The moment was at hand. The Nine were merely minutes away from the city limits, and the moment they crossed them we'd crash down on them like thunder. From there, the route had been planned to cross the entire country as rapidly as possible in a zigzag fashion to erase their legacy.
And suddenly Taylor was calling me. The timing felt decidedley unlucky, but it would be best to get this done with now. I shifted my position to put my back to a wall, and accepted the call.
"Hello, Tay-"
Standing in what seemed like a basement, two Taylors were looking at the virtual camera, wearing identical clothes and nearly identical worried frowns.
I blinked "What, exactly, am I looking at?"
Taylor-left winced, while the other bit her lip, and then blurted out "I was kind of hoping you'd know."
Accessing the medical scanner, I was met with two nigh-identical copies of Taylor Hebert. The only difference was in nanite density. Taylor-right had a dramatically lower density of nanites, though emergency countermeasures were rapidly shrinking that gap.
"You... cloned yourself? How?"
Taylor-left suddenly turned and left the scene, while Taylor-right scratched the back of her head "Sorry, Dad just came back. I... SoIwasthinkingof-"
"Taylor, please breathe."
She paused and took a breath "Sorry. Um. So I was thinking of donating a bunch of blood, but then I wasn't sure if that would be ok, and I wasn't sure how quickly I'd be regenerating blood, so I tried poking myself with a nail, but obviously, that didn't work, so I used a mosquito to suck a bit of blood out of my body, but then the mosquito started dying so I moved it off of me and then I passed out and suddenly I had two bodies. I can't make them touch though, for some reason. It hurts like hell."
"That... shouldn't have happened." Seeing her terrified expression I quickly elaborated "There's intent-based effects, if you wanted to have your blood drawn that could work, and the nanites wouldn't exit, but they also wouldn't just let you freely bleed out. What I don't understand is the mosquito - it shouldn't have been able to bite you. I guess you were letting it bite you, but the nanites know how to recognize parasites, and anything strong enough to burrow into you is set to be killed, and it would be killed before you could even give it another command."
"So... you don't know how to do this?"
I blinked. I assumed Taylor would want me to merge her back into one being, but apparently, that wasn't where her thoughts were heading. "Taylor. I am not going to help you clone yourself further. Your power seems to be bridging the gap between your brains, but that's not safe. It might have repercussions on other aspects of your power. Not to mention, you don't know what will happen if your bodies get too far from each other!"
Taylor awkwardly scratched the back of her head. I sighed "Just... I'll be busy for the next hour. Let me..." I rapidly dug through familiar systems, thankful to find an open slot "Ok, I booked a room in the library again. You still have that canvas bag, right? Use that, and I'll meet you there. Sorry, I need to go now."
It had taken some experimentation, but I finally figured out what had occurred. Her insects, when located on her person, were categorized as 'equipment', and thus reinforced by the mantic energy. The mosquito was able to survive long enough to separate from her body - with a sample of nanite-rich blood - only thanks to that. Her nanites had then finished killing the parasite, and then went about reconstructing her body - a body which was then linked to her power, allowing her to think with two human brains.
Essentially, she'd somehow found a way to bring the intent-based effects of the nanites into conflict and exploited it to create a clone.
The complete divergence in the timeline of her existence confused the distributed Cores significantly, and the mantic resonance induced by contact between the two bodies resulted in destructive interference, creating nasty feedback.
Having mapped out the issue, all I had to do was fuse two mantically infused and reinforced bodies that were also full of divine enchanted nanites reinforcing optimal health at a ridiculous pace without doing damage to the shared mind/soul.
So really, I was significantly overqualified.
Taylor had promised me to never try that again, and while I was tempted to curse her to force her to not, I didn't trust that she wouldn't find a way to exploit that. And so I hybridized the nanites with a Shikigami made from a blend of divine and mantic energy, to add a bit more intelligence to the system. I could only hope the guardian angel could stop her before she crossed another Rubicon.
Taylor turned away from the news feed projecting through her watch, and looked at me. "You... killed the Slaughterhouse 9?"
"Busy morning."
