and things when I'd been in the hospital, but I thought they'd died down. Had they flared up again?

I couldn't function like this. If something big was happening, I wanted to be awake to face it, not running off fumes and a few hours of staring at the ceiling… I sighed. Time to fix it.

My tiredness was an ugly little baby-thing with midnight blue skin and a pale, horse-like mask. It constantly screamed out a lullaby that made my eyes droop despite its dissonant voice. I envisioned it nailed to the wall with iron nails the length of my forearm, heard its song choked off, and felt immediately much more awake. Why hadn't I thought of doing this earlier? This way I could avoid the nightmares.

Though it might be kind of unhealthy. I'd need to see if I was just making myself ignore my fatigue, or I was actually no longer tired. I'd feel like such a fool if I dropped dead from sleep deprivation because it turned out that I was still physically paying for it.

I tapped the sink. If I only slept every other day, maybe I could be too tired to dream when I actually rested. That'd be good. And I'd have more time to do stuff. Well, I'd see. I wasn't sure yet that suppressing my tiredness like this was exactly safe. Drying my face, I left Cry Baby nailed to the wall, and went to get dressed.

It had stopped raining, and the clouds had cleared up during the night. Unfortunately, just meant that it had become bitterly cold, and there was ice on the sidewalks. The main thoroughfares had been salted and gritted, but I saw two crashed cars on the way to Dad's work. Someone had died in one of them. I shivered. I didn't want to know that. It made me think of Mum. I tried to put it out of my mind as Dad parked in the car park for the Dockworker's Union.

The union office was surrounded on all sides by the decaying industrial infrastructure of Brockton Bay. The streets had been built wide, to allow for fleets of trucks that had long stopped coming. Old cranes rose into the skyline like predatory insects. In the Other Place, they wept rust. Every pool of water I saw shimmered with iridescent layers of oil, and the surfaces were blackened and grimy. At least the blood rain was gone. It hadn't left so much as a stain, as though it had never happened.

Of course, according to everyone else, it hadn't.

There was someone waiting for my dad in the foyer. They were about the same height, but while Dad was a beanpole like me, the other guy was built like a brick wall. He had deep bags under his eyes, and he looked exhausted. "Sorry 'bout calling you in, Danny," he said by way of apology.

Dad sighed. "I can't say I'm happy, Cal, but from what you said on the phone…" he trailed off and shook his head, before glancing at me. "Taylor, just wait here," he said. He dug around in his pocket for change. "Get yourself something to eat from the vending machines," he added. "I'll try to get this done as soon as possible, but… you have a book in your bag, right?"

I nodded, pursing my lips slightly. Something was going on and I didn't know what. This had to be important if he was being called in like this, and everyone was being evasive in front of me. It was just a moment's thought to shift to the Other Place, before I paused. Was it really right to just casually spy on my dad?

No, it wasn't, I decided. I would show restraint, like I had before. Dad was off limits. I wouldn't abuse my powers like that. Putting my hands in my pockets, I slouched off to stare at the vending machine. Was I feeling in a chocolate mood? Urgh. I really didn't want to start the day with that for breakfast. And I wanted a proper lunch too. I was going to be healthier, I'd promised myself. Hmm. I really should start my new exercise regime.

I heard a muffled thump, and frowned, looking around. Now that I was listening for them, I could hear raised voices, just at the edge of audibility, from the room Dad and the other guy had gone into. I managed to keep a hold on my curiosity until the second thump. What on Earth was going on in there? I focussed, breathed out two twin butterfly-winged dolls, and sent one in to listen, while its twin repeated everything it heard.

"You don't think I don't fucking know that?" my dad snapped, his voice coming from the mouth of the chipped china doll. "But there's never any proof!"

I gasped, and then looked around nervously to see if anyone was paying attention to me. "That's really expensive," I said. That probably was one of the least convincing attempts to cover up surprise ever, but at least I'd made the effort. But what? What was going on here?

"Who needs proof? Remember? Tim now, Aaron Crikton when he tried to unionise Walmart, Yusuf from the Teamsters! Even when they find someone, it's always some petty ganger!"

"There's no proof, Cal," my dad grated. He sounded furious, but he seemed to have it – barely – under control. "Whoever's doing this, they win if we lash out."

"Whatever happened to the Dan me and Tim used to know in the old days!" Cal retorted. "He might die, and they killed his son! They win if we sit back and take it!"

"I know!" There was a pause, and I heard him panting. "I know," Dad said more quietly. "Godfuckingdammit. We can't win either way. Fuck it."

"I know, right?" Cal had also gone quiet. "Anyway."

"Yeah. The insurance stuff. I'll need to hold down the fort today. I'll go talk to his wife tomorrow."

"Yeah. There are other people we'll need to talk to, too. Without Tim around, that changes things."

"I don't want to even think about that. We can see where that goes at the next meeting," my dad said, so softly I could barely hear him. "Never mind. It's for later." He coughed, and took a deep breath. "Do I look calmed down?" he asked.

"Give it a few moments," the other man said. "Heh. Taylor's shot up like a weed, she has. I can remember when she was just yay-high. Takes after you there. Looks a lot like you, too." He paused. "How's she doing?" he asked, sounding awkward.

I could hear the shrug from my dad. "Better," he said tersely. "The doctors say so, anyway. Me… I don't even know. I thought I knew her and then it turns out all this stuff was happening with her and…" he sighed. "We're just taking it day by day. I don't even know what to say, half the time. But enough about that." I heard a door click. "Let's just get this over and done with."

I called the dolls back to me, and reinhaled them as my dad approached, before looking him up and down in the Other Place. His fire was almost out of control, straining and licking the ceiling. I winced, and took a deep breath. I wanted to help him – but it just didn't feel right to try to chain his anger. It felt… icky. Wrong.

"What's going on?" I asked my dad. He'd expect me to ask, and I wanted to see what he'd tell me.

"Tim… someone I've known for a long time, he's our treasurer, he's been shot. The police say it looks like it was a white nationalist gang," he said. "I'm sorry, Taylor, but I'm going to have to help deal with the insurance. And we'll have to go visit him in hospital, maybe today, probably tomorrow." His lips were thin. "You should remember Tim. Short, dark skin, glasses?"

It did ring a distant bell. I vaguely remembered people from Dad's work I'd seen over the years. "The one with the funny tattoo on his arm?" I hazarded.

Dad winced. "Yes," he said. "I should have guessed you'd remember that." He took a deep breath. "Anyway. Taylor, this is going to take a while. I'll give you some money. There's a diner just up the road, closer to the docks. Go get lunch. Stay close."

"And if I go somewhere else or something, I'll come tell you," I said quickly. I hadn't much liked the look of the place he suggested. I'd seen it on the drive in. It had been decidedly greasy spoonish. I was going to be eating more healthily than I had in the hospital. And if it took a long time, I could maybe go for a jog. Maybe not. The air was cold enough that my lungs would probably start hurting if I jogged. But I could give it a go, and if it didn't work out, I could at least walk.

He pursed his lips. "I'd prefer if I knew where you were," he said. "I'd wanted to spend today at home with you. A nice quiet day."

"I won't go too far," I said quickly. "If I even go. It depends if they do anything that I want, right?"

"Just… be safe," he said, wearily.

"I will," I promised him.

My breath steamed in front of me when I stepped out of the entrance. I rubbed my gloved hands together, and stuck them in the pockets of my coat. Wherever I went, I wanted something hot to drink. In a place with heating.

In the end, I did just go to the place he pointed out. Finding a seat, I ordered a coffee, and got started on Foucault's Pendulum. Reading slightly old books was always odd. Not really old books, but books which were just about old enough for the world to be very different, but still familiar. It was sort of like reading science fiction. I mean, I did intellectually understand that there had been such a thing as a world without capes and without the Endbringers, but reading about it always seemed strange.

And boy, was this book stranger than most. The foreword had mentioned that it was a translation from the Italian. Maybe I would have understood it better if I was Italian and got all the references. Probably not. The characters made all these complicated references to various conspiracy theories and – huh, I'd never even thought that a vanity publisher would work like that. It really seemed like things like that should be illegal. Like, it was basically fraud. Oh, and it was all flashbacks and… was it a parody of conspiracy stories? It was a bit – was literary the right word? Literary? Fancy? Not-written-to-be-funny? – to be a parody.

Leah was a very strange girl to read books like this for fun, I had to conclude. Mind you, I didn't put it down, so I was clearly a bit strange as well.

I snorted to myself. Yeah, just a bit. I only saw twisted monsters in a horrible hell-world when I used my weird parahuman talent. Barely worth mentioning.

Still, to spend my first full day out of a mental hospital sitting in a diner reading a book was nice. I didn't even see the Other Place once, because I was hungry and didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food. The last thing I wanted was to see that the waitress serving me had a fly's head or something. That would just lead to me thinking about flies and not wanting to eat anything she touched and probably feeling ill from the things I'd already had and then working myself into a worry about whether I was feeling ill from worry or because the food had been unsafe to eat in some way and… well, enough about that. No, I was just going to drink my coffee, eat and read.

And maybe spy on my dad. Just a little bit. But everything I heard from him was boring talk about insurance and I just stopped listening when he started talking to someone on the phone about coverage. I didn't like the implications that I'd heard from that first bit of conversation, though. They worried me. If people from unions were being killed… well, surely Dad'd have said something if he was in trouble, right? Wouldn't he?

I got back to my book.

An electric hum broke my concentration. I sighed, and looked up as the lights flickered and dimmed. It was 13:39 according to the clock on the wall, and still no call from Dad. And now this.

Another brownout. They were just a background feature of life in Brockton Bay. An annoying one. From what Dad had told me, the old power station down the coast at Red Beach hadn't been up to standards when it was built in the 70s, and the power company found it cheaper to pay the fines for failing to live up to regulations than actually do the full infrastructure rework that the city needed. There had been a Tinkertech powerplant built back in the early 90s to replace it, but that'd been wrecked by supervillains who'd stolen whatever thingie made it work.

I heard grumbling all around me. The television was fuzzing in and out, waves of static washing over the surface. I quickly glanced into the Other Place, but there was nothing more strange going on in the lipstick-scrawling-covered screen than usual. Oh, and the waitress was just a greyed, exhausted-looking walking corpse with threadbare clothes, which left me feeling rather better about the meal I'd just eaten. That just meant she was tired and overworked and didn't care, and probably had money problems. Which, you know, I'd kind of guessed from looking at her.

