Happy New Year everyone! Sorry this took so long, This chapter was
really hard to write for some reason.
---
Idly, I flipped through the code for the infiltrator, checking for the seven hundred forty second time that everything was as it should be. It was unlikely I'd find anything; the last major change I had made was on the three hundred forty sixth check, but it was helping me keep my mind off of the upcoming mission. Well, at least as much as it could, considering my multitasking ability.
I mentally sighed, annoyed with myself. Deciding moping around was not productive, I abruptly closed the file and began to browse the internet for something else to do. 4.3 seconds later, I settled on PHO, and opened a thread on Brockton Bay, skimming through it.
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♦ Topic: Spike in Gang Conflict
In: Boards ► News ► America ► Brockton Bay
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 14th 2011:
Well, in case the title didn't give it away, it seems the gangs of Brockton Bay have decided to celebrate the new year with a new round of gang warfare. While this is nothing new in itself, the rise in intensity is something worth noting. Here's what I know:
1. On January 4th, the E88 launched a major offensive against some of the ABB's eastern territory. Members of this offensive included Rune, Crusader, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket. Offensive continues for around 20 minutes before Lung intervenes, along with Oni Lee. E88 retreats after a brief skirmish.
2.On January 7th, ABB launches counter offensive to take back lost territory. Offensive is spearheaded by Lung, with Lee not visibly present.
3. On January 8th, ABB hits E88 again, with Lung and Lee hitting different locations. Lung's offensive is largely successful, though Lee's stalls after Kaiser and the Twins get involved.
I sighed, turning my attention away from the thread. Reading about the sorry state of the Bay was doing nothing for my stress. If anything, it was making it worse, mostly by making me think about everything else that could go wrong. What if, for instance, I ran into an E88 patrol? The infiltrator wasn't made for combat, meaning there would be little I could do other than sit by and hope they didn't notice me. Sure, Mom and I had managed to get the camo system working, meaning it would take some really bad luck for them to notice it, but what if I needed to get involved like I did with Trainwreck? Would I be able to just sit by and watch, or would I try to get involved regardless of the risk?
I shook my metaphorical head.
Not much I can do about that, might as well just focus on the problem at hand.
With the infiltrator as ready to go as it ever would be, Mom and I decided today was the day we would be… 'acquiring' Emma's phone. To my disappointment, I had still been unable to find it online, even after multiple days of trying. It was strange. When things were connected to the internet by cables and Wifi I was able to access them with little issue. Other things though? No such luck.
I figured it out after I was unable to find Mom's phone when she forgot to turn her Wifi off, despite the fact it was in the house. After a bit of research, I decided that it was likely the cell phone towers and the like that I was having trouble with. Mom and I discussed it, and she agreed to let me mess around with her phone in order to puzzle out what I was doing wrong.
For now though, that wasn't important. Sure, I could spend more time trying, but each day we waited gave the trio more time to cover their tracks.
Of course, if I was being honest with myself, they most likely already had. Thankfully, Mom had finally gotten over her reluctance to submit my journal to the police, and with the help of a remote controlled harvester, had retrieved it from its hiding place.
Originally, I had wanted her to just turn it in, in order to avoid her having to read it. She however, argued that it would be better for her to read it first, in order to gain a better idea of what was in it. With no real points to oppose this, I sat back and let her.
For a while, she just sat there on my bed reading, her expression slowly growing more distant as she did. While the cameras on the harvester were of relatively poor quality, spectroscopy was able to detect the tears gathering around her eyes.
Eventually, she finished, and all but slammed the journal shut. She sat there for a minute, staring at the notebook in her lap, seemingly unsure of what to do. Then, the floodgates slammed open, and she burst into tears.
I dithered for a few hundred milliseconds, unsure of what to do. Making up my mind, I ordered the harvester to crawl up onto the bed and press itself up against her. Mom immediately all but collapsed onto it, the extra weight forcing the harvester to increase the power of its leg motors. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help but note that the harvester, being a sharp cornered box with legs, couldn't have been a very comfortable pillow.
