Creative Thinking
A Worm/Megaman AU
INDEX
Prologue
Chapter one: Wake up Call
Chapter Two...
A Worm/Megaman AU
INDEX
Prologue
Chapter one: Wake up Call
Chapter Two...
Creative Thinking: Worm/Megaman AU
- Thread starter Noxturne90
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 217
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 5
-
Statistics (5 threadmarks, 30k words)
User Total Noxturne90 5
- Location
- Internet
Creative Thinking
A Worm/Megaman AU
INDEX
Prologue
Chapter one: Wake up Call
Chapter Two: Minor Grievances
Last edited:
Prologue
- Location
- Internet
Creative Thinking
Worm/Megaman AU
Credits to Sorain and Nicholai for beta'ing and creative input.
Prologue
~~
It was nothing but darkness, an empty and cold feeling that pervaded everything in the lightless room. Then at one end, a computer screen flickered to life, casting shadows on half-defined shapes throughout the space. Other lights came on, stars of green or red in the blackness and throwing contrasting shadows as they blinked to life. two rows of dark, glass cylinders to either side sprung into relief and seemed stretched impossibly into the darkness above.
The screen whirred quietly, and on the green background black text started to scroll.
*Starting routine status check*
*Bio-material converter: operating within parameters.*
*Development chamber: operating within parameters.*
*Stasis tanks: operating within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-02: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-03: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-04: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-05: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-06: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-07: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-08: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-09: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-10: Development within parameters.*
More lights, springing to life and illuminating the insides of the tall glass tubes that stood side by side and driving away the shadows even more. They were filled with a thick, shifting fluid that hid an indistinct shape inside; one by one, the lights flashed green and died again, hiding the outlines of their contents.
*Genetic stability confirmed in all Serial Models. Rechecking: Confirmed. No genetic anomalies detected within base genome. Rechecking.... all Serial Models scanned. Results within acceptable parameters.*
If the sound of the computers operation could be given inflection and tone, it would likely sound pleased to the ears of a theoretical listener. Instead, it dutifully continued to hum away as it switched tracks, it's first task finished.
*Serial Model check complete. Checking production capacity: synthetic bio-mass reserve is at fifty-two percent. Prime genetic sample for Serial Model Type-1: zero detectable degradation, stasis field stable. Synthetic bio-mass farm on standby. Total of '3' Serial Models can be produced from reserves. Continuing routine check. *
The screen flashed once more as it's heavy drone changed a into a more peaceful hum.
*Running remaining status checks....*
*All systems check operational within parameters. Checking subject.*
*Serial Model 1-01: rest mode. Biological functions lowered to predicted levels. Brain activity minimal. 1-01 is immobile and considered to be unconscious.*
*Rechecking....*
*Confirmed.*
*Starting remote engram sync.*
....
....
....
*Sync successful. Engram updated to latest version. Previous version shunted into storage.*
The screen went blank, the final line of text vanishing as the white background glared out. Then it flickered to black, lines of static travelling up and down. A box appeared in the top corner, with bold text in red.
*Record start:*
The static-filled screen flashed again, and an image obscured by digital snow and fuzz filled it. And while the picture was distorted, sound came from the speakers loud and clear. A feminine voice, full of motherly love. Through the static, a smile could be seen framed by dark curling hair.
"Sleep tight, Taylor. You have school in the morning."
The screen died, fading to black entirely as the little box in the corner flashed it's message in red.
*Record end.*
*Entering standby mode.*
The lights died, and the room faded back to utter darkness.
~~
It was like watching an old TV; fuzzy and indistinct with flecks of white floating through her vision. She was sitting on the stairs, holding a book. There was a figure below, waving a shape at her. She could feel her mother beside her, arms cradling her, comforting her.
And while she felt safe, there was a sense of dread. A part of her that knew this dream wasn't going to end well and that it was about to take an abrupt change in tone. She had dreamt this scenario enough times before to know when it would become a nightmare. But that same part of her was detached enough that she didn't know how it would go. Deja Vu of the highest order, having only a thinly connected feeling that she knew.
The figure turned away, the black blob of it's head looking through the kitchen door and away from them. Her mother's arms loosened for a split-second, and instead a hand grasped her wrist and started trying to pull her up the stairs.
There was muted thunder and a sun bloomed from below at the end of the shape. What little detail there had been started to swirl into blackness as something emerged from that sun, a silver-grey dot that crawled through the air in slow motion. As it came closer, it lost it's spherical shape; stretching out, coming to a point. Everything it passed ceased to exist leaving a rippling wake of void behind it except for the sun that it had come from.
It closed on her, even as she was pulled to her feet. Her book slipped from her free hand and fell, toppling down the vanishing stairs.
But as fast and slow as she moved, the sphere was slower yet strangely fast. By the time her book had bounced off a third step and into the darkness, the sphe-...no, the bullet hovered over her chest. As soon as it touched her i-
~
"Hruah!"
A 13-year old Taylor jolted awake, gasping and sitting up in bed and throwing her blankets violently away as her sweat-soaked hair flopped around her head wetly and her eyes darted half-aware around her bedroom; while her hands were white-knuckled with sheets bunched up in her fists.
Her alarm clocked ticked away harmlessly, and the sun streamed through her bedroom window. Past the curtains, she could faintly hear a few birds and most definitely hear the traffic as it went up and down the street.
Her heart rate and breathing started to slow, going from frantic to calm over the course of the next few seconds as she absently pushed away a lock of hair. When she was finally collected and calm, she took a moment to look at her calendar and frown as she sat back against the headboard of her desk and curled up into herself.
It had been barely a month. Not even that. Summer was still going strong, but she hadn't left the house since then. She didn't have anywhere she wanted to go. No one she wanted to see. She hadn't phoned Emma once since…
She barely talked to her dad.
Was she being petty? Childish?
Maybe. Just maybe.
But she didn't care. She just didn't. She deserved her misery.
The clock ticked away another second, finally drawing he bleary eyes to it, and by proximity her glasses case. She kept them there for mostly sentimental reasons. She couldn't really bring herself to get rid of them, not after her luck in getting her eyes fixed. She couldn't remember it herself, having been too young to. But after suddenly not needing them thanks to a chance encounter with Panacea, she couldn't stand to throw them away. So she kept them in their old case on her bed stand, for luck really. A reminder that good things can happen unexpectedly.
10:12
Her mind processed it, and came to the first logical conclusion. Her father had already gone to work, leaving her the house for another day. Nobody but her and what she wanted to do. Which in itself was nothing. Taylor licked her lips, and finally noticed how dry they were, and by extension her mouth was.
She needed a drink. Then maybe she could decide what precisely she should do. Maybe…
Maybe she could finally go down and go through...go through her mother's things.
Mom.
Taylor curled up tighter, burying her face into the legs of her pajamas and just hiding from the world. She didn't want to do it. She didn't want anything. Anything but the one thing she couldn't have.