Thanks, power. Really perceptive there.

Well, I wasn't going to be getting another coffee while the power was playing up. I'd been silly enough to get a seat away from the window, too, so it'd be hard to keep on reading while the lights were flickering.

Oh, sure, I'd told my dad I'd stay here, but it wasn't far. And I had promised myself I'd get fitter. So I'd just go for a jog around the block while I waited for the power to come back on. I wouldn't go near any dangerous areas or anything like that. This wasn't the really bad area of the Docks, and I'd just do this until I could get back to reading. I put my book back in my bag, and paid my bill. The girl at the counter apologised for the power cut with a roll of her eyes, and I shrugged.

I bought a candy bar to go, and left, heading deeper into the Docks.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.05

It was warming up a little, but I still stuffed my hands in my pockets as soon as I got outside. A bit of me wanted to go back into the warm, but I didn't listen to it. Even if I could feel the cold biting at the sensitive flesh of my hands even through the gloves. I needed warmer gloves to wear over the top of the protective latex. The tips of my fingers, where my nails were regrowing, ached.

No, of course I didn't go and pin to a wall my desire to go inside. That would be silly. Hmm. It would have probably have looked like me swaddled in a pile of blankets and thick clothes, with a pair of glowing eyes inside the shadows of its hood. Something to remember, I supposed.

I set off at a brisk walk. The ice from the morning was melting, but it was still slick and I really didn't want to end up on my ass. I'd just walk around the block a few times, I decided, and get the lay of the land before I went off any further. I'd been trapped in a psychiatric hospital for too long and a normal hospital even before that. I needed some fresh air, but maybe I'd go poke my head back into the union offices and see if Dad was done after my walk.

I saw a few gangers along the way, on the other side of the street. It was easy to tell. I didn't know how it was in other cities, but in Brockton Bay criminals of all kinds wore masks. If Hollywood wasn't lying to me, they did it elsewhere, too. I bet the 1980s PR people who went and got the whole parahuman 'caped crusader' thing going when they were busy showing off the 'Supermen' to the Russians didn't think that would happen. First the government parahumans dressed up as superheroes for PR, then the vigilantes and terrorists copied them, then criminals with powers started being 'supervillains' to try to 'legitimise' their actions. It was disgusting. Why didn't the government just stop them when they'd started? In the end, it had wound up that people holding up the local 7-11 threw on a Halloween mask over their balaclava.

Or, in the case of the people over the street, they all wore white masks and cheap suits. I thought that meant they were in the White Lion Association, but I wasn't sure. It made sense they were, though. I mean, white masks, White Lion. I thought they were based further south, though – in and around Old Chinatown. Well, it wasn't like I had any great insight into the criminal underworld. Either way, I stayed clear of them.

For all my talk of fresh air, the air wasn't too clean. I could smell cars, smoke, and just a hint of sewer over the top of the ever-present sea salt tang. I paused at the lights, watching the cars pass. I almost choked on a cloud of fumes leaking from some oil-dripping old clanker, but managed to settle for a coughing fit. That was one thing I definitely hadn't missed.

There was a discarded newspaper in the gutter, its pages flapping in the wind. I stooped and picked it up. It was soggy and the bottom half of the front page was ruined, but the headline of-
LEVIATHAN ATTACKS DUBAI
-was all too clear. I guess it had come in too late yesterday to make the morning paper, so it was headlines today. The black-and-white picture of a ruined city was bleeding ink onto my gloves. I looked around and found a trash can to dump it, wiped my hands against the pavement, and headed on, heading towards the ocean at the junction.

I could hear music from up ahead – organ music, I realised. It was coming from an old redbrick factory which had a neon cross on top of the chimney. It had been whitewashed – probably when it had been converted to being a church – but the mix of industrial grime and ocean salt so distinct to the docks had worked its way into the crevices. The paint higher up the façade was cracked, though it had been touched up close to the ground. There was a street preacher standing outside with a placard, and the congregation heading into the church tried their best to ignore him. He didn't take too well to that.

"God is dead!" called out the street preacher. His eyes were wild and his greying beard was wispy. His teeth were rotten – he looked like a meth addict. "He died alone, because we did not love him! The Soviets with their blasphemies and their lack of faith tried to kill him, unleashing the Legion upon him. With their wicked science and sinful amorality, they tried to bind Satan himself at a place called Tunguska! They failed, and were cursed! But seeing the sins of his creation, who spurned his love and the sacrifice of his Only Son, the Lord God let himself fall into the dark waters, and is no more!"

THE END IS NIGH!
HEB 12:22-24
WILL NEVER COME TO BE!​

read his sign.

"The Book of Revelations is invalidated by the sins of man!" he called out. "There will be no Rapture! The Endbringers are the false gods, the demons of the Egyptians and the Babylonians and other wicked peoples. The burning Lion, the shifty Leopard, and the lying she-Wolf! They are lesser than the Lord and if we had not sinned, he would have kept them chained as before, but now he is dead they have returned to seek their revenge! They have burned Heaven and now turn their eyes on the world!"

I crossed the street to get away from his mad-eyed, spittle-spraying rant. Just talking about those things was morbid as hell. The people heading into the church weren't so lucky, and as each passed he would turn to scream at them. I adjusted my glasses, and noticed that there was someone at one of the windows in the church, staring out at him and talking on the phone. Calling the police, perhaps.

I flickered my vision to the Other Place, and peered over the top of my glasses. The church was now a gothic monstrosity, leering gargoyles glowering down at the world from atop rusty iron crosses. It looked like it belonged in some ancient city somewhere in Europe. There was a smog of – I sniffed – fear, worry, concern, something I couldn't quite pin down about it, and it clung to the people heading in.

But were they worried because they were going to church, or were they going to church because they were worried? I wasn't sure. We used to go every week when Mum was still alive, but when she died Dad basically fell apart, and we just… drifted away. I sighed. Some certainty would be nice in my life. Maybe I should head in, see why all those people were gathering.

But then I'd have to walk past the crazy preacher. When I saw him in the Other Place, I really, really didn't want to get anywhere close to him. His flesh pulsed and flowed, never staying constant. Mouths budded from it, shouting curses and nonsense words – do you know the word for that is 'glossolalia'? That was something I'd found out from a book I'd borrowed from Leah. Looking at him, I knew what his problem was. It was a worse version of what Emily at the hospital had.

"She told me!" he ranted and raved, over the babbling of the mouths on his body, "that ninety nine knights of the air ride super high-tech jet fighters! But does the army kill the Endbringers? No! People, innocents, loved ones die, their lives thrown away because we can't kill those wicked gods! Only faith can stop them!"

Of course, Emily was on medication, and it wasn't too easy to tell she had problems in normal conversation. If she was prone to strange leaps of logic and saying things without thinking, maybe that was just how she was normally. This guy, though – I sighed, and thrust my hands into my pockets. He wasn't right in the head. He looked like he'd been taking drugs from those meth-addict teeth, but his problems went deeper than that. What had gone wrong for him, I wondered. The way he talked suggested he had some kind of education, but who knew?

I walked on by, and hated myself a little bit for it. I could see there was something wrong with him, but I did nothing. Could I do something? Maybe. I didn't know everything my powers could do. But even if I could fix him, by – I don't know – pulling out a construct that represented his addiction, what then? It'd get free in a few hours, when the construct collapsed.

And what if I did it wrong? What would happen then? I could barely manage to chain Madame Secret, and she was part of me. The idea of mucking up with a crazy street guy's meth addiction made me feel like I was holding broken glass in my bare hands. What if it got into me?

No, I wasn't good enough to do anything. But that didn't mean I liked knowing that he was ill, and doing nothing about it. I wished I'd never looked at him in the Other Place.

I'd gone a bit off track, and should probably head back to the diner or the union offices. Well, I wasn't going to head back the same way. I didn't want to have to walk by the crazy street preacher again. I doubted the cops would pick him up. Sure, they'd grab him if he was doing it over in Nobility Hill, but this was the docks. Even if they did take him in, there'd probably be complaining letters in the paper about how they should have been spending their time combating gang violence.

… honestly, those letters would be right.

I didn't leave the Other Place. Hands in my pockets, I strode down filthy streets, beneath the shadow of rusty insect-cranes, and past monsters of all descriptions. At first I tried to guess what that meant about each person I saw, but quickly I stopped wondering. It was just getting me down. That, and the irregular stains of red-black death-marks on the sidewalks and the road.

God. Why did I have this power? It gave me the ability to see how rotten the world was, how everything was rusty and filthy and horrible. And yet I kept on using it. Maybe it was because I already knew how bad the world was, how people could be monsters beneath a pretty surface. Why couldn't I have had something which let me heal people? Something which would let me make the things better, not just see how broken they were?

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and dug in my pockets, fishing out the candy bar I'd got from the diner. I stared numbly at the packet, and the twisted text which now declared 'GlUttONy FeELs GoOd', and giggled weakly. Or maybe I was just feeling mopey because it was the first day I'd spent out of a psychiatric hospital, I spent all my time staring into a twisted hell-dimension, my dad was busy dealing with one of his friends being shot, and top of everything else, it was that time of the month. Maybe I had a good reason to be feeling a bit blue.

I bit into the candy and felt a bit better. Gluttony did feel good. God, I hate you, Other Place, for being so cynical and yet accurate. And that was more chocolate, which meant I really should try to jog to burn off some of the calories from this and… and my attempts at a jog slowed and then stopped after only a hundred yards.

One building drew my eye. An old, heavy squat structure probably dating back to the early 1900s, longer than it was wide, with small high-set windows completely opaque from decades of grime. It was set back from the road, in front of a mostly empty parking lot behind a well-maintained chain fence. There were spikes on top of the fence and regular 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' and 'Beware of the Dog' signs.

The dog was being walked around the parking lot by a security guard in a day-glo jacket. It was not a friendly dog. And the security guard wasn't much of a looker, either.

Of course, that was what it looked like in the real world, when I checked it. That wasn't what had caught my attention.

In the Other Place, it was a looming structure of human misery. The walls were fleshy, and almost seemed to throb. No, I corrected myself, they were visibly pulsing. The ivy growing up one side of the building appeared to be veins. Compared to the greyness and the decay and passive despair of the rest of the area around it, it was active in its dreadfulness.