Eventually Mom calmed down enough to talk. Looking at me she said, "We're going to get them Taylor. I promise, we're going to get them."
I bobbed the bot up and down in the approximation of a nod. "I tested the infiltrator, and everything seems good to go."
She shook her head. "I don't mean it like that Taylor." She let out a shuddering breath and looked at me. "I mean that we're going after them."
I tilted the bot to the side, confused.
What do you… I blanched, realizing what she meant.
Oh shit, I thought. That was… not good.
"Mom," I said. "As I have already said
many times, that is really not a good idea. The Protectorate-"
"Fuck the Protectorate!" she interrupted, slamming her fist against the bed. "What the fuck are they going to do? All they do is sit around twiddling their thumbs. With how little they've done to help this city, do you really think they're going to give a shit about just another villain?"
"That's the problem," I retorted. "The gangs have the numbers. They're entrenched, which limits what the PRT and Protectorate can do. Us? We don't have any of that. The Protectorate would absolutely go after us, for the good PR if nothing else."
Mom deflated, her expression going from furious to… tired. Defeated. She slumped against the bot again. Her mouth opened and closed, the words she was trying to say not coming out.
"Taylor," she finally said. "I'm sorry, I just…"
"I understand," I replied. "But we need to do this the right way, otherwise we'll just be endangering ourselves."
Mom nodded, but didn't say anything else.
To be honest, the Protectorate was only part of the issue. Most of it was that for all the Trio had done, I still didn't want them dead. And considering what they did… I doubted Mom would be able to stop herself from going that far.
No, I decided. It would be best to keep her mind on pursuing the legal options we had, that way she wouldn't do anything she would regret.
---
With a jolt, I pulled myself out of the memory.
Shit, I thought to myself, realizing what had happened.
While my new form allowed me to recall any event since my uploading in perfect detail, it did have its drawbacks. Namely, the fact that it was very easy to get lost in a memory, like what had just happened. Shaking myself, I checked how much time had passed.
647 milliseconds
I mentally sighed. Okay, it could have been worse; one time I had been stuck for almost half a minute. Thankfully, those types of events were rare, and were becoming rarer still as I got used to my new capabilities.
Offhandedly, I checked what Mom was doing. Still out, if the cameras she had installed were any indication. While I was stealing Emma's phone, she was going to be at the local police station, delivering my journal. We had planned this so she would have an alibi in case I was caught. While I doubted it would be necessary, there were no problems with doing it this way, so I figured that we might as well.
I took one final look at the code for the infiltrator and let out a digital sigh.
Showtime.
With a mental command, the infiltrator booted up and uncoiled itself, its many legs lifting it off the ground as it did.
With the appearance of a 2.5 foot long centipede, I somewhat doubted the bot would be winning any beauty contests. Then again, the whole point of it was that it was not supposed to be seen, so I doubt it would matter too much.
After quickly completing its diagnostics, I ordered the bot to follow the path I had set to Emma's house. It immediately obeyed, its 80 legs carrying forward and up the stairs.
As it passed through the house, I used the cameras to admire the adaptive camouflage system Mom and I had installed, the infiltrator's smooth carapace taking the appearance of whatever was behind the bot, the image shimmering slightly as it moved.
I felt a spark of frustration. Despite our best efforts, Mom and I had not managed to get that kink out of the system, no matter how much we tried. On the bright side, it was only noticeable to the human eye if it moved at high speeds; speeds that should be unnecessary for most purposes.
Unfortunately, the camo system did not have the ability to hide it from thermal cameras. While I had found some ideas for how to do so, I had been too occupied with other tasks to even design a prototype.
I sighed. My time on the internet had given me so many ideas as to how I could improve our machines. Unfortunately, between operating the fabricator, figuring out the abilities and limitations of my now digital nature, and planning this operation, even my fast processing speed was not enough to allow me to add yet another thing to my plate.