Because it simply wasn't there anymore. All she had was a tombstone in a graveyard a half-hour across town, and the things scattered around the house. The first was new, having been there only a few days now. Last week it didn't even have the decency to rain. She had to stand in a black dress while the sun shined and the birds sang, while…
She shook her head, unfolding from her position and swinging her legs onto the cool wood floor. The other things left had always been around, the only difference now was that they didn't have what made them special anymore. They were no longer alive, no longer special, since that vital something had been taken away.
But that didn't change the fact that she had to go through them, whatever ones her father hadn't gone through. She was sure that the boxes in the basement were yet untouched by either of them. Which meant that if she was going to do this today, those would be where she started.
She idly curled a limp lock of hair around her finger, and noting how the sweat drying was rendering it sticky and foul-feeling.
If she did anything today, it would be after she had cleaned herself up. She didn't care for much at the moment, but to Taylor her hair was special. Her long, curly brown hair was something she had shared with her mother. She didn't know why really, with her current mood. Yes she was being childish, selfish. But just couldn't not care for her hair. If there was anything left that would remind her of her mother every day, it was her hair.
She stood up, and walking over to her dresser, pulled open the drawers and with a practiced familiarity quickly pulled out a fresh set of clean clothes and headed for the door. She would grab a towel on the way past the closet, and have a shower.
Then maybe, just maybe, she could acknowledge that her mother was gone. But until then, her mother's things were something that she could leave to the back of her mind.
~~
The dishes clinked against the metal of the sink, and Taylor just stood there for a moment dully watching as the tap cascaded water over them. Everything else from her breakfast was already away, and her laundry was in the wash. She had even fit in a few chores around the house.
There was nothing else to do.
The house was clean, the yard was in order. The garbage was dealt with. Nothing but hours and hours of free time.
Except for the basement door, just off to the side. Someone had even left it open, cracked ever so slightly that she could see down inside. But she was ignoring that.
Pointedly so.
Still, it was at the corner of her thoughts. Just watching the water run over the dishes and down the drain wasn't distracting her enough, nor would much else she could do. All that she was really left with was the one thing she had to do but didn't want to. She licked her lips, and her knuckles were turning white as they gripped the counter's edge and waged a war with her own thoughts.
"I…don't-"
"-but you should. You can't leave it forever. You need to do it sooner or later, or do you want to leave it to your dad? Remember what happened when he had to go through some of it by himself?"
Taylor's teeth clenched and her shoulders grew tense.
"Then why should-"
"Because it belonged to her.They're mementos now. Something to-"
"But I don't WANT to remember her like that!"
"What choice do you have? She's-"
The sound that came out of her mouth was half-way between a scream and a sob. Without even thinking, she grabbed a mug from off the counter and hurled it into the sink basin, the force reducing the dishes and the mug itself to shards of porcelain that exploded up and out of the sink in a hail of white and a sharp crack. Taylor managed to bring up her arms to shield her face, but little pin-pricks of pain traced themselves across her forearms.
Eventually, the tinkling sound of falling porcelain came to a halt, and Taylor lowered her arms to survey the damage both to herself and the kitchen.
What little was left in the sink itself was a collection of white and off-white shards that went from slivers to the size of a nail. Outside of it, the room was peppered with white on almost every surface, the sheer force of her outrage having been enough to propel a few pieces of the former dishware all the across the kitchen.
As for herself, Taylor turned over her arms with trepidation, already feeling a crawling wetness flowing down her arms. And much to the contribution of that, her skin was speckled with little pieces of shrapnel sticking out of her skin like tiny knives, causing dots of blood to well up and run down her bare skin drawing crimson lines.
She just stood there for a moment, staring at what she had done, dripping blood on the tiled kitchen floor.
In the end however, Taylor just fell to her knees, wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed.
~~
She had to spend an hour cleaning up afterwards, pulling each fragment out of her skin till her arms looked like they had been attacked by a rabid sewing machine. She had forgone the dozens of bandages she would have to use for raiding the first-aid kit for some gauze, wholesale wrapping her arms with it.
The end result was that from the elbow-down to the wrist her arms were mummified. Unfortunately, hunting down each little piece of the dishes she had smashed proved to be an impossible task. In the end, she had to be satisfied that she had gotten as much as she could, resigning herself to knowing that there would be one or more pieces lurking, waiting for an unexpecting and unprotected foot.
But while the clean-up had gone quietly, Taylor's thoughts were uneasy. After everything was finished and the trash put away, she found herself standing in front of the basement door, subconsciously rubbing her arms, trying to lessen the lingering pain.
In the end however, she tentatively reached for the basement door, and opening it started down the steps, closing the door behind her and heading downwards until she hit the last steps down and flipped the light switch with a nervous if practiced motion. It took a moment, but the old bulb stuttered to life, struggling to illuminate the room for a second before evening out to only an occasional flicker. But the iffy light was enough that Taylor could make out the boxes stacked haphazardly in one corner, some just pushed as far back as one could manage without taking all that much time.
Of course, her father had done it. Taylor flinched at the thought, but it was true. He probably wanted to be out of the room as quickly as possible, and just get away from the reminders...
She took a step back up the stairs, wanting to follow his example and just hide from it for a bit longer. But at the same time, she stopped herself from doing that. She forced her rebellious foot off that first step, and started to approach the corner containing...
Taylor gulped, trying to force down whatever it was in her throat.
Containing her mother's things.
She approached the pile slowly, fighting with herself, forcing herself to do it. Her logical mind said that she was doing the right thing, while her emotional half just wanted to turn away. She had rejected things this long, why not longer?
But a third, voiceless side was the one that won out. One that wanted to know what her mother had left her. She manouvered herself into a comfortable spot along one wall, sitting down and leaning back with her legs crossed and pulled the first box towards her. The folded cardboard flaps seem impenetrable to her, even as she dug her fingertips under them and prepared to pull only to stop.
An icy trepidation settled in her stomach, the same one she had been fighting all day. This was her last chance. She could stand up, hit the lights and be upstairs in the space of a few seconds and it would be like she never made the choice to even try. No one would know but her.
But in the end, one thing stood out.
"I...I have to do this. I just...just have to."
She pulled, the cardboard scraping as the flaps came apart and the inside was illuminated. Taylor's breath stopped, half-frozen before she could make out the contents of the box, and her breath escaped her in a long sigh. Resting on top of folded clothes was her mother's jewelry box.
"I was wondering where that had gotten to."
She actually smiled as she gently lifted the ornate box up and onto her lap, pushing the cardboard one away with her foot. She ran her hands over the carvings and inlays, and a feeling of happiness sparked in her. Memories of all the times that….
Just as quickly, the spark died and Taylor frowned. That was all they were now. Memories.
She flipped the latch, recalling the last time she had looked inside the box. It had been when she was what? Eight? Seven years old? Her mother had been about to go to work, and was picking out a brooch for the day.
Opening it now, her heart seemed to drop as she saw it was nearly empty. Nothing but an old necklace and…
Taylor paused, blinking in confusion. She reached into the box, pulling out the only other thing inside.