It looked as bad as that shanty town I'd seen the day before. Maybe worse. I hadn't seen the shanty town up close. What was that building anyway? A warehouse? A leftover dockside factory built by some old industrialist so he could get things straight to the ships with as little delay as possible? Maybe it was now some slum housing – though it looked kind of dead for a place people lived.

There was a dark black-red stain in the middle of the parking lot, just short of one of the slightly dirty white vans. I squinted. The stain looked like it was smoking slightly, though it was hard to tell in the misery-fog.

I knew what that meant. Someone had died there. And my eyes drifted over to the warehouse door. More stains. The wind shifted and the misery-sick-hate-depression stench blew over towards me. I gagged, and tasted bile.

There was something horribly, horribly wrong about that place. I had to do something. I didn't know what, but I couldn't just leave this alone. Unless… well, maybe it was an old stain in the Other Place? A forgotten tragedy, nothing to do with the building's current use?

No, I told myself. I didn't know how I knew, but the reek was far too fresh for it to be anything other than recent. I nervously twisted my hands together, and winced at the pain from my fingers. What to do, what to do? I couldn't just call the police right now. What proof did I have? Nothing that wouldn't have them either thinking I was crazy, or a parahuman. Hell, I didn't even know what was going on in there for sure. Maybe it was… like, a place where they cut up people and turned them into dog food.

Nah. There was no way that could be true. That's the kind of thing which only happened in trashy horror movies, right?

I wished I could believe that. When the wind in Other Place blew the smell of that building at me, I could have accepted almost anything about it.

Perching on a bollard on the other side of the street, I exhaled two of the dolls that I'd used to spy on Dad earlier today. "Go, listen," I told one of them. "Find out what's inside."

The one which stayed with me opened its mouth. There was a rhythmic noise coming from inside the building. It was some kind of machinery – no, scratch that, quite a lot of machines all making the same noise. Some kind of motor, I thought. It was muffled, though. I tried to make it go inside, but it seemed to bounce off the walls. That was what happened when I tried to send one of my constructs outside sensory range without something to anchor it to, or something it was tracking.

I frowned, and brought out the barbed wire angel with a camera for a face. I sent it to follow the security guard around. If he went inside, I could get a look. But I'd need to find a better place. I wanted to see inside with my own eyes. I paced around the building, keeping my eyes open. There were a few other buildings, old warehouses and the like, on the same block. None of them looked like that in the Other Place. They were just bleak, decaying concrete and brick structures. Whatever was wrong, it was something to do with that building.

One of the warehouses had an old fire escape running up the outside, up to the roof. I looked around. No one was watching me. And checking in the real world, the fire escape looked in good condition. I deliberated for a moment, and then started to climb the stairs.

My heart was pounding. In the cold air, each breath seemed to ache. I could feel my nerves on fire with adrenaline. I was technically trespassing here. I was already rehearsing my story in my head, 'Oh no, I just wanted to see what everything looked like from up here'. It wasn't even technically a lie. I was trying to get a better view of the place. At least I was giving my thighs a workout.

I clearly wasn't the first person to climb this fire escape. There were old discarded beer bottles around a soot-blackened metal barrel, as well as some graffiti tags and – my nose wrinkled – what looked like enough cigarette butts to give you lung cancer all in one go. Charming. The graffiti wasn't all in English. Chinese or Japanese, I wasn't really able to tell the difference. It was all French to me… or rather, Chinese or Japanese, which was the problem.

I squinted as I tried to see in through the windows of the building in the normal world. Damn it, I had the feeling that my eyesight might be getting slightly worse. I might need new glasses. I hadn't noticed it until I contrasted it to my perfect vision in the Other Place – which was really strange when I thought about it. Because I was short sighted, and that meant my eyes focussed the light wrong, and that meant that, somehow, in the Other Place my eyes were working properly. Did that mean I wasn't using light to see or… what?

But that was just my mind trying to distract itself. The high up windows had been boarded up from the inside. I couldn't see in from up here. And the gap between this roof and the other building was far, far too far for me to jump. I wasn't stupid enough to even think about it – not seriously, at least. I sighed. I should probably stop wishing that I was Alexandria.

Funny, really. Before I got my powers, I could have ended up with any set of powers possible. Well, theoretically. But the point was, I could have been the next Alexandria, even if it was really unlikely. Though not totally impossible, right – after all, they were already calling Glory Girl the next Alexandria, and she lived in Brockton Bay.

Now? No way. I had my powers. That die had been cast, and come up horrible.

However, what I could see from up here was a bit where the fence around the warehouse wasn't quite flush against the wall. I thought I might be able to squeeze in. I wouldn't have a chance if I hadn't been a beanpole, but I thought I might fit. So it was a calf-aching climb down the fire escape again, and then I had to hold my breath and squeeze through the gap, nearly losing the buttons on my coat along the way. I was now up against the side of the suspicious building. I hoped the guard didn't patrol here, but at least I was out of the open. I ducked up to a pair of dumpsters, and thought to look inside.

I found lots of fabric. It looked like offcuttings from… from something. I wasn't sure. They came in lots of colours, though. Why would they have a dumpster full of fabric offcuttings in a place so horrible? I wasn't just imagining it, was I?

I checked the Other Place and immediately regretted it. This close to the flesh-building, the smell was indescribable. I meant that literally, too, because it had things in it like grief and exhaustion which never really came in smell form. They just got into my brain through my nostrils.

Right. I put my palms flat against the wall, and concentrated. Sniffer, long limbs, big camera eyes, big nose. I took a deep breath in reality, and released it in the Other Place. I was going to force Sniffer through this wall, whether she liked it or not. I was going to see what was on the other side. I was going to see everything there.

Things went wrong almost immediately. She didn't form. Not like I wanted to. Crimson butterflies forced their way out of my mouth, briefly coalescing into a half-shape of pale flesh before disintegrating again and again. I focused, and pushed harder. There was a sudden sense of pressure which gave way, and my vision turned black.

And I saw… everything.

the walls, padding fastened to the inside to mute the noise
narrow, cramped
no colour, no light, only a sense of shape like the knowledge of where my hand was when it was behind my back, but covering everything in the area
those two, chained by love
those two, chained together by hate
everyone is connected
all these people
all these sewing machines
men walking up and down
batons and guns
old violence in the floor
people died here
he hates her
misery
hopelessness
tiredness
contempt
apathy

I collapsed to my knees, panting. I had a splitting migraine, and I could taste copper. My throat was burning, like I'd just breathed in smoke from a bonfire. I'd bitten my lower lip, I realised. Shit.

What… what had just happened? I'd just been trying to see what was going inside and then my senses had gone strange. Had I just seen through Sniffer's eyes? Was that how she-it saw the world? Well, 'saw'. It wasn't sight. I couldn't tell you what colour any of the clothes the people had been working on had been – yes, they had been clothes – but I could tell you their shape. I could tell you how everything had been connected together, tied together by iron chains – the thicker the closer – and everyone in there was trapped by it. And the faint machine noise I'd heard had been sewing machines.

Oh. I knew what this was. You heard about this sometimes; illegal sweatshops. In the old days, they used to make clothes overseas where you didn't have to pay people as much. Nowadays, they bought the people to the US, from war torn or Endbringer-wrecked places.

Coughing, spluttering, I pulled myself to my feet. These weren't nice people. This wasn't a nice place. And they were totally fine with keeping people in conditions which… which make the Other Place like this and…

"What's this noise?"

Shit. Shit shit shit. There was the security guard with his dog at the end of the alley. Oh fuck, I'd been coughing and making noise and of course he'd come to see what was going on. No. No no no.

"You!"

Shit. He'd seen me.

"Hey!" he called at me, and I jumped back. "Stop right there!"

I ran.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.06

My feet slipped on the wet ground. My heart pounded like a drum. My ears were hammered by angry barks. Legs thumping, I threw myself around the corner, dimly aware in the back of my mind that even if I was moving away from the guard I was still going the wrong way. That knowledge didn't couldn't change a thing, though. He was between me and the bit of the fence I'd squeezed through.

Behind the warehouses was nothing but a maze of old dead ends, unused buildings, and overflowing dumpsters. I had to get out of here. On the street, there were people around. I needed witnesses, help. I couldn't get trapped in here, in these stinking alleyways with filth all over the floor and rusty metal and… and I tried to push myself even harder. No. I wouldn't let myself get caught. I wouldn't let him put me back in the locker- in somewhere like the locker.

I couldn't even empty my mind to leave the Other Place. My head was hurting from all the things going on in it - I couldn't just think of nothing. My throat was raw, and each breath of cold air burned. The stink that surrounded me just made it worse. Each mouthful of stench made me want to throw up, stomach churning as I ran.

I took the first turn to the right, trying to escape the building more than its guard. The walls were covered in Other Place scrawlings-
APATHY APATHY APATHY NO ONE HEARS THE whimpers APATHY APATHY
-and I the already cold air felt even cooler near it. I could barely see in the panic and gloom, and my first clue to a trashcan in my path was a jabbing pain in my left thigh. It rolled over with a clatter, and I nearly fell too, stumbling out of the collision and grabbing onto a drain pipe. The pain in my sensitive hands barely went noticed.

The barking was getting closer, and I reached the end of the alley, taking the left turn. Wrong direction; dead end. The other end was blocked up with rusty construction equipment and plastic sheeting. I turned, and the other path ended in a door.

Which was locked.

"Let me in," I shouted, tears rolling down my face. "For fuck's sake, open up!"

No response.

Hyperventilating, I looked around desperately. The dog sounded close enough that I couldn't head back. I had to find somewhere to hide. Maybe… maybe in the normal world this place smelt bad enough that it couldn't smell me? I didn't know. I couldn't think of nothing and I didn't even know what the place looked like. There was just the rust and bare concrete and brick. There was an alcove – an old bricked-up door, really – and I ducked into it. I pressed myself against the back as hard as I could, hoping beyond hope that the dog wouldn't smell me and he wouldn't hear my breathing.

I was trying to think but it wasn't working and I couldn't focus and I couldn't think of anything and God, what was I going to do? I was a skinny out-of-shape teenage girl with hurt hands; he was a security guard with a gun and a dog – and in the state I was in, I was more scared of the dog than the gun. I huddled down, trying to keep out of the light – but no, my reason for that wasn't anything so reasoned. I wasn't thinking by that point. I was just reacting. All I knew was that the dog was growling and it could probably smell me and it was getting closer. The panic and the stench of the building in the Other Place and the way I just wanted it to go away all pooled together, and welled up out of my mouth in the form of a vaguely dog-shaped thing made of dried blood and wire.