The bot quickly reached the point I had directed it to; a small disguised door leading to a side wall of the house. Mom had built it in order to allow for these kinds of operations to proceed without having to send our robots out the front door. So far, it had been adequate for our needs, though I knew it wouldn't be large enough to accommodate some of my larger design ideas.
The bot, moving at around 6 miles per hour, made quick progress through the city. As it did, I couldn't help but feel sad as I looked around at the state of the city I called home.
To be fair, it wasn't like said state was anything new; the decay of Brockton Bay had started even before I was born, with the emergence of Leviathan and the resulting decline of global shipping starting it off. And yet, maybe it was just the good quality cameras of the infiltrator allowing me to see every detail of the cracked buildings around me, but I couldn't help but wonder how anyone could have let things get this bad.
Forcing the thought out of my head, I double checked the route to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I set the bot to notify me if anything came up, and opened up a connection to the internet.
---
Around 34.4 minutes later, I received a notification that the infiltrator had arrived at its destination. Turning my attention away from the article on the phone network I was reading, I reconnected with the infiltrator.
As I looked at the house of the person who had once been my best friend, I couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia come over me. Even now, with everything she had done, I could still remember us both sitting on that very lawn, laughing together without a care in the world…
I shook the feeling off. Regardless of what Emma and I had before, she had thrown that all away a long time ago. I had long since made peace with that, though I guess being back here was making me sentimental.
I looked back at the house. The next step of the plan was to find a way in, though I suspected that might be a bit difficult. If we were doing this during the summer, then I might have been able to find an open window to crawl into. Unfortunately, we were currently in the middle of January, and while the infiltrator might have been strong enough to force a window open regardless of locks, the Barnes were wealthy enough to have potentially bought contact or glass break sensors, and I didn't want to risk alerting them before I had even gotten in.
As a result, my current plan was quite simple, if rather reliant on the Barnes; simply, wait for the Barnes to let me in on their own. Now, while that might sound weird, it was not unknown for people to get into secure locations by pretending they belonged there and relying on others to open the doors for them. Now, in this case the Barnes wouldn't
know that they were letting me in, but the basic idea was similar enough.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before I saw Alan's car entering the driveway. Moving slowly so as not to reveal myself, I positioned myself as close to the door as I possibly could without possibly revealing myself.
It didn't take long for Alan to exit his car, gather up his things and begin the short walk to the door. He seemed surprisingly alert for someone coming home from work, even for a Brockton Bay native, and I had to wonder if he suspected someone was watching him.
Thankfully, Alan still did not seem to notice me, instead hurriedly walking to the door. As he neared it, he fiddled with something in his pocket, before pulling out a key.
Taking care to avoid being noticed, I started to slowly crawl towards Alan. For this to work, I would have to be very close to him. Luckily, it seemed that he was having trouble with the lock, and was now too busy trying to unlock it to notice me.
I managed to reach him just as he unlocked the door. I took my chance as he opened it, and with a mental command, the infiltrator sprinted into the gap.
I didn't stop moving once I was in. Instead, I took a sharp turn right, hiding in the gap between the door and the wall.
Alan came in after me. As he closed the door, the tension in him seemed to fade, and he let out a long sigh. Straightening up, he set down his keys in a nearby counter (which I noticed had several such keys) and walked further into the house.
I waited for him to leave my field of view. Once he was gone, I resumed moving, albeit at a much more reasonable pace. Luckily, I remembered where Emma's room was, and while my memories on where she kept her phone were foggier, I was confident in my ability to find it regardless.
It only took around 20 seconds for me to make my way up to the second floor and into Emma's room. As I entered, I was once again struck with a surge of nostalgia. I knew it was stupid, considering how she had tormented me for the past few years, how she had…
And yet, even now, I still felt a current of sadness as I looked about the room. Sadness at all the memories that I had made here, about how we used to spend hours in this room, just talking
about whatever came to mind. About how she had put me back together after I had lost Dad…
I shook the feeling off, feeling slightly ashamed of myself as I did so. This was stupid. Emma had literally
killed me, and all I could think about was the time before she turned on me?