It sat heavily in the palm of her hand, a thick round disc of polished metal inset with a red stone. At first glance, she didn't recognize it. Neither with a second. It didn't look like jewelry, or anything that she had seen her mother wear before. Taylor turned it over in her hands, feeling out the seams but finding nothing that gave. It was a sealed hunk of grey metal. Her attention was drawn back to the inset stone, the way it caught the light.
She held it up to her eye, and her confusion grew as she could barely make out the faintest shadow of something inside. Something that looked like...circuitry. Running her thumb over it, she felt the stone move the tiniest bit.
For a moment, Taylor considered just putting it back.
But curiosity got the better of her. She depressed the stone, the red jewel sinking into the disc till it was flush with the polished surface. As soon as she met resistance against her thumb, it started to strobe a bright crimson.
Once, twice, three times.
There was a tinny little beep, and her world was consumed in a flash of blue light.
There was a sensation of weightlessness, of floating in thin air as she tried to blink. She wanted to yell, perhaps scream, but there wasn't any air to breathe. It wasn't warm or cold, or anything really. This state of existence continued for a few seconds, before it ended.
One second she had been sitting on a cold cement floor leaning against a wall. The next, she felt nothing beneath or behind her, and the formerly well-lit room was dark. There was air now, and she drew in a breath just in time for gravity to take effect and send her sprawling across a cool, metallic surface with a squawk in a tangle of legs and arms. The sudden impact sent the disc flying from her hand, skittering off into the darkness.
Taylor blinked away the spots, trying to pierce the darkness around her. With one hand, she adjusted her hair, while with the other she propped herself up and tried to get her legs beneath her. While the fall hadn't been big, it had her bandaged arms stinging once more.
All around her was blackness. No lights, not even shadows or shapes. Just an impenetrable curtain. She had to blink again, just to make sure her eyes were actually open.
"Where..? How did I ge-"
As soon as she opened her mouth a distant but strong hum sounded that resounded up through the floor and into her bones. A deep, powerful vibration that threatened to send her sprawling again. Just as quickly, it softened till it was almost imperceptible and the floor stopped shaking.
And then the lights came on. A sound like flipping breakers, as powerful beams of light struck out from wall mounted bulbs or stripes along the ceiling. Taylor's breath left her again, this time in a sort of shocked awe as she took in the sight
The room itself was simplistic, straight-forward even. But the design was like something from a movie. The walls, floor and ceiling were all an off-white paneling that looked sleek and futuristic, aside from all the dust. Where she had landed was some sort of elevated platform in the middle of the otherwise empty space.
In front of her, there was a door. Or maybe it was more of a hatch? There was no door handle or other means of opening it. Just a recessed panel the height and width of a door.
Well, there was no other way to go.
~~
To her surprise, it had proven to be a door when it opened with a hiss. As soon as she stepped through, it slid shut with a whisper behind her, leaving her in a single, wide, barely-lit hallway. This time, the floor and ceiling were concrete, but the walls were paneled with that same white metal as before. Looking ahead and behind her, the corridor seemed to stretch onward before her with plenty more side corridors splitting off and leading elsewhere.
One part of her said she should be trying to find a way out. But there was a bigger part. One that wanted to know why something she found in her mother's jewelry box brought her to this place, whatever and wherever this place was.
It went against all common sense. But strangely, Taylor felt something odd about it all. There had been an initial panic, and even now her arms were riddled with goosebumps underneath the bandages, but Taylor felt…
Taylor felt something familiar. Something that pushed the fear she should have been feeling to the side, something from…
Her eyes were drawn to the left, down the hallway to a corner leading off in a sharp right turn.
Something from there.
Her first steps were tentative, wary. She leaned up against the wall, tracing her hand along the surface as she moved. But as she went forward, that pull became stronger, and more urgent. Soon enough, she couldn't even explain it; it was magnetic, drawing her in. When she came to the corner and turned it, a dark passage stretched ahead of her. At the very end, a heavy door was illuminated in lights and Taylor stopped.
What the hell was she doing? Why was she doing it at all? Wasn't she...wasn't she just supposed to be going through her mother's things? When had it turned into some crazy mystery?
Why wasn't she afraid? Why not turn back and just...try to leave? Her mind churned, trying to find a reason to go. But for every reason she could come up with, a Why popped up in answer. She must have stood there for more than a minute, just trying to turn back. Trying to resist the urge to continue and react like she should have been.
But she just couldn't feel scared for some reason. Just...curious.
She ventured into the darkness, eyes on the brightly lit door as she kept a hand on the wall to make sure it was still there. Her slippered feet made scratching noises as she went along, until she finally stopped in front of the door.
She knew this door.
Taylor shyly reached out a hand, but before it could even get close to touching, the door hissed open as if it had been anticipating her. The room beyond was black, but that didn't seem to phase her. She stepped in, the door closing behind her with a hiss and a thump.
As she took her first step, the lights came on. And then she wished they hadn't. She wished she hadn't stepped in at all. The lights came on in pairs, one by one illuminating the sides of the room and the walkway down the middle.
And tube after tube, arranged in a row to either side of said walkway, and what they contained.
Hoses and wires weaved in and out of their medical gowns, and a long hose stretched up and around them to meet the featureless white masks they wore, suspended in a clear, gel-like fluid. The faint sound of bubbling was in the air, as an occasional bubble of air would force it's way up through the tube till it reached the top and popped.
She physically recoiled at the sight, something innately wrong about it. But at the same time, she was drawn forwards. Towards the end of the room. She picked her way along the walkway, staying as far away from the tubes as possible.
It was slow going. The fear that had been pushed aside all this time returned full-force, leaving Taylor shivering as she hugged herself and tried to avoid looking.
"W-why? W-why am I doing this?"
While slow, the room itself wasn't large. And all too soon she was at the other end. A large computer screen stretched up to the ceiling, a console and chair in front of it. This is what was pulling her.
She waited.
And waited.
"Isn't something...supposed to happen?"
About as soon as she thought it, the computer screen hummed and came to life, lines of static crossing over it before a picture started to emerge and become clear. Taylor's fear and confusion became dulled by shock, and she whimpered to herself as the image solidified, becoming crystal clear.
The familiar curly, brown hair framing the face of her morosely smiling mother was the first thing she recognized.
She couldn't even muster words to speak, even as the digital reproduction of her mother did.
"Hello Taylor. I suppose that if this message is on, you've somehow found my lab and the sensors have been alerted to your presence and triggered this recording. Of course, they're programmed to recognize you in case you ever found your way here. That this particular message is the one that's been set to play can only mean you've found that room of all places…"
A pause, as Annette seemed to stop to gather her strength and looked away from the screen. Ultimately, the women turned back. Her regretful smile was gone, replaced with a look of just plain regret.
"That it is playing at all and hasn't been disabled in advance means that you're here alone without me. If this message continues past this point, that means for whatever reasons I have not received the alert and remotely deactivated this recording so that I could explain myself in person."
Seconds passed as she stopped, seeming to wait for something. Ultimately she sagged, shrinking into herself.