I gagged, and stuffed my forearm in my mouth to avoid being sick. I had tasted my feelings doing that, and that just felt wrong. I spat blood, from my suddenly bleeding lips.

And the thing I'd made wasn't chained at all. The blood-wire-dog barked, only it didn't bark, it slammed and I knew the sound because it was the sound the locker doors made at school when someone kicked them and… and… I couldn't look.

The dog bark-slammed again, and then the other dog yelped. The man started shouting and the dog shifted to snarling and I heard the man yell and then there was the gloing of a falling empty trash can. The dog's frantic barking receded, but the man – swearing, shouting – wasn't going. I was trying to think and it was like trying to think when I had no sleep, all fogged and blurred and…

Tired.

Crybaby – my feelings of tiredness. It was still nailed to the wall at home. I wouldn't have to make it; I already had it made. I just had to think the nails released from the wall and there it was, wailing at the edge of my vision. I didn't know how it managed to get back here so fast, but I wasn't asking questions right now.

"Go for him," I muttered. "Get in him." I clenched my hands, letting the pain stab into my awareness. I could feel the creeping tiredness from the wails and… no! "Do it," I growled. "Or I'll send you back to the wall!"

The horse-headed infant with the midnight blue skin reluctantly crawled away, the nails in it scraping against the floor. I heard it hiss, and hoped against hope it'd work. The footsteps were coming closer and closer. I heard the man swear as he stepped in a puddle, and I could hear his breathing.

"I have had it up to here with this shit," I heard him mutter. "Fucking stupid dog. Get back here, you stupid thing!" I, thank God, heard him yawn. "For fuck's sake. Going to have to chase it down. I'm not paid enough for this. Get back here, Lupe!"

And mercifully, I heard him turn on his heel and stomp away, his bad mood obvious in every footstep. I stuffed my forearm into my mouth, and tried not to whimper until he was out of hearing. Then, slowly, aching all over, I pulled myself to my feet. I licked my cracked lips. They hurt, and tasted of iron. My bottom was wet and grimy, from where I'd been sitting. I left the Other Place, and just stood there for a bit, shaking, until I realized that the man might come back.

I felt sick.

I wasn't entirely sure how I managed to hold on to the contents of my stomach until I'd squeezed through the gap in the fence and got to safety, but I did. And then I emptied about half of my lunch into a dirty alleyway.

I was in a daze as I walked back. My mind was running around in loops, and I was still shaking. People might have been staring at me. I wasn't sure. I only noticed I was sort of a mess when I saw myself in a shop window.

I had to clean myself up. I found a 7-11, and went in.

"Fell down," I told the guy behind the counter when I noticed he was staring at me. "It's slippery out there, isn't it?"

One bottle of water purchased, I drank about half the bottle to wash out the taste of sick, and then used the rest to sort of blot off most of the dirt. That meant I was wetter, but at least I didn't have alley gunk on me.

Fight-or-flight? Really, really terrible for my power. My stupid body hadn't got the memo that I could imagine up scary monsters, and decided I should panic instead. And when I panicked, things went wrong. I had to be in control. All the time.

I… I wasn't suited for being a cape. When I grew up, I could be a parahuman detective and go work for the FBI, but it wouldn't be me on the front lines saving people.

I wiped my eyes. It hurt to think like this. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to go out and fight crime. Personally, I meant; I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be able to stop people who were picking on others. But my powers – they helped me with investigation, they helped me find things, but if I had to act on the fly, things went wrong. I'd never be someone who could just see someone being attacked and step in to protect them. Not any more than I could have before, at least, and look at me. I couldn't even protect myself from bullies, let alone someone else.

I wanted to be a superhero. I wasn't. I was just a person with powers.

Oh, I realised dimly. The lights had been back on properly in the 7-11. When had the brownout ended? I frowned, and realised I hadn't been paying enough attention to notice.

I snuck in through the front door of the union offices, trying to get to the ladies bathroom to do a proper clean up and…

"Taylor!" Dad asked, standing by the vending machine in the offices with a look of surprise on his face. "What happened?"

No such luck.

"I just went for a jog… well, mostly a walk during the brownout," I said defensively. "I couldn't read when the lights were flickering like that. I stayed in the area!" I sucked in a breath and looked down at the dirty knees of my jeans. "And… uh, yeah, there was a reason I stopped jogging. You know, it's still pretty slippery out there." I licked my lips. "And I think I need to get some lip balm. They're cracking in this cold weather."

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose. "Taylor," he said, "you should have… you…" he sighed. "You didn't go too far?" he asked.

"No," I lied. "I just was trying to find a place to sit which had light and was out of the wind." I rubbed my arms. "It's cold out there."

"We'll… we'll talk later. Just… just stay here," he asked me. "Please."

Yeah, he wasn't done yet. I ended up waiting in the offices, reading, for another hour or so. It wasn't sinking in much. I was just staring at the pages, and the words which didn't make sense. All I could think of was how scared and helpless I'd felt, and how horrible the sweatshop had been. I went and cleaned myself up in the bathroom.

Eventually Dad was done, and he said his goodbyes. "I'll be heading into the hospital this evening," he said, as we got into the car, "but I'll leave you at home, okay? If you're okay with that."

I didn't want to sit around the hospital. "Yeah, sure," I said. "Is… is your friend going to be okay?"

His lips were a thin line. It didn't seem to be good. "I hope so," he said, his tone guarded.

"How did you meet?" I asked. I wanted to talk about something normal, surround myself with things as far as possible from the Other Place and that horrible building, to get some peace from what I'd seen. Well, that and the more mundane 'oh god I was chased by a guy with a dog'.

"Oh, we go back years," Dad said. "All the way back to CANE. Me and him and a few others."

"The supervillain group?" I said, blinking. I didn't expect that.

"CANE? A supervillain group? Taylor, it was the Campaign Against Nuclear Escalation."

"Someone from CANE assassinated Reagan," I objected. "That sounds pretty supervillain-y to me."

"I know this might sound surprising, kiddo," he said, "but you can't just say a protest group is a 'supervillain group' just because a parahuman linked to them went and killed the president. It's more complicated than that. I was a member 'cause I was protesting against the way it looked like Reagan was going to make the Cold War go hot and was… you know, showing off all these 'super-men' and brand new tinkertech bombs and new nuclear weapons and his Star Wars missile defence thing… stuff like that. And, of course, he was cutting everything else when he was throwing money at these world-ending bombs. Because otherwise the Soviets might get ideas."

We came to a stop at traffic lights.

"But I blame Reagan for that. Talking about 'evil empires' and 'supervillains' and turning everything into black and white, good guys and bad guys, cops and robbers. It was treating stuff like that which made the problems. Anyway, the worst I got up to was some vandalism and… okay, we scrapped a bit with the police, but they started it! We were just protesting and then they started up with the tear gas and the water cannons."

The lights changed.

"Though I should probably thank them for that, because something good came of those riots."

"Oh?" I asked sceptically.

Dad flashed a grin at me. It was a strange expression, somehow both carefree and sheepish. "How'd you think me and your mother met?" he asked. "Singing at choir? Hardly!"

"Dad!" I said. I didn't mean to sound quite so scandalised, but… uh, yeah. I sounded pretty shocked. Hell, I was pretty shocked.

"Oh, it was the eighties. Things were different back then," he said. "And your mother had a hell of an arm on her."

"She was part of the police?" I asked sceptically. "What, your eyes met romantically as she beat you with a baton?"

Dad looked confused. "What, no! Not likely! She was throwing petrol bombs at them." He sighed. "She was always more of a radical than me," he added. "She had such beautiful eyes behind her army surplus gas mask. And those outfits that her and her friends were wearing were really flattering."

"Dad!" I managed, cringing.

"If you're going to accuse either of us being supervillain henchmen, look to her, not me. I didn't have a costume. Just some wet cloth tied over my mouth to try to help with the tear gas. She'd come prepared."

I stared at him flatly. "Okay, now you're just making things up," I said.

He grinned. "Look, if you want to pretend we sprung fully formed in a parental state, that's up to you. Whatever helps you sleep at night," he said, and then his face fell and he winced. "Oops. Sorry."

"It's all right," I said.

He sighed. "But you have to get how the world was different, Taylor. We were young, and the idea of the Cold War going hot terrified us. It would have been the end of the world, before the Endbringers even showed up. I remember I got a call from my dad once, telling me to get out of the cities, because they'd be first hit. That was afterwhat happened in Nicaragua, back in '84. Him and your grandma packed up and headed out into the country. Mind you, he was a bit… eccentric by that point, but I almost joined him."

"What happened in Nicaragua?" I asked blankly.

"Honestly? No one really knows," he said, shaking his head. "I mean, a local Nicaraguan cape caught people laying mines in their harbours, then they paraded them on TV saying they were CIA agents, and the government, our government, said they'd just kidnapped some tourists on a boating trip and it was all false allegations to try to embarrass us. Then they sent in people – capes and special forces – to rescue the people who were supposedly tourists. Then it turned out that the Soviets had sent their own capes to help Nicaragua as 'advisors'. So there's this massive parahuman fight and it's all being recorded by local journalists and… yeah."

"Oh," I said, realisation dawning. "That's the Corinto Incident, right? Yeah, I've heard of it. That was the first really public display of parahumans fighting. That was in Parahuman Studies at school. We watched the footage."

"And that's what it gets remembered for," Dad said, shaking his head. "Reagan and his damn 'Superman is real… and he's American!' speech. Trying to turn the whole mess into a 'look at how dangerous the Soviets are with their supervillains; good thing we have our own to protect us'. And what did we get from the Cuban Missile Crisis II: Electric Boogaloo? The name 'Protectorate'."

He seemed bitter. He seemed old. I kept silent, hoping he'd calm down. The rest of the drive back was quiet. I headed up to my room and changed. I had a nasty bruise on my thigh from where I'd run into the bin. Well, if Dad noticed that, I'd just tell him I hit a bin when I slipped. The best lies were mostly true, after all. I couldn't focus on reading, so I went downstairs and stared at the television screen. Dad seemed to be happy that I wasn't spending time in my room, though.

He'd probably have been less happy if he'd known that I was trying to work out a way to tell him that a place near his work was an illegal sweatshop, without telling him what I'd done today.