It reminded me of when the bullying had first started, and all I could do was hope that she didn't mean it. That she was testing me somehow. That all of it was a nightmare.
It felt…
disgusting. Like my mind was somehow betraying me, holding me back, rather than letting me move forward.
I turned to look at my code, considering it. During our redesign of the infiltrator, I had spent some time watching Mom code, seeing if I could spot any underlying patterns. The results were… middling, to be generous. While I
might have seen some traces of a pattern, any attempts to look more into it had been met with failure after failure. I couldn't even ask Mom, as coding seemed to put her into some sort of a trance (a quick search told me it was called a Tinker fugue, and was apparently normal for Tinkers), and even when she was lucid enough to answer, the most I got was largely incomprehensible.
Honestly, I wasn't even sure if
she knew what she was doing.
All of this meant that I wouldn't be able to do what I wanted; namely, remove the traitorous positive feelings that still somehow seemed to pop up whenever I thought of Emma.
Unfortunate.
Well, whatever. More problems for me to deal with later I guess. For now, I had a phone to steal. Now where could it be?
The infiltrator stood up, slowly unfurling a pair of sensor antennae. Tenderly weaving through the air, they immediately got to work looking for the characteristic EM emissions of a cell phone.
It only took me 37 seconds to find a pattern of EM waves that was similar to the pattern I had gained from Mom's phone. Scuttling over to it, the infiltrator immediately found its source; a drawer next to Emma's bed.
Carefully, the bot opened the drawer. As it peered in, I looked through the low light cameras to see what it had found.
…What the…
Sitting inside the drawer was not one, but
three phones. One of them looked like the smart phone I had remembered Emma having, but the other two were flip phones, flip phones I did not remember Emma having.
I took a hundred milliseconds to process this. The main conclusion this seemed to lead to was that Emma was trying to conceal her communications with someone, probably Sophia. It made sense, considering what they had done, though I was still somewhat surprised.
I mentally shrugged.
Oh well, I thought.
More evidence for me, I guess. I paused.
Though, I guess the 'I found it abandoned in the mall, officer' excuse isn't going to work now.
Maybe if I said it was a bag instead?
I sighed. I guess I would need to take a purse as well.
And my list of crimes grows longer and longer… Eh, whatever. It still didn't change the general plan; steal the phone, look through it for evidence, and if we found any, deliver it to the police with a bot. The story would be that we were a new cape who found a lost phone, and in the process of trying to find who the owner was stumbled across evidence of a crime. Simple, yet mostly believable, and best of all; no ties to us whatsoever.
Hopefully, this would keep Mom from doing anything extreme. At least until I found another thing to distract her with.
I frowned internally. It wasn't lost on me that Mom seemed… broken, in a way. I guess it wasn't
that surprising, considering what she had been through, but I would have hoped that her managing to bring me back would have fixed that.
I sighed. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like there was much I could do about that, other than try to prevent her from hurting herself further. Maybe once the Trio were gone from our lives, I could start to pick up the pieces. Until then however, it seemed that I would be left doing damage control.
For a few milliseconds, I felt guilty about thinking about Mom that way. Then I pushed the feeling aside. I had work to do.
---
After a bit of searching, I was able to find one of Emma's purses. Unfortunately, that was the easy part. First, I had to find a place to empty out all of the crap she had put in it. Some of it I kept, in order to more effectively sell the story of it being left behind, but I didn't have enough room for all of it. After looking for a place to discreetly dump it, I eventually decided that stealing all three phones meant subtlety was out the window either way, and just dumped it into the drawer where the phones were. Then came the hard part; fitting the purse into one of the infiltrator's storage compartments.
After around two minutes of effort, I finally managed to squeeze the bag into a compartment half of its size. After taking a few dozen milliseconds to rest, I began to make my way downstairs, planning on finding a window I could leave from.
I paused upon hearing the sound of plates clattering coming from the dining room.