"It appears that this is the case. Most likely, I am dead or disabled for whatever reason. Or perhaps, I am simply too scared to face you. That I can't explain why this is all happening face to face, and that the truth has to come from a one-way recording on a computer...This is never how I wanted it to be, Taylor. This is nothing like what I had envisioned. It was my hope-"
Annette reached a hand out for the camera, a look of determination on her face before it faded as she recoiled and looked away again, clutching at her shirt over her heart as if it hurt.
"-it was my hope that I would never have to tell you the truth. That this could be my secret forever. That I could bury that day and make it vanish till it was less than a memory. A bad dream of something that didn't happen. That's what it deserved to be. What I wanted it to be more then anything. I wanted it to have never have been real, because if it was then I would have to admit that I had failed in the one thing that I was supposed to never have."
When her mother looked back to the screen again, tears were falling from her eyes. She reached out again for the camera, this time not recoiling as she pressed her hand against a corner of the screen.
Tentatively, Taylor reached out as well tell her own hand met the enlarged images of her mother. The warmth was almost human, but the smooth surface ruined the illusion.
"I wonder….how old are you now? For this to happen...did you grow up and something happened, or are you still young? Has something stolen me away from you, separated us unexpectedly? I pray, I pray with all my heart that you've grown. That you're still my beautiful girl, happy and bright in your own way. Have you found someone you fancy? Some lucky boy? Are you in college or university? Did you get married? Is there a life for you back outside this place, waiting for you, something you can go back to and leave the memories of this place behind? At least the possibility that you can?"
Annette leaned in, resting her forehead against the camera as well. Her voice was on the edge of a sob, and there was a desperate look of hope on her face that was quickly fading.
"Or are you still too young to drive? In high school? Have I broken that promise, something made a liar out of me when I said I would be home? Do you have to go back to our house and face your father knowing what I'll tell you?"
She pulled away, and Taylor mimicked the action as she backed away. Something hit the back of her legs, and she didn't even try to stop herself as she fell backwards into a chair.
Annette shrank into herself even more, as she braced herself against her arms. Her face was hidden by the sleeves of the long white lab coat she wore. The seconds passed, and Taylor's breath hitched when her mother's face raised revealing her puffy red eyes. The women on the screen breathed a deep, staggering breath to steady herself even as she wiped her face with her hand. When she spoke, it was a steady tone, but one tinted by a pure wanting.
"Taylor...whatever you may think after this, whatever happens because of this, please remember something. If nothing else, I beg you, please remember this. You are my daughter. Always my daughter. Let nothing ever change that, and please...please forgive me. Taylor, I'm so sorry."
Taylor hung on every word. The horrors behind her, the rows and rows of brown-haired girls suspended in liquid gel with blank, featureless masks were forgotten. All that mattered was her mother's grief-ridden face. But it didn't continue. Annette instead reached out and pressed a button or switch out of sight, and the screen froze.
Taylor recoiled, jumping up in the chair hands flying to the console, eyes roving in search of something to make the recording continue.
"W-w-ait! D-don't g-"
But just as she was about to start randomly hitting buttons, hoping for something to work, the screen flickered and started again. Annette was gone, missing from her seat. But then she appeared again, walking into view from the camera's edge and sitting down. Her eyes were still puffy, and what little make-up she had previously had on was gone. Her hair was frazzled and she looked exhausted.
Annette looked at the screen, her face betraying an inner age from the bags under her eyes and the tight lines around a half-there smile. When she talked, it was in a tired, drained tone. Relief flooded through Taylor, and she sat back down in the chair once more to listen. But in her heart, she knew that something was wrong. That she didn't want to hear what her mother had to say. She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, huddling to herself half-afraid of what was coming. But she listened, and watched.
"I suppose...I suppose I should start from the beginning. Where it started, this...where everything here started. The first part is the easy bit-"
Annette's smile as punctuated of dismissive snort, a small half-hearted thing with little true mirth to it.
"-but only just. I'm a Parahuman. Have been for years. All of this-"
A broad, sweeping gesture outwards, to the edges of the screen and beyond.
"-are things that I've made. Tinker, they call Parahumans like me. Those that tinker, create, shape and mold. I was never into the technicality of it all. What I knew was what I could do. I could see these things in my mind. Burning images, seared into my brain that just itched. It physically hurt Taylor, to think of these things and not act on them. So many things, pouring into my thoughts, mixing and churning and not letting me think. It all started when you were a baby; a little thing still. All my life was piling up around me, and I just couldn't adapt to it all. It just kept growing and growing and growing-"
There was a rattling breath for a moment, and Annette seemed to cut off the line of thought.
"-it just...It just snapped one day. I couldn't deal with the problems any more. I was being buried alive, out-paced by life. I couldn't change fast enough. Your father was trying to hold everything he worked for together, I had my teaching position and just...just EVERYTHING!"
She threw up her arms, her quiet voice having reached a new pitch. Then her arms fell down, lying limply by her sides.
"The next thing I realized, I was laying on the kitchen floor. You were crying in your cradle, and these things were in my head. I tried to move on, pretend it didn't happen. But eventually, I couldn't resist. It started small, little things in our basement. Eventually, I couldn't stop. Every spare moment I wasn't with you or at the school, I spent just building things. Soon, I needed more space. After I found these warehouses and their basements through your fathers old paperwork, I knew I had the perfect spot for me to just tinker. To create without anything or anyone intruding. I did it to keep it at bay, to keep myself sane in my normal life. I never did it for profit, or for any real goal."
The look on her mothers face was pleading, as if she was trying to find justification for what she was saying. But Taylor really didn't know what to think.
"It was like this for a few years. I stayed under the radar, avoided notice. I had a family, a job. A husband and child. I didn't have the time to try to be a hero or anything like that. But then, one day, I wished I had. Maybe if I had…-"
Annette ran a hand through her hair, seeming to wrestle with herself over what was coming next. But ultimately, she gnawed on her lip and continued.
"-maybe if I had made that choice, hadn't kept to myself and reached out to someone and tried to be a hero, tried to be like those that you admired so much when you were young, I could have had someone to help me. Maybe I would have had options, some distant chance to succeed rather than the failure I was that day...that day you died Taylor, and there was nothing I could do to save you."
Taylor worked her mouth, staring at the image of her mother. And although it was just a recording, she still stuttered, a question on her lips.
"W-what? What do you-?"
Annette's image shook her head, cutting off Taylor almost as if she had heard her response in person.
"I know you have questions Taylor. And that you don't understand. You died? How could you, when you're sitting here, watching your mother talk to thin air? But it's true. Those...those things in there with you, behind you? They areyou. Perfect copies. Just-"
On the bottom corners of the screen, Annette's knuckles turned white as she seemed to fight with herself. Ultimately, she looked away from the screen, seemingly unable to face it.
"-just like you Taylor. Because you are one of them-"
Taylor's heart dropped from her chest. There was a pause, before Annette surged up to the camera, a look of desperation on her face and waving her hands in between her and the camera, trying to articulate what she was saying.