I couldn't work out how to do it, though, not least because all that tiredness which I'd built up last night seemed to be coming back. It must have been escaping the guard or… or something. I was feeling limp and listless, so when Dad got ready to head off to visit the hospital, I told him I was going to bed early.

"I think I sort of overdid it on my first day out of that place," I told him. I tried to smile. "Maybe I'm coming down with a cold."

He looked worried, but he couldn't pin it down on anything. What was he going to do, anyway? Drag me off to the hospital when I was clearly exhausted?

I lay face-down on my bed, forehead resting on my arms. Maybe I should just go to bed. Take my sleeping pills, rest.

There was one thing I could do before I did that, though.

Quietly, I snuck out of my room. The house was almost silent without Dad around. I crept into his room, which smelt of sweat and needed an airing, and wrinkled my nose at the pile of clothes in the corner. He was usually tidier. How much had he been worried about me?

Well, time to think about that later. I was here for something else. I knew the old photo albums were tucked away on the top shelf of his cupboard, and standing on a chair I could easily reach them. They were handily dated. So… hmm. What dates was I looking for? Well, there was one which was 'Early 80s' and one which was 'Late 80s', so I got them both down.

Faded photographs were tucked into sleeves. I started with the 'Late 80s' one, and got lucky. Yeah, that was Dad with a full head of hair and a slightly straggly beard standing next to a considerably thinner version of the guy he'd been talking to at work, and a black guy. Probably the Cal who'd been shot. More pictures of Dad. Him and Cal working on a placard together. The three of them holding beers and mugging for the camera. Dad and Mum, holding hands.

I turned the page. And there was Mum, dressed in – my eyes widened. Okay, yeah, that was some kind of fairly close fitting leather catsuit thingie. It was black with yellow patches on it. And she had a hood up and a gas mask around her neck. It… was sort of flattering, I had to admit. Especially since it looked like it had been armoured around the chest, which covered up that – well, I got my figure from her.

Wow. Of all the things I thought she'd did in the eighties, I didn't think she'd have been a henchman. Henchwoman. Yeah, Dad might have said that things were different back then, but come on. She was dressing up in black leather – maybe biker leathers – and wearing a gas mask and throwing petrol bombs at the police. There was a term for people like that.

I sighed. She was quite obviously posing for the shot, too. And from the nature of the posing, I could bet that Dad was taking it. I shuddered. Not going to think about that. I turned the page to get away from that image, and came face to face with a picture of a line of similarly attired people – all women, I was pretty sure. Next picture, Mum sitting next to a few other young women in the black leather without their hoods and gas masks. They were either students, or not much older. There were banners up behind them. Things like 'Troops Out Of Panama' and 'Down With The New Patriarchs'.

My head sunk into my hands. My mother had been a henchwoman in her student days and I'd never know that. My mental image of her was going to need some adjustment. I couldn't believe it. She'd gone out wearing leather and a gas mask, no powers at all, and taken on the police because… why? Why would you do something crazy like that?

Well, according to Dad, because she thought she was going to stop the end of the world.

… damn. When I put it like that, if I thought I could stop nuclear war that way, I'd probably do it. I shook my head. Clearly inherited villainy. I'd need to watch for villains trying to recruit me by telling me that they were really the good guys. I smiled weakly at my bad joke. My twenty-something year old mother smiled back from the faded photograph, standing among a bunch of armed leather-clad women.

I was looking more and more like her. Not in every way, of course, but I wondered properly for the first time how this was affecting Dad.

And whatever bad things she might have done, I thought, at least she was doing it because she believed in it. Because she thought she was helping. And even if she had been wrong and even if there hadn't been a war, she'd done her best. Or what she thought was her best.

Not like that place down in the Docks. My stomach squirmed in disgust. There was no higher goal there. No cause they believed in. They were making the entire building a hellhole in the Other Place, and why? So shops on the Boardwalk could get cheaper clothes. For profit. Did the guards for that place even care they had a bunch of people trapped in there who probably thought they were coming to America for a better life? Did they just not care? Or did they think they deserved it or something?

I had to stop them.

The fury burned away my melancholia. I'd been wrong earlier. I could be a hero. All I'd need was proof. Photos. Enough to take to the police. I could drop them off without being IDed, get the police to raid the place and arrest everyone responsible for this. Maybe I could discover where these clothes were going, who was buying them. Get them arrested too, or make them feel so bad about it they'd never do it again. And my powers were very, very good at finding things out. The Other Place would tell me where to look.

The Protectorate could fight supervillains. I could stop this 'small' crime – which wasn't small at all.

I'd need an outfit. I didn't want them finding out who I was. I'd need a camera.

And I'd need a plan.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.07

There was a moth on my window when I finally twitched the curtains open. The motion disturbed it, and it fluttered away under a grey sky. It was a miserable-looking morning, but at least I was feeling pretty good. I hadn't had any nightmares. The sleeping pills were doing their job.

Wait. I blearily stared out the window, confused as to why everything was so blurred, before realization hit and I pinched my brow, massaging my eyes. I was getting too used to having perfect vision in the Other Place. And I wasn't exhausted, which meant I probably couldn't use Cry Baby. That was sort of annoying. The ability to make someone tired and fed up had probably saved my life yesterday. Because I'd had that thing on hand, I'd managed to drive off the guard without him seeing me. Hopefully, I'd just been a fleeing figure. I could have been anyone. I don't know what would have happened – or what I could have done – if I hadn't had it around.

Wow. A great night's sleep, and I'd already decided that me not feeling shit was a potential problem? At least I could blame this one on my fucked up power.

I'd need to come up with any other things I could force on other people to protect myself. Or see if I could make Cry Baby without needing to be tired. Thinking about what had happened yesterday, I checked my thigh. It was decorated by a nice big bruise where I'd collided with the trash can when running away. It was a fetching shade of red-purple, but least it wasn't somewhere obvious.

Limping slightly, I went to shower and get ready for the day.

…​

There was ice in the milk carton. It rattled around when I swirled it. I squatted down by the fridge, and noticed that the inside was encrusted with frost. Even the vegetables had a thin layer of ice over them. I sighed wearily, brushing a lock of still-wet hair away from my face.

"Dad," I called out, "the fridge is too cold! It's all frosted up and there's ice in the milk!" I frowned, and nudged some of the icy lettuce aside. There was also quite a bit of beer in the fridge. More than there would have been normally. And two empty… what are those things called? The plastic sixpack loop things for beer cans? The ones that kill fish when they get dumped in the ocean? There were two of them.

I pushed the lettuce back into place and pretended I hadn't seen them.

"Yeah, it needs defrosting," he called back. "I've been meaning to, but it's been too cold outside."

You mean you haven't got around to it, I thought. I turned the temperature up slightly, and shook my head. I poured myself a bowl of cereal then fished out the lump of ice which fell out of the carton. I took a seat opposite to Dad, and started to eat.

"Taylor?" he asked, sitting at the table. He had his hands folded in front of him.

"Mmmphmph?" I said, with my mouthful, and swallowed. "What is it?"

"So, Taylor," he began. That wasn't a good sign. In my experience, few good things started with 'So, Taylor'. "There's something I meant to say to you yesterday, but… well, I got the phone call. We have a meeting at school tomorrow. We need to talk about how you're going to return to school, and they also want to get you to hand in the work you're meant to have done."

I was right. That really wasn't a good sign. "I have done the work," I said quickly. "Not much else to do in the hospital."

"And that's good," he said, "but we do need to talk about how you're going back."

My shoulders slumped. "I know," I said in a tiny voice.

"Now, one of the things they suggested was that you change classes," he said. "You know, so you're not around the people who are being a problem anymore."

"What, you mean like Emma?" I said bitterly. "That's going to help so much. They'll just have to get me in the corridors and at lunchtime. I'm sure that'll be so much of a problem for them. I just hope Winslow hasn't prepared them for the academic challenge of finding me."

"Oh, I've talked with them plenty," he said darkly, hands baling into fists. "They're going to listen to any future complaints. If they don't… well, they will. Trust me on this."

"What did you do, Dad?" I asked nervously.

"I know people," he said. Okay, that didn't help my concern at all. That sounded like the prelude to an admission that he actually ran the Brockton Bay branch of the Russian Mafia or something.

"Dad…" I said.

"I talked to some people on the union grapevine who linked me up with a friendly lawyer, and she gave me some advice," he added. "Helped advise me how to present my demands to them, and how to use the kind of language which made it clear I'd been talking to a lawyer. They don't want an expensive court case or the bad publicity – and she pointed out that 'My daughter tried to kill herself while locked in a locker filled with…' uh, those things."

"Used tampons," I said, with fake helpfulness.

He looked decidedly awkward. "Yes, that. The press would be all over that. She… uh, that is, the lawyer… well, she was shocked enough that…" he took a deep breath. "Well, the point is, if the school doesn't do everything they can to help, she said that we'd probably win any case. They knew that too."

"Well, why aren't you suing, then?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"Taylor," Dad said, trying to look for words. "This already happened. We settled , and that's why the hospital got paid for along with any extra care you need in the longer term, and why we got a bit extra on top of that. And another part of it is that they have to show that they're taking action to stop anything like that happening again. If they don't, they're breaching the terms of the settlement."

"Good," I said.

"The point is," he said, "when you go back, if they try anything again – anything at all – then tell the school. And tell me."

I stared at him in frustration. How could I explain that I couldn't tell? That it would just make things worse if I did? That telling never helped and… I took a breath.

Was that me thinking that, or was that Madam Secret? The thought came on so suddenly I might have almost doubted that it was my own. But that wasn't it. It was me, but it was the memory of how I felt when I had Madam Secret beaten down and chained talking.

It had felt good.

It had felt like how things had been before Mum had died.

"I'll try," I said quietly.

"Taylor. Please, promise me, you'll do more than try. Do it. Or else…" and whatever he was about to say was broken by the phone ringing. He left me sitting in silence while he got that.

"Danny Hebert speaking… oh Janice. What is…. oh shit. Shit, is he… oh." I heard a sharp inhalation. "I'll be right there," he said. "Hold on." He put down the phone. "Tim's taken a turn for the worse," he said, lips thin. "That was his wife. I'm heading to the hospital and… are you going to be…"

I thought fast. "I'll come with you," I said. I think that surprised him. He expected more protest. "But… uh, I really don't want to hang around the hospital all the time. I've seen more than enough of hospitals the past few months. I'll just go out to the Boardwalk. It's pretty close, right?"