Oh, right, it's probably dinner time for them.
Taking it slow in order to minimize my risk of being seen, I gingerly crept down the stairs. Now that I was on the same floor as them, It was much easier to hear the Barnes. Strangely, they seemed to be eating in complete silence. Now, I understood this wasn't incredibly uncommon (hell, it had happened between me and Mom often enough after…), but from what I remembered, Emma's family generally talked quite a bit when they ate. With my curiosity getting the better of me, I sent the infiltrator to get a better look.
What it saw was… interesting, to say the least. Sure enough, the Barnes were eating without saying so much as a single word to one another. Alan was nervously looking between Emma and Zoe, a look of concern on his face. Emma just looked confused, and maybe a little nervous. Zoe… Zoe just looked tense, like she wanted to say something, but wasn't sure if she should.
Eventually, Alan got it in him to break the silence. "So," he said, trying (and failing) to hide his concern behind a smile. "How did today go for you two?"
Emma gave a plastic smile of her own and replied with "Good, how was yours?"
Alan's smile became slightly less forced. "Pretty stressful, but I'm home now." He looked meaningfully at Zoe.
Zoe's mouth opened and closed a few times eventually, she managed to speak. "Emma," she asked. "I know I've asked this before, but was there anything going on between you and Taylor before she…?"
Emma's smile faltered for a second. "Once again Mom, no, things were fine, we just weren't as close as we were before. Why do you keep asking this?"
Zoe once again seemed to have trouble speaking. Eventually, she said, "Earlier today, I went to Winslow to see if I could get the staff to tell me anything about what might have happened to Taylor." She paused. "While they didn't tell me much, some of the teachers said that you two didn't seem to talk at all, and…" She started to hyperventilate. "One of them said that you two didn't seem to get along at all, that you…
disliked each other."
As Zoe continued to talk, Emma's smile became more and more brittle, while Alan's had disappeared altogether, his eyes darting between Emma and an increasingly distraught Zoe.
Eventually, Zoe seemed to get herself back under control. After taking in and releasing a deep breath, she looked back at Emma, and asked, almost pleadingly, "What happened between you and Taylor, Emma?"
Emma didn't say anything, instead staring at her plate, face completely devoid of emotion.
Alan, perhaps seeing that this was going nowhere good, tried to interject. "Zoe maybe we should-"
Zoe's head snapped around to look at him, a near manic look in her eyes. "Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you two? Am I the only one who notices something is wrong here? Wrong with this family?"
There was a pause. Suddenly, Emma stood up, moving so quickly she nearly fell onto the table. Glaring at Zoe she yelled out "Nothing is wrong with me! You're the one that keeps asking and asking about things that don't matter!"
Seemingly shocked, Zoe tried to interject, but Emma beat her to it. "Shut up!" she yelled. "All you do is ask 'Taylor this' or 'Taylor that.' 'Oh Emma, Taylor's been having a rough time at school, could you help her out with that?' Well guess what? Now she's dead, and even now all you do is ask about her!"
There was a pause, Zoe seemed to be almost in shock, her hand over her mouth. Alan just sat there nervously, eyes darting between the other two. Even Emma seemed somewhat taken aback by her outburst.
"I- I have to go," Emma said quietly. Without saying another word, she quickly walked away from the table and towards the stairs, nearly stepping on the infiltrator in the process.
As Emma nearly ran up the stairs, Alan and Zoe continued to sit at the table, both silently avoiding each other's gaze. "Uh, I have some work I need to do," Alan eventually muttered, walking away as he did so, leaving Zoe alone. Zoe for her part didn't say anything, instead staring off into the distance. Her gaze lowered to the table, and after a moment, she lowered her head, letting out muffled sobs as she did so.
Okay then…
Deciding that I had seen enough, I directed the infiltrator over to a window out of view of everyone in the house. Pausing only long enough to disable the contact sensor (I was right about that at least), I lifted the window open and scurried out into the city.
---
Thank you for reading, and have a Happy New Year!