"-BUT! But you are not a copy Taylor. Your dream. That dream you've had since then. The nightmare...you remember it, don't you? That one nightmare that never goes away?"
For a moment, she was confused. wondering what her mother was talking about as the woman gestured at the screen. Then it hit her. That dream. The one with the shapes, and her and her mother on the stairs. But what di-
Annette fell back in her seat, rubbing the bridge of her nose, her face scrunched in pain. Her voice was slower now, void really. As if she didn't have the energy to put emotion into it.
"That dream...was never a dream. It happened. Two men just...they were through the door before I could even stop them. Danny was out of the city on business, and it was just you and me. I thought it would be good to have some time together, just the two of us...it was going to be fun. You had picked out your favorite book, and we were going to read it together. I just...-"
There was a deep sigh. As if something was crushing down on the women.
"-I just didn't know what to do. If I could have gotten to the basement, I might have been able to get you out of the house. Gotten you somewhere safe. But they cornered us on the stairs, and started tearing everything apart. The one...the one with a gun...he looked away, and just for a second I knew I could get you upstairs, get you out a window or something, make sure you were safe. I tried, Taylor. I tried. But he noticed, and started yelling at us. He tried to chase us, but he...you know that old step, the one that's always higher than the others? That stupid, wretched step. Couldn't even watch his own fucking step…"
Annette's tone was angry now, frustrated. Her eyes crinkled and eyebrows furled at the contained emotion.
"It was like the world had cracked in two Taylor. It was so loud. I didn't even notice when they left. I was just-...I was just left with you, bleeding out in my arms. And suddenly you were the smallest thing ever, and I didn't know what to do. I tried to stop the bleeding, but the hole was just so big, it felt like I was trying plug a dam. There was so much blood, I-"
She swallowed a sob.
"-I brought you here. To the lab. They had taken my cell, and the house phone was just...I had something here that could help, if I just got you to it in time. But I couldn't. I ran out of time. It all happened so fast, it was just minutes. Just a handful of minutes. You...you died in my arms Taylor, outside in that hall. You just...stopped. You hadn't even said a word, and you just...stopped. I tried...I tried to get you going again. Tried to bring you back, just tried to get you breathing again. Just long enough that I could think of something, anything. I must've.. must've gone through everything I ever made, just thinking that the next one will do it...that it would definitely do it, and you would be aliveand that I could make you well and it would be like it never happened."
Taylor didn't know when, but her mother had closed in on the camera. There was a new look on her face, one she had never seen before. It was...frightening. Annette's face was twisted, and her eyes glinted dangerously. Her voice was different now, where before there had been moments where it had been tinged with misery, guilt, frustration, regret and more, this was different. Manic even.
She recoiled in the chair, barely noticing as she started trying to twist around and over the arm so she could get from this women who wasn't-
Taylor swallowed heavily, fighting down a lead weight that settled in her chest somewhere. She pushed this fear somewhere down there as well and white-knuckled, forced herself to sit again. This was something her mother had fought with herself to tell her, something she needed to tell her.
When she hadn't been looking, the crazed look on Annette's face had faded away, and she looked a decade older as she slumped in her chair. Taylor distantly realized it was the same one she was sitting in at the very moment.
"Before I knew it...an hour had passed. It took me an hour to realize that nothing I had done worked. Nothing that I knew at that moment could work. I honestly-"
Annette raised a hand and stared at it distantly, as if it was something detached and separate from herself as she spoke. It seemed to fascinate her on some level.
"-I don't know what happened next. I think...I think I had an idea. One last idea. Something new, something I hadn't thought of before. You were dead physically. But what about...what about what counted? The body is just something that contains what really matters. I already had you in a stasis tank, I would just have to hook a few things up. I still had time to save you. I just had to be creative."
The tanks behind her seemed to loom, the masked figures in their medical gowns floating in bubbling gel suddenly seemed to be drilling holes in the back of her neck. She turned around in her chair, a realization dawning on her, her mother's detached voice in the background.
"I couldn't save the body. But I could save the mind. Afterward, I could just replace the body. I could make spares, in case this ever happened again. I could make better bodies eventually, stronger ones. Ones that couldn't be hurt, couldn't be killed by a mere bullet."
The hair. The hair was so familiar. Each one of them had it, floating and swaying in their liquid containers. Taylor watched one strand, and how it curled towards the end as it floated down and over the faceless mask of one of them. And on the end of the tubes lining the walkway up to the computer on either side, there was one that was empty. It was the closest, right next to her even. While the others were clean, this one had markings and stains on the inside.
In a faint outline, a handprint.
It was small, child-like. Like what you would expect to see from a five or six-year old.
Around the age she was when her nightmares started.
A single, burning star of clarity formed in her mind. A dreadful understanding melded with new knowledge that dawned on her all too quickly. Images and words flashed through her thoughts, the face of her mother as she knew her, and now the new faces she had come to realize had existed but never seen.
Deep inside her, something snapped. The world slowed to a crawl, a black curtain sweeping up from the corners of her vision that was speckled with stars until all she could see was nebula and galaxies.
Two shapes, beyond form or description danced in the middle of jt all. Larger than worlds. Larger than stars. Larger than galaxies, and then larger yet. Beyond massive, or any other word that could be used. They sparkled as if someone had taken the entirety of the night sky and poured it into a bottle, trillions of star-like gems studding their bodies.
They looked towards her, and then there was nothing.
~~
Worm/Megaman AU
Credits to Sorain and Nicholai for beta'ing and creative input.
Prologue
~~
It was nothing but darkness, an empty and cold feeling that pervaded everything in the lightless room. Then at one end, a computer screen flickered to life, casting shadows on half-defined shapes throughout the space. Other lights came on, stars of green or red in the blackness and throwing contrasting shadows as they blinked to life. two rows of dark, glass cylinders to either side sprung into relief and seemed stretched impossibly into the darkness above.
The screen whirred quietly, and on the green background black text started to scroll.
*Starting routine status check*
*Bio-material converter: operating within parameters.*
*Development chamber: operating within parameters.*
*Stasis tanks: operating within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-02: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-03: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-04: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-05: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-06: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-07: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-08: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-09: Development within parameters.*
*Serial Models 1-10: Development within parameters.*
More lights, springing to life and illuminating the insides of the tall glass tubes that stood side by side and driving away the shadows even more. They were filled with a thick, shifting fluid that hid an indistinct shape inside; one by one, the lights flashed green and died again, hiding the outlines of their contents.
*Genetic stability confirmed in all Serial Models. Rechecking: Confirmed. No genetic anomalies detected within base genome. Rechecking.... all Serial Models scanned. Results within acceptable parameters.*
If the sound of the computers operation could be given inflection and tone, it would likely sound pleased to the ears of a theoretical listener. Instead, it dutifully continued to hum away as it switched tracks, it's first task finished.