He looked uncomfortable. "I'd prefer you close by," he said. "I really shouldn't be dragging you all over the place, when you're still not 100% yourself."

"It's not your fault what happened," I said. "But think about it, Dad! The Boardwalk and the area around it are safe. There's all that security. I'll be close, and I can come back if you call me. And there are things I need to get," I pointed out. "Like lip balm. My lips were cracking from just spending a bit of time outside yesterday. And warmer gloves, because I'm really feeling the cold in my hands."

He sighed, but acquiesced. I barely had enough time to grab a coat and what money I had in savings before we were off racing to the hospital. I had to remind Dad to keep below the speed limit several times, and that wasn't like him, because he was usually obsessively careful about his driving. I shivered at the sight of the building I'd spent time recovering in, and the memory of drug-hazed and nightmare-filled nights.

Dad handed me a bundle of dollar bills distractedly as we got out of the car. "I'll expect some change from that," he said. "Get lunch. And call me if you need help or feel…"

"Yes, yes," I said. I leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. "I hope your friend gets better," I said, almost surprising myself with the unprovoked public display of affection. I think it surprised him too, but the watery smile it produced was worth it.

"Me too," he said.

It was just a short walk from the hospital to the Boardwalk proper. The high rise bits of the city were all clustered around this area, the grey horizon obscured by steel and glass canyons. I skirted the edge of the Ashton Park neighbourhood, passed by the glasshouse-garden structure above the Little Paris submall – wasn't going to get in there, I wasn't paying for an access pass – and stepped onto Wear Street, which was the start of the Boardwalk. It was technically right at the edge of the Docks, but you wouldn't think it was part of that area.

It was amazing, the difference half a mile made. I could still see the hospital, a looming grey structure visible over the top of Little Paris, but it didn't belong here. Bright flatscreens festooned the buildings, adverts playing on endless loops. The smart fabric stretched between the buildings was pretending to be a sunny day at the moment, and would keep on doing that even if it started raining. There were clean murals on the walls where there weren't billboards and adverts. The city even smelt different.

Tourists were everywhere, even though it wasn't the weekend. It probably wasn't fair to call them tourists, but as a Brockton Bay native, it was something you just did. Most of them weren't staying here. They'd just drive in or get the train, shop here, and leave. They stood out. They dressed like they had money, even if they didn't.

I knew Dad viewed it as a mixed blessing at best, which was something I hadn't really understood. Surely it was a good thing that Brockton Bay had something like this. It wasn't a real tinkertech town, like some places – such as Silicon Valley – but it helped. It would probably be bigger if we hadn't been so close to Boston, too.

Everything was better here. And didn't the advertising want you to know it? "Nostalgia for Tomorrow," proclaimed a perfume poster. "Embrace your fantasies." And of course, "Why not forget all the stress in your life?" I paused by a mural, showing a romanticised depiction of the docks. A young girl in a white dress holding a red balloon in one hand stood on a pontoon, eating an icecream and staring out of the picture. There was smart paint in the mural, too, because the white seagulls circled in the background.

Of course I looked in the Other Place.

It was fake. All of it. Plastic veneers peeled off bare concrete. There was a haze of – I sniffed, half-aware that I shouldn't really be able to smell this sort of thing – greed and apathy and desperation in the air, like morning mist. Posters of green-eyed vaguely-female monsters declared-
IT'S YOUR FAULT YOU'RE POOR
-and I only had to shift back to the normal world to see that there, the monsters were pretty women and that the 'Because you're worth it' written in a 'flirty' font basically got the same message across.

The girl on the mural was covered in little black words of 'hate' and 'revenge' and 'contempt'. Her arms and legs had red paint thrown over them, so they dripped crimson. No. I sniffed. Blood, not paint. Or paint which smelt like blood, at least. I shook my head and walked on, hands in my pockets.

Envy, greed and worry under a mask of pretending that everything was okay. Way to break any illusions that I might have had about this place, Other Place. Thanks.

Back in the Other Place, it seemed like the wall-screens and smart fabric street-roof were glitching. In some places, they showed an iron-grey sky broken up by pixelated splodges of bright colour. In others, they dimmed into an abstract pattern of coiling serpents and watchful eyes. As I stared, one of them blinked and turned its attention to me. And another. And another, until it seemed like the entire street was staring at me.

I shuddered. Paranoia? Or was the Other Place telling me I was being watched? There were certainly cameras everywhere, and the private security force which patrolled this area kept an eye out for any signs of trouble. They were well equipped – better than the normal police – and had even managed to catch a pair of two not-very-super supervillains a year or so back. Either way, I didn't leave the Other Place. I wanted to see what those eyes and snakes did.

Shaking my head, I headed for Monarch Clothes, to get into my real purpose for being here.

Last night, I had put quite a bit of thought into what I'd wear when getting those pictures. I couldn't be seen doing it. Plus, I'd be superheroing, and you had to dress up when doing that. Even people robbing the local 7-11 threw on a mask, though that was probably mostly to stop any CCTV getting a picture of their faces.

On the other hand, I didn't have much cash to spend – even with the unexpected generosity from Dad – and I certainly couldn't get any of the thinkerfab or tinkertech gear which government capes or well-off supervillains had. And I was a beanpole and would look terrible in spandex.

So, as a result, my objectives in getting a costume were as follows:
1) Stop anyone from finding out who I was,
2) Have a costume which was comfy and warm because it was freezing outside, and
3) Pay as little as possible doing so.

To help towards that end, I'd gone and booted up Mum's old desktop in the study, and – after struggling with myself – connected up the dialup. I hadn't wanted to, because Dad might have called, but I had to check some facts. I wanted to see how other heroes kept their identities secret.

It was, of course, easy to find out who New Wave really were. Exposed faces, public IDs. I'd decided that exposing my face was, all things considered, taking everything into account, a bad idea. Likewise, domino masks were out. I'm not even sure how they attached those things. Was there like… elastic or something? Or did they glue them on? I had no idea. They wouldn't work with glasses, anyway. And would look stupid on me.

Armsmaster, the most senior local cape, wore full self-built power armour which totally covered him in plating which could and had stopped stolen military missiles. And could turn invisible. And probably dispensed coffee. I should totally do that. Except, oh wait, I wasn't a Tinker and couldn't build power armour . Aware that I was wasting time, I had excluded all Tinkers from my search, and then waited for the painfully slow connection to update the page.

Now, Shadow Stalker, one of the local Wards – she had the right idea about things. According to her page, she was a former vigilante, and she seemed to be pretty smart about it. Obscuring garments, a full-face mask, no bare skin. If I was trying to track her down, from what I could pick up I was looking for a girl somewhere between… hmm, maybe -12-13 if she was an early bloomer, all the way up to the max age of the Wards. The Wards attended Arcadia, apparently – there's no way they'd go to a dump like Winslow – which narrowed down the pool of people she could be, but still. Much harder to find. That's the sort of thing I should go for. Full face covering, dark clothing – I could just get a hoodie – maybe a balaclava as well, so they couldn't see my hair.

Of course, if I really wanted to find who she was, I'd just go to one of their PR things and have Sniffer follow her home. Which was another reason I shouldn't join the Wards. PR things. Going and standing in front of crowds and posing or being 'security' on the Boardwalk wasn't something which appealed to me. And if I was part of the Wards, I wouldn't be able to keep me and Dad safe from people with powers like mine.

Man. That was kind of scary. It would be freakishly easy for me to find out who any cape in the public spotlight was, just by setting Sniffer to track them. It was kind of annoying that villains – for some reason – preferred to keep out of the public eye. With that in mind, it was a good thing I was a good guy. Though if it was this easy for me, it suggested that a lot of villains could probably find out who various government capes were. If they hadn't used that knowledge, it probably meant that doing so put anyone who tried it in deep shit. And a quick check did confirm that capekillers tended to meet very quick ends.

That was reassuring, in its own way. The time might come that I might need to go to the Protectorate, to the Parahuman Protection Division. I was under no illusions that I wouldn't be in over my head if something really big happened. Of course, we'd need to move cities if that happened. There was a little bit of me which would be glad to have a completely legitimate reason why I couldn't be a Ward in Brockton Bay, because that meant that I'd have an excuse to move to a new city and a new school. But it would be selfish to force that on Dad.

Plus, if I fucked up that badly, it'd mean people were trying to kill me. I wasn't a great fan of that idea.

Two-and-a-bit years. I'd just grin and bear it for that much longer. Then I could join the Protectorate as an adult. I'd be paid well for it. I could get them to pay my way through college, and I could basically get into the college of my choice, if the rumours were true. Maybe I wouldn't even have to wait that long. If I told them when I was seventeen-and-a-half, maybe, there wouldn't be a need to really join the Wards for six months. I could just stay back, go through the induction period they obviously had to have, and by the time that was over, I'd be basically ready to leave the Wards. Leave Brockton Bay. Maybe I could go to Los Angeles, on the other side of the country from here, working directly under Alexandria.

I could barely wait.

I was smiling as I walked into Monarch Clothes, ready to get my first costume. And then the smell hit me, like a punch to the stomach. Blood and misery and apathy and so many terrible things, all blended together.

The smell of the sweatshop.

 

[EarthScorpion]

An Imago of Rust and Crimson

Chapter 2.08

Oh no. Oh no no no.

What were the odds? The first place I walked into was selling clothes from the sweatshop. Either I was really unlucky, or there was some vast conspiracy which led most of the shops on the Boardwalk to source their products from slave labour. Or both.

Some of the clothes on the racks before me reeked of the warehouse. They were wrapped in a red haze of misery.

I covered my mouth with my hands, hyperventilating into my gloves. What was I going to do? What could I do? I shed the Other Place, but somehow I could still smell it. It was all around me. The entire building stank of misery and suffering and… and I had to calm down. I couldn't freak out, not in public. Even if I knew the truth behind this place and how all these people were buying things that had been made… no!

If I made a scene, I might end up back in the hospital. I didn't want to go back. I couldn't. I wouldn't. They wouldn't make me!

I only realised I was standing around at the entrance to the shop when I got jostled by an overweight man, who glared at me. I had to get out the way, to stay under the radar. I didn't want people paying attention to me. Looking around wildly, I headed over to the women section, and pretended to be paying attention to shoes. I needed to sit down, so found a seat and began to unlace my shoes as slowly as possible.

The sheer mundanity of untying my shoes calmed me down a little. I thought I could still smell the sweatshop, though, like a whiff of smoke caught in the back of my throat.