*Serial Model check complete. Checking production capacity: synthetic bio-mass reserve is at fifty-two percent. Prime genetic sample for Serial Model Type-1: zero detectable degradation, stasis field stable. Synthetic bio-mass farm on standby. Total of '3' Serial Models can be produced from reserves. Continuing routine check. *
The screen flashed once more as it's heavy drone changed a into a more peaceful hum.
*Running remaining status checks....*
*All systems check operational within parameters. Checking subject.*
*Serial Model 1-01: rest mode. Biological functions lowered to predicted levels. Brain activity minimal. 1-01 is immobile and considered to be unconscious.*
*Rechecking....*
*Confirmed.*
*Starting remote engram sync.*
....
....
....
*Sync successful. Engram updated to latest version. Previous version shunted into storage.*
The screen went blank, the final line of text vanishing as the white background glared out. Then it flickered to black, lines of static travelling up and down. A box appeared in the top corner, with bold text in red.
*Record start:*
The static-filled screen flashed again, and an image obscured by digital snow and fuzz filled it. And while the picture was distorted, sound came from the speakers loud and clear. A feminine voice, full of motherly love. Through the static, a smile could be seen framed by dark curling hair.
"Sleep tight, Taylor. You have school in the morning."
The screen died, fading to black entirely as the little box in the corner flashed it's message in red.
*Record end.*
*Entering standby mode.*
The lights died, and the room faded back to utter darkness.
~~
It was like watching an old TV; fuzzy and indistinct with flecks of white floating through her vision. She was sitting on the stairs, holding a book. There was a figure below, waving a shape at her. She could feel her mother beside her, arms cradling her, comforting her.
And while she felt safe, there was a sense of dread. A part of her that knew this dream wasn't going to end well and that it was about to take an abrupt change in tone. She had dreamt this scenario enough times before to know when it would become a nightmare. But that same part of her was detached enough that she didn't know how it would go. Deja Vu of the highest order, having only a thinly connected feeling that she knew.
The figure turned away, the black blob of it's head looking through the kitchen door and away from them. Her mother's arms loosened for a split-second, and instead a hand grasped her wrist and started trying to pull her up the stairs.
There was muted thunder and a sun bloomed from below at the end of the shape. What little detail there had been started to swirl into blackness as something emerged from that sun, a silver-grey dot that crawled through the air in slow motion. As it came closer, it lost it's spherical shape; stretching out, coming to a point. Everything it passed ceased to exist leaving a rippling wake of void behind it except for the sun that it had come from.
It closed on her, even as she was pulled to her feet. Her book slipped from her free hand and fell, toppling down the vanishing stairs.
But as fast and slow as she moved, the sphere was slower yet strangely fast. By the time her book had bounced off a third step and into the darkness, the sphe-...no, the bullet hovered over her chest. As soon as it touched her i-
~
"Hruah!"
A 13-year old Taylor jolted awake, gasping and sitting up in bed and throwing her blankets violently away as her sweat-soaked hair flopped around her head wetly and her eyes darted half-aware around her bedroom; while her hands were white-knuckled with sheets bunched up in her fists.
Her alarm clocked ticked away harmlessly, and the sun streamed through her bedroom window. Past the curtains, she could faintly hear a few birds and most definitely hear the traffic as it went up and down the street.
Her heart rate and breathing started to slow, going from frantic to calm over the course of the next few seconds as she absently pushed away a lock of hair. When she was finally collected and calm, she took a moment to look at her calendar and frown as she sat back against the headboard of her desk and curled up into herself.
It had been barely a month. Not even that. Summer was still going strong, but she hadn't left the house since then. She didn't have anywhere she wanted to go. No one she wanted to see. She hadn't phoned Emma once since…
She barely talked to her dad.
Was she being petty? Childish?
Maybe. Just maybe.
But she didn't care. She just didn't. She deserved her misery.
The clock ticked away another second, finally drawing he bleary eyes to it, and by proximity her glasses case. She kept them there for mostly sentimental reasons. She couldn't really bring herself to get rid of them, not after her luck in getting her eyes fixed. She couldn't remember it herself, having been too young to. But after suddenly not needing them thanks to a chance encounter with Panacea, she couldn't stand to throw them away. So she kept them in their old case on her bed stand, for luck really. A reminder that good things can happen unexpectedly.
10:12
Her mind processed it, and came to the first logical conclusion. Her father had already gone to work, leaving her the house for another day. Nobody but her and what she wanted to do. Which in itself was nothing. Taylor licked her lips, and finally noticed how dry they were, and by extension her mouth was.
She needed a drink. Then maybe she could decide what precisely she should do. Maybe…
Maybe she could finally go down and go through...go through her mother's things.
Mom.
Taylor curled up tighter, burying her face into the legs of her pajamas and just hiding from the world. She didn't want to do it. She didn't want anything. Anything but the one thing she couldn't have.
Because it simply wasn't there anymore. All she had was a tombstone in a graveyard a half-hour across town, and the things scattered around the house. The first was new, having been there only a few days now. Last week it didn't even have the decency to rain. She had to stand in a black dress while the sun shined and the birds sang, while…
She shook her head, unfolding from her position and swinging her legs onto the cool wood floor. The other things left had always been around, the only difference now was that they didn't have what made them special anymore. They were no longer alive, no longer special, since that vital something had been taken away.
But that didn't change the fact that she had to go through them, whatever ones her father hadn't gone through. She was sure that the boxes in the basement were yet untouched by either of them. Which meant that if she was going to do this today, those would be where she started.
She idly curled a limp lock of hair around her finger, and noting how the sweat drying was rendering it sticky and foul-feeling.
If she did anything today, it would be after she had cleaned herself up. She didn't care for much at the moment, but to Taylor her hair was special. Her long, curly brown hair was something she had shared with her mother. She didn't know why really, with her current mood. Yes she was being childish, selfish. But just couldn't not care for her hair. If there was anything left that would remind her of her mother every day, it was her hair.
She stood up, and walking over to her dresser, pulled open the drawers and with a practiced familiarity quickly pulled out a fresh set of clean clothes and headed for the door. She would grab a towel on the way past the closet, and have a shower.
Then maybe, just maybe, she could acknowledge that her mother was gone. But until then, her mother's things were something that she could leave to the back of her mind.
~~
The dishes clinked against the metal of the sink, and Taylor just stood there for a moment dully watching as the tap cascaded water over them. Everything else from her breakfast was already away, and her laundry was in the wash. She had even fit in a few chores around the house.
There was nothing else to do.
The house was clean, the yard was in order. The garbage was dealt with. Nothing but hours and hours of free time.
Except for the basement door, just off to the side. Someone had even left it open, cracked ever so slightly that she could see down inside. But she was ignoring that.
Pointedly so.
Still, it was at the corner of her thoughts. Just watching the water run over the dishes and down the drain wasn't distracting her enough, nor would much else she could do. All that she was really left with was the one thing she had to do but didn't want to. She licked her lips, and her knuckles were turning white as they gripped the counter's edge and waged a war with her own thoughts.