"Are you looking for anything in particular," one of the shop assistants asked me. The world shifted to grey and rust for a moment, and goat horns of tarnished metal forced their way out of her chalky skin. Then the Other Place vision faded, and she was talking again. "We have a sale currently on. So if you want me to check if we have anything in your size in the backroom, I'll be happy to help, but sale items are going quickly."

"Just checking what size I am, I'm still looking," I said hastily. "I'll ask if I see anything." Urgh. Why did people come over and try to talk to me? Pretending they cared. They were just as bad as some of the teachers at school, faking their interest. They didn't help me, and right now they couldn't even if they'd actually wanted to. No one could.

Fortunately, the assistant moved on. I had to calm down. I took a deep breath, tapping my gloved index fingers against my teeth. I hadn't lost control like this since I'd taught myself to control how I saw the Other Place. I was on the edge of tears. I couldn't lose control. I mustn't start crying.

But it was just too much. It was more than I could face. One illegal factory was one thing. But this was a large department store. I'd vaguely considered that there might be some dodgy shop getting under the table consignments from that place, but somewhere this big? What would I do? What could I do against something like this?

Was it even an illegal factory? Yes, I decided. It had to be. Something that looked that bad, felt that bad couldn't be legal. Shouldn't be legal.

I went and found the bathrooms, and locked myself in one of the cubicles until I had calmed down. I dried my eyes with tissue paper, and washed off my face. Staring at myself in the mirror, I sighed.

"You're so fucked up," I told the girl in the mirror softly. "Get a better grip of yourself."

Of course, I could do that. That was my thing. So I breathed out my worry and my agitation, and nailed it to the ceiling.

I felt better as I strolled out of the bathroom, leaving the squirming thing that wore my face behind. I didn't have to worry about anything. The sweatshop was horrible, and I was going to make sure that it was shut down. And then I'd make this place pay. Yes, it was perfectly clear and logical.

I almost felt like laughing. Yes, this shop was large. But if I shut down the sweatshop, their supply would be cut off there. And then if I could get evidence linking them to it, then I'd be able to make them pay. I hated bullies. I hated them so much. And what they were doing here, making people suffer for no good reason at all – for cheap clothing – was the worst kind of bullying, because they didn't even care.

Well. I'd make them care.

First things first. I needed to know for sure that the clothes here were being made in that particular sweatshop. That probably wasn't the only one in Brockton Bay. I nodded to myself. Yes. Sniffer managed to find my mother's flute, so she could almost certainly follow a trail back to where these clothes had been made. I opened my eyes to the Other Place, staring at the rot and the filth. The sweatshop clothes were the cheap ones, the ones which I could actually afford. I felt like I should have been feeling bad about that, but nothing registered. Anyway, I was going to make things all better.

You, I thought at Sniffer. I'm not going to let you out this time. You're staying in here, and you're going to show me what you see. I balled my hands into fists, and the prickling of pain helped me focus. I felt like I was pushing up against a wall, like I had my face pressed against a cellophane wrap. The skin all over my body felt taut, and not quite the right shape.

And it suddenly gave way.

It didn't come as naturally as seeing the Other Place normally. There was a feeling of depth about it. Have you ever opened your eyes at the bottom of a swimming pool, and felt the pressure against your eyeballs? It wasn't like that, but it wasn't entirely unlike that. The pressure was behind my closed eyes. It was like the world around me was thinner, less dense than I was.

Swaying, I tried to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo which nearly overcame me. I should have been sitting down when I tried this, I thought, with a trace of tipsy whimsy.

The light was dimmer, faded. There were almost no colours. But the changes went far beyond petty things like the spectrum. I saw shapes, and they meant nothing to me. In this iron-grey, formless world, my sight was almost meaningless. Or maybe my mind wasn't working correctly, because if I focussed I could just about put together that I was staring at my own face in a mirror. It took me long, long seconds to realise that.

But that didn't matter. I didn't need normal sight. I could feel the shape of the area around me in the same way I could feel where my arms and legs were when I wasn't looking at them. Eyes wide, I drifted around the main shop floor. I knew that what I was looking at was a man, a rack of clothes, the escalators up to the next level. I was effectively blind, but I simply knew where everything was even without looking at it.

And more than that, I could see the threads Sniffer followed when she tracked things down. I could see the hair-thin strands a tall, thin man left whenever he touched one of the pieces of clothing, spiderwebs in the air quickly lost among the haze of threads that surrounded him. I could see the hand-thick iron chain which linked him by the neck to the curvy woman who stood next to him. When I paid attention to the terminal point of the chain, I could see so many other chains and threads and wires, all wrapped around the blurred, unfocussed shape of the man.

But I didn't have to just focus on that nexus. I could focus on the nexus next to him – the woman, I dimly remembered – at the same time. And the nexus behind me. And that nexus that they were standing by. So many central points. All these chains. I could see them all. I – Sniffer – didn't care that I wasn't even facing most of them.

I covered up my eyes with my hands, trying to shut it out. It didn't help. I could still see everything. Seeing without eyes. I swayed, and staggered to grab a blurred shape I knew to be a rack of winter jackets. It was all too much. My attention shifted to the jacket-nexus, and I could see the chains stretching away from it. I reached out and grabbed at the thickest one, trying to pull myself upright with something which wasn't real, and when I touched it, I knew it connected up to the sweatshop. The sensory impressions flooded in and I desperately thrust Sniffer's awareness away from me.

A wave of light and sound hit me as the world returned to something approaching normalcy. Shaking, I found somewhere to sit and tried to catch my breath. I could feel the cold sweat prickling on my brow.

That… that thing I'd made from me saw the world like that all the time. No wonder it was a monster. What kind of person could deal with all that and stay sane? I stared blearily at the world around me. The lights seemed so bright, and yet my awareness seemed so limited compared to what had happened then.

I took a deep breath, and wiped my forehead against my sleeve. Staring up at the humming electric lights above me, I thought about what to do next. I couldn't buy a costume from here. The things I could afford were made in that place. I could go looking for some other place. Get out of here. Return only when it was time to make them pay.

Except there was another way I could make them pay. Literally. And by doing so, I could get a proper, good-quality costume made of expensive tinkerfab-cloth. I'd just need to take what I needed from here, without paying. Technically it would be theft. Technically, and legally. But would it be morally wrong?

I considered it for a while. I knew for a fact that this shop was directly profiting from what I'd seen down in the Docks. And they had to know from how much they were getting the clothes for that everything wasn't quite above board. Even if they didn't know, I bet they weren't asking the questions they should have been asking. Which made them party to the crimes.

From a certain point of view, that would make it karmic justice if I 'obtained' my disguise from this place. I wouldn't need to roll up the clothes and stick them under my coat or anything risky like that. All I'd need to do would be to send a doll-cherub or two to take the things I'd use back home. I could hide them under my bed. No one would ever know.

Legally it would be stealing. And would remain so even if things like 'my parahuman talent tells me that they're benefitting from slave labour' were admissible as evidence. Maybe they were. I wasn't up to date on parahuman law. They totally had to have some kind of way for psychic FBI agents and the like to submit evidence, right? No, I was getting distracted.

I had to be honest with myself. Was I doing this for the right reasons? I weighed up the option. On one hand, I was going to be stealing… oh, probably over a hundred dollars. At least. The coats alone were selling for more than that. That was wrong, at least normally.

But on the other hand, I wasn't doing it for my own benefit. I couldn't wear these clothes around normally. They were going to be part of my superhero costume. And the shop was benefitting from really, really horrible things. So I would be depriving the bad guys of stuff, and using it to help the people they were hurting. And I needed a good disguise, or they might trace me back and then they might hurt Dad. And me, too.

In the balance, it was probably morally acceptable for me to do this. As long as I didn't get into the habit.

And I couldn't wear things made in the sweatshop. I just couldn't. It was wrong. And, I realised, if I was doing things in the Other Place when wearing those clothes, I'd be smelling it all the time. It'd be up against my skin. I'd be touching it.

No. I couldn't. I wouldn't.

I took a deep breath, and made my choice.

I didn't bother trying to look innocent or like I didn't want to be noticed. Years of bullying had taught me that trying to look like you didn't want other people to pay attention to you just made them pay more attention to you. So I just checked out the place like I was looking around, and probably wanted to compare the coats in several shops before I bought anything. I wanted something black or grey, which would be hard to see at night. I made sure to ask one of the shop assistants for help, too. Her name, according to her badge, was Hello-My-Name-Is-Mary.

"Um, so," I asked her, "are these clothes ethically made?"

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Well, you hear about these sweatshops where clothing gets made," I said. "None of this comes from sweatshops, right? Everything is all above board?"

Hello-My-Name-is-Mary shook her head. "It's all ethically sourced," she told me.

Well. She was lying to me. Or didn't know. Either way, that meant that the shop was lying to its customers and pretending things were all above board. Some of my reluctance melted away at that. They had it coming.

"Is there anything in particular you're looking for?" she asked.

I frowned. "Something warm, but not too heavy," I said. "I want to… you know, be able to move in it properly. Not one of those long coats which you can't run for the bus in."

"Three-quarter lengths are coming in," she said encouragingly. "Frock coats were very big this Christmas. We have our selection over here."

I poked around, examining the various coats. These weren't cheap. Hundreds of dollars each, minimum. But they were very nice looking. I stroked the sleeve of a charcoal grey double-breasted coat, and held it up against me. Oh God, it would work so well. That shade would totally be almost invisible in the shadows at night, I was sure. I tried it on, and it was a little big around the shoulders, but it felt really nice.

"Won't that get wet and heavy?" I asked.

"It might look like it's wool, but it's not," Hello-My-Name-is-Mary said helpfully. "It's machine-washable. It's made of really clever synthetic stuff which feels like wool, but doesn't absorb water in the same way. You don't need to have it dry cleaned."

That was helpful. I was probably going to get muddy or dirty at some point, and there was no way I could get away with taking anything I wore to be dry cleaned. If I could just take it down to a Laundromat when Dad was at work, though… yes, that'd work. Hello-My-Name-is-Mary had just sold me on it. 'Sold' me. I tried a few more on, but I'd made my mind up.

"Thanks for the help," I told her, "but all these things just seem to be too big around the shoulders and feel loose. I mean, I like the length, but…" I shrugged. "It's so hard finding stuff when you're a beanpole," I said self-effacingly.