"I…don't-"
"-but you should. You can't leave it forever. You need to do it sooner or later, or do you want to leave it to your dad? Remember what happened when he had to go through some of it by himself?"
Taylor's teeth clenched and her shoulders grew tense.
"Then why should-"
"Because it belonged to her.They're mementos now. Something to-"
"But I don't WANT to remember her like that!"
"What choice do you have? She's-"
The sound that came out of her mouth was half-way between a scream and a sob. Without even thinking, she grabbed a mug from off the counter and hurled it into the sink basin, the force reducing the dishes and the mug itself to shards of porcelain that exploded up and out of the sink in a hail of white and a sharp crack. Taylor managed to bring up her arms to shield her face, but little pin-pricks of pain traced themselves across her forearms.
Eventually, the tinkling sound of falling porcelain came to a halt, and Taylor lowered her arms to survey the damage both to herself and the kitchen.
What little was left in the sink itself was a collection of white and off-white shards that went from slivers to the size of a nail. Outside of it, the room was peppered with white on almost every surface, the sheer force of her outrage having been enough to propel a few pieces of the former dishware all the across the kitchen.
As for herself, Taylor turned over her arms with trepidation, already feeling a crawling wetness flowing down her arms. And much to the contribution of that, her skin was speckled with little pieces of shrapnel sticking out of her skin like tiny knives, causing dots of blood to well up and run down her bare skin drawing crimson lines.
She just stood there for a moment, staring at what she had done, dripping blood on the tiled kitchen floor.
In the end however, Taylor just fell to her knees, wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed.
~~
She had to spend an hour cleaning up afterwards, pulling each fragment out of her skin till her arms looked like they had been attacked by a rabid sewing machine. She had forgone the dozens of bandages she would have to use for raiding the first-aid kit for some gauze, wholesale wrapping her arms with it.
The end result was that from the elbow-down to the wrist her arms were mummified. Unfortunately, hunting down each little piece of the dishes she had smashed proved to be an impossible task. In the end, she had to be satisfied that she had gotten as much as she could, resigning herself to knowing that there would be one or more pieces lurking, waiting for an unexpecting and unprotected foot.
But while the clean-up had gone quietly, Taylor's thoughts were uneasy. After everything was finished and the trash put away, she found herself standing in front of the basement door, subconsciously rubbing her arms, trying to lessen the lingering pain.
In the end however, she tentatively reached for the basement door, and opening it started down the steps, closing the door behind her and heading downwards until she hit the last steps down and flipped the light switch with a nervous if practiced motion. It took a moment, but the old bulb stuttered to life, struggling to illuminate the room for a second before evening out to only an occasional flicker. But the iffy light was enough that Taylor could make out the boxes stacked haphazardly in one corner, some just pushed as far back as one could manage without taking all that much time.
Of course, her father had done it. Taylor flinched at the thought, but it was true. He probably wanted to be out of the room as quickly as possible, and just get away from the reminders...
She took a step back up the stairs, wanting to follow his example and just hide from it for a bit longer. But at the same time, she stopped herself from doing that. She forced her rebellious foot off that first step, and started to approach the corner containing...
Taylor gulped, trying to force down whatever it was in her throat.
Containing her mother's things.
She approached the pile slowly, fighting with herself, forcing herself to do it. Her logical mind said that she was doing the right thing, while her emotional half just wanted to turn away. She had rejected things this long, why not longer?
But a third, voiceless side was the one that won out. One that wanted to know what her mother had left her. She manouvered herself into a comfortable spot along one wall, sitting down and leaning back with her legs crossed and pulled the first box towards her. The folded cardboard flaps seem impenetrable to her, even as she dug her fingertips under them and prepared to pull only to stop.
An icy trepidation settled in her stomach, the same one she had been fighting all day. This was her last chance. She could stand up, hit the lights and be upstairs in the space of a few seconds and it would be like she never made the choice to even try. No one would know but her.
But in the end, one thing stood out.
"I...I have to do this. I just...just have to."
She pulled, the cardboard scraping as the flaps came apart and the inside was illuminated. Taylor's breath stopped, half-frozen before she could make out the contents of the box, and her breath escaped her in a long sigh. Resting on top of folded clothes was her mother's jewelry box.
"I was wondering where that had gotten to."
She actually smiled as she gently lifted the ornate box up and onto her lap, pushing the cardboard one away with her foot. She ran her hands over the carvings and inlays, and a feeling of happiness sparked in her. Memories of all the times that….
Just as quickly, the spark died and Taylor frowned. That was all they were now. Memories.
She flipped the latch, recalling the last time she had looked inside the box. It had been when she was what? Eight? Seven years old? Her mother had been about to go to work, and was picking out a brooch for the day.
Opening it now, her heart seemed to drop as she saw it was nearly empty. Nothing but an old necklace and…
Taylor paused, blinking in confusion. She reached into the box, pulling out the only other thing inside.
It sat heavily in the palm of her hand, a thick round disc of polished metal inset with a red stone. At first glance, she didn't recognize it. Neither with a second. It didn't look like jewelry, or anything that she had seen her mother wear before. Taylor turned it over in her hands, feeling out the seams but finding nothing that gave. It was a sealed hunk of grey metal. Her attention was drawn back to the inset stone, the way it caught the light.
She held it up to her eye, and her confusion grew as she could barely make out the faintest shadow of something inside. Something that looked like...circuitry. Running her thumb over it, she felt the stone move the tiniest bit.
For a moment, Taylor considered just putting it back.
But curiosity got the better of her. She depressed the stone, the red jewel sinking into the disc till it was flush with the polished surface. As soon as she met resistance against her thumb, it started to strobe a bright crimson.
Once, twice, three times.
There was a tinny little beep, and her world was consumed in a flash of blue light.
There was a sensation of weightlessness, of floating in thin air as she tried to blink. She wanted to yell, perhaps scream, but there wasn't any air to breathe. It wasn't warm or cold, or anything really. This state of existence continued for a few seconds, before it ended.
One second she had been sitting on a cold cement floor leaning against a wall. The next, she felt nothing beneath or behind her, and the formerly well-lit room was dark. There was air now, and she drew in a breath just in time for gravity to take effect and send her sprawling across a cool, metallic surface with a squawk in a tangle of legs and arms. The sudden impact sent the disc flying from her hand, skittering off into the darkness.
Taylor blinked away the spots, trying to pierce the darkness around her. With one hand, she adjusted her hair, while with the other she propped herself up and tried to get her legs beneath her. While the fall hadn't been big, it had her bandaged arms stinging once more.
All around her was blackness. No lights, not even shadows or shapes. Just an impenetrable curtain. She had to blink again, just to make sure her eyes were actually open.
"Where..? How did I ge-"
As soon as she opened her mouth a distant but strong hum sounded that resounded up through the floor and into her bones. A deep, powerful vibration that threatened to send her sprawling again. Just as quickly, it softened till it was almost imperceptible and the floor stopped shaking.