"Have you considered a different cut?" she asked. "Frock coats are kind of designed to make you look thinner by having a narrow wait and wider shoulders and," she waved her hands, "the flared bit at the bottom, but you'd probably look better with something more straight up-and-down."

I shook my head. "I might come back," I said, "but I think I might need to look somewhere else. Your sizes are a bit on the wide side."

She snickered. "I've noticed that too," she said. "Well, if you want to try one of our other styles, come back and I'll try and help."

I sighed to myself as she went off to someone else. She had seemed nice, but this whole place was so fake I couldn't trust it. Especially when they sold things from that sweatshop down at the Docks. Shifting my vision to the Other Place, I made a winged doll, and started to walk away from the coats.

"Go, take it, put it under my bed," I told the doll. When I turned around, the coat I'd tried on was gone. I smiled faintly to myself. Drifting around the shop, I slowly added a few more things to my collection, making sure to check each thing I was 'buying' was a good size. By the end of my browsing, I'd picked up two pairs of business dress pants in nearly the same shade of grey, and a black high-necked sweater. They were all on the more expensive side, but of course that was just so I could avoid the stuff that were tainted in the Other Place. Besides, it hurt this place more if I took those things. After a moment's thought, I grabbed a dark grey hat, of the sort PIs wore in those old films. I was being a detective, after all. Oh, and a very nice pair of black leather gloves which fit like… uh, like a glove.

To stop anyone getting suspicious of what I'd been doing in there, I paid for a cheap pair of gloves that fortunately didn't stink of the sweatshop. Then I walked out, feeling lightheaded, even a little giddy. That had been so easy. The world was spinning slightly and I was hyperventilating, so I sat down for a moment, on a bench outside the shop.. I couldn't let it go to my head. I just had to go on and be normal and get the rest of my shopping done. 'Shopping'. Heh.

My giddiness was spiked by an irrational surge of jealousy as I watched some of the people walking out of the shop. And the worst thing was that it wasn't irrational. I must have taken over $500 dollars of clothes – the coat alone had been $250. The stuff I'd swiped was worth more than we'd normally spend on half a year of my clothes, but people were wandering out with even more than that. Just casually bought. They didn't even think about how much money they'd just spent. They were too busy talking on their smartphones or doing things on smartglasses. That wool-but-better fabric sounded like tinkerfab, too - was there anything these people had that wasn't some kind of futuristic luxury dreamed up in a parahuman's lab?

If I was going to be honest, my turmoil had two layers. There was the bit of me which wanted to shake them and shout about where their toys and finery had come from, the conditions facing the workers who'd made some of them. Surely they'd do something, change how they acted if they knew? But there was also simple jealousy. I wasn't the sort of girl who obsessed over clothing, but… it'd be nice to get expensive things like that. Like what Emma got. Back when we were friends, I used to get really nice presents from her, and even now I knew that she always got the latest stuff. Because her dad was rich.

It wasn't fair.

I had a headache, a dull ache right behind the eyes, so I went to buy lunch and find a place to sit. I deliberately didn't check the Other Place at all when I was doing it. I didn't want to see anything that would put me off my food.

With a packaged ham sandwich, a bag of chips and a bottled drink, I sat down on one of the gardens under the false blue sky of the Boardwalk. And it was just as well that I was sitting down, because just as I unscrewed the bottle, a sudden wave of cold shivers hit me. They ran up and down up my spine and I cramped up, my abdomen aching. I whimpered.

Nothing strange seemed to be going on. Just people going about their day. There were several other people in this small garden, eating lunch, and none of them seemed to be having any problems.

Maybe it was a sign I'd been overusing my powers. I wasn't sure if I'd ever used my power so often, in such quick succession. I certainly hadn't been moving things around like that. And I'd read online that most Thinkers got headaches if they used their abilities too often. I was basically a Thinker, too – just one who made constructs from the things they thought of – so it looked like that limitation applied to me to. And by my best guess, making teleporting wiredolls was much more 'exhausting' than smaller effects, or just looking into the Other Place.

I sighed, and took a deep breath, trying to settle the unpleasant nausea and dizziness I felt. I supposed that was another place I paid for the flexibility in my powers. Chris Bankron had been able to teleport things around all day in Going Places . Or, rather, the guy he played had. And it hadn't been a particularly good movie.

Shouting drew my attention, and I half-turned to see a kid about my age being manhandled by a pair of boardwalk security guards. The overturned skateboard on the ground by him told me everything I needed to know. There were "No Skating" signs up all over the Boardwalk, and the security enforced that pretty strictly. He tried to protest, but they didn't pay any attention.

I wanted to intervene. Yeah, sure, he had been skating where he wasn't meant to, but you heard rumours about what the security guards did here. Well, I heard rumours, mostly from Dad, who called them a bunch of thugs with badges and said they had all the worst traits of the police and none of the good ones. But what could I do?

Boredom, I thought suddenly. If I could make the guards bored, they wouldn't keep on doing what they were doing. Boredom, boredom, boredom… grey, clinging, smoky, like the days I spent in the psychiatric hospital I'd spent with nothing to do. I imagined it, recalled it, and exhaled. It took shape immediately, a grey column of fireless smoke with no features or details.

Huh. Boredom seemed to be pretty easy to imagine and didn't require much detailing. That might be useful later.

"Go," I whispered to it. The grey fog crept along the ground, roiling and boiling, and sunk into the two guards, who faded to a greyer shade in the Other Place. I smiled, and waited for it to take effect.

Nothing had happened, though. Not in the time it took for them to leave my line of sight. Why hadn't it worked? Surely if they were bored, they would have just gone off and done something else? Maybe I hadn't made the construct strong enough. Or maybe they were well trained enough that they did their job even if they were bored.

I sighed. That had been a no-show. Although apparently I wasn't all that great at affecting emotions which weren't my own, if that was anything to go by. Urgh. Apparently, I'd need to learn how to get people to do what I wanted, if this was going to be really useful. Great. Thank you, power. If I knew how to get people to do what I wanted, I'd have friends.

Dusting down my clothes, I rose and dumped my rubbish in a bin. I might as finish getting everything I needed, and then I could just go find a place to read. Maybe the library.

But first I needed some gear which wasn't sold in normal clothing shops, so I headed toward the army surplus store on the edge of the Boardwalk. It smelt slightly of stale sweat, and I got the distinct feeling that it didn't see too many women.

The adverts in the shop were all talking about patriotism and the need to be ready and 'What would you do if an Endbringer attacked?'. Well, let's see, I would end up a refugee or die of drowning, end up a refugee or die of radiation poisoning, or get to stay in Brockton Bay because I was now stuck in an internment camp or die from weird psychic bullshit. Sorry, Sammy's Surplus, but I'm not sure you're going to be as much help as you think.

A sudden cloud of depression descended on me. Except now I was a cape. I should be volunteering with the PPD for one of the parahuman reserve groups, even if I wasn't going to register with the government. Even some criminals did that, though that was probably because they thought it bought them lighter sentences and a route for rehabilitation. And I wasn't a criminal.

But… I mostly just had Thinker powers. What could I do? They didn't release actual figures, but everyone knew the casualty rate for fighting an Endbringer was really high. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to see an Endbringer. I paled at the thought of what one of those things, those living natural disasters would look like in the Other Place. I'd have to look at it if I wanted to do something against it. If the sweatshop had been that bad, what would something which had killed millions look like?

But surely it was my responsibility to help, right? I just… didn't want to face something like that. I didn't want to die.

No. I shouldn't think about things like that. The Protectorate didn't send parahumans who couldn't help to those things, and I was too young anyway. If it came to it, I'd deal with it, but for now I didn't have to think about that kind of thing. To get away from these morbid thoughts, I continued looking for the final parts of my costume.

My mother had managed to avoid getting caught when carrying out acts of villainy with a gas mask and balaclava, so apparently that set-up worked. It made sense. It would make it hard to identify me, and on top of that, it might help against gas or smoke, or even some cape powers. There was bound to be a villain with poison gas powers or someone who made worm things that tried to crawl in your mouth. I had considered trying to dig through the junk in the basement or the attic to see if I could find her old one, but it probably wouldn't be in great shape after twenty years even if I could find it.

Also, I really didn't want Dad going 'Hmm, new superhero in town wearing what looks to be my wife's old costume from her days as a henchwoman. I wonder who that could be?'.

It wouldn't end well.

It wasn't too hard to find where they were stocking the gas masks, and they had an entire range of balaclavas. I decided to go for one of the better ones, with a foil lining. It looked warmer and more comfortable, and I'd be wearing it quite a bit. I also vaguely remembered seeing on some crime show that foil linings could block microwave cameras, so maybe it would make it harder to see who I was.

I had enough cash for it, but – I pursed my lips, and winced slightly from the cracked skin – I didn't want to be associated as someone buying something like that. Gas masks weren't exactly regular purchases. And if I was in charge of a group looking for criminals, I'd be suspicious of people buying gas masks and balaclavas.

Well, the solution to that was obvious. Three barbed wire doll cherubs later, and the gas mask and balaclava were under my bed, while the money for them was in the cash register. That wasn't stealing at all. In fact, I was technically being cheated, because I couldn't return them if they weren't up to standard.

And I was feeling rotten. No, really, really bad. I felt sick and dizzy, and my lips had started bleeding again. The guy behind the register looked worried, and asked if I was feeling okay.

"A bit dizzy," I admitted. "I'm just going to go outside and find somewhere to sit down for a bit. I'm sorry, I just get low blood sugar when I don't eat for a while and everything goes a bit fuzzy and I just realised I missed lunch, sorry. It's not diabetes. I'll be fine."

I'm not sure if he believed me – in fact, I'm certain he didn't, but he let me go and I managed to find a bench out in the fresh air and sit down, holding my head in my hands. Ow. Ow ow ow. I guess I had proof that overusing my powers did a number on my body. Great. Just great.

But on the other hand, I now had my costume, hidden under my bed. I could go about making the world a better place. Or at least, I thought with a sinking feeling, I could do so the day after tomorrow. Because tomorrow I had that stupid meeting up at the school, talking about when I was going to be back. I really wasn't looking forwards to it. I was trying to shut down an illegal sweatshop and really help people, and I didn't need a school which couldn't even keep me safe getting in my way. They didn't care about me, anyway. They probably didn't want me back.

Maybe Dad would be feeling stressed enough with the whole thing with his friend that he would reschedule it?