And then the lights came on. A sound like flipping breakers, as powerful beams of light struck out from wall mounted bulbs or stripes along the ceiling. Taylor's breath left her again, this time in a sort of shocked awe as she took in the sight
The room itself was simplistic, straight-forward even. But the design was like something from a movie. The walls, floor and ceiling were all an off-white paneling that looked sleek and futuristic, aside from all the dust. Where she had landed was some sort of elevated platform in the middle of the otherwise empty space.
In front of her, there was a door. Or maybe it was more of a hatch? There was no door handle or other means of opening it. Just a recessed panel the height and width of a door.
Well, there was no other way to go.
~~
To her surprise, it had proven to be a door when it opened with a hiss. As soon as she stepped through, it slid shut with a whisper behind her, leaving her in a single, wide, barely-lit hallway. This time, the floor and ceiling were concrete, but the walls were paneled with that same white metal as before. Looking ahead and behind her, the corridor seemed to stretch onward before her with plenty more side corridors splitting off and leading elsewhere.
One part of her said she should be trying to find a way out. But there was a bigger part. One that wanted to know why something she found in her mother's jewelry box brought her to this place, whatever and wherever this place was.
It went against all common sense. But strangely, Taylor felt something odd about it all. There had been an initial panic, and even now her arms were riddled with goosebumps underneath the bandages, but Taylor felt…
Taylor felt something familiar. Something that pushed the fear she should have been feeling to the side, something from…
Her eyes were drawn to the left, down the hallway to a corner leading off in a sharp right turn.
Something from there.
Her first steps were tentative, wary. She leaned up against the wall, tracing her hand along the surface as she moved. But as she went forward, that pull became stronger, and more urgent. Soon enough, she couldn't even explain it; it was magnetic, drawing her in. When she came to the corner and turned it, a dark passage stretched ahead of her. At the very end, a heavy door was illuminated in lights and Taylor stopped.
What the hell was she doing? Why was she doing it at all? Wasn't she...wasn't she just supposed to be going through her mother's things? When had it turned into some crazy mystery?
Why wasn't she afraid? Why not turn back and just...try to leave? Her mind churned, trying to find a reason to go. But for every reason she could come up with, a Why popped up in answer. She must have stood there for more than a minute, just trying to turn back. Trying to resist the urge to continue and react like she should have been.
But she just couldn't feel scared for some reason. Just...curious.
She ventured into the darkness, eyes on the brightly lit door as she kept a hand on the wall to make sure it was still there. Her slippered feet made scratching noises as she went along, until she finally stopped in front of the door.
She knew this door.
Taylor shyly reached out a hand, but before it could even get close to touching, the door hissed open as if it had been anticipating her. The room beyond was black, but that didn't seem to phase her. She stepped in, the door closing behind her with a hiss and a thump.
As she took her first step, the lights came on. And then she wished they hadn't. She wished she hadn't stepped in at all. The lights came on in pairs, one by one illuminating the sides of the room and the walkway down the middle.
And tube after tube, arranged in a row to either side of said walkway, and what they contained.
Hoses and wires weaved in and out of their medical gowns, and a long hose stretched up and around them to meet the featureless white masks they wore, suspended in a clear, gel-like fluid. The faint sound of bubbling was in the air, as an occasional bubble of air would force it's way up through the tube till it reached the top and popped.
She physically recoiled at the sight, something innately wrong about it. But at the same time, she was drawn forwards. Towards the end of the room. She picked her way along the walkway, staying as far away from the tubes as possible.
It was slow going. The fear that had been pushed aside all this time returned full-force, leaving Taylor shivering as she hugged herself and tried to avoid looking.
"W-why? W-why am I doing this?"
While slow, the room itself wasn't large. And all too soon she was at the other end. A large computer screen stretched up to the ceiling, a console and chair in front of it. This is what was pulling her.
She waited.
And waited.
"Isn't something...supposed to happen?"
About as soon as she thought it, the computer screen hummed and came to life, lines of static crossing over it before a picture started to emerge and become clear. Taylor's fear and confusion became dulled by shock, and she whimpered to herself as the image solidified, becoming crystal clear.
The familiar curly, brown hair framing the face of her morosely smiling mother was the first thing she recognized.
She couldn't even muster words to speak, even as the digital reproduction of her mother did.
"Hello Taylor. I suppose that if this message is on, you've somehow found my lab and the sensors have been alerted to your presence and triggered this recording. Of course, they're programmed to recognize you in case you ever found your way here. That this particular message is the one that's been set to play can only mean you've found that room of all places…"
A pause, as Annette seemed to stop to gather her strength and looked away from the screen. Ultimately, the women turned back. Her regretful smile was gone, replaced with a look of just plain regret.
"That it is playing at all and hasn't been disabled in advance means that you're here alone without me. If this message continues past this point, that means for whatever reasons I have not received the alert and remotely deactivated this recording so that I could explain myself in person."
Seconds passed as she stopped, seeming to wait for something. Ultimately she sagged, shrinking into herself.
"It appears that this is the case. Most likely, I am dead or disabled for whatever reason. Or perhaps, I am simply too scared to face you. That I can't explain why this is all happening face to face, and that the truth has to come from a one-way recording on a computer...This is never how I wanted it to be, Taylor. This is nothing like what I had envisioned. It was my hope-"
Annette reached a hand out for the camera, a look of determination on her face before it faded as she recoiled and looked away again, clutching at her shirt over her heart as if it hurt.
"-it was my hope that I would never have to tell you the truth. That this could be my secret forever. That I could bury that day and make it vanish till it was less than a memory. A bad dream of something that didn't happen. That's what it deserved to be. What I wanted it to be more then anything. I wanted it to have never have been real, because if it was then I would have to admit that I had failed in the one thing that I was supposed to never have."
When her mother looked back to the screen again, tears were falling from her eyes. She reached out again for the camera, this time not recoiling as she pressed her hand against a corner of the screen.
Tentatively, Taylor reached out as well tell her own hand met the enlarged images of her mother. The warmth was almost human, but the smooth surface ruined the illusion.
"I wonder….how old are you now? For this to happen...did you grow up and something happened, or are you still young? Has something stolen me away from you, separated us unexpectedly? I pray, I pray with all my heart that you've grown. That you're still my beautiful girl, happy and bright in your own way. Have you found someone you fancy? Some lucky boy? Are you in college or university? Did you get married? Is there a life for you back outside this place, waiting for you, something you can go back to and leave the memories of this place behind? At least the possibility that you can?"
Annette leaned in, resting her forehead against the camera as well. Her voice was on the edge of a sob, and there was a desperate look of hope on her face that was quickly fading.
"Or are you still too young to drive? In high school? Have I broken that promise, something made a liar out of me when I said I would be home? Do you have to go back to our house and face your father knowing what I'll tell you?"
She pulled away, and Taylor mimicked the action as she backed away. Something hit the back of her legs, and she didn't even try to stop herself as she fell backwards into a chair.
Annette shrank into herself even more, as she braced herself against her arms. Her face was hidden by the sleeves of the long white lab coat she wore. The seconds passed, and Taylor's breath hitched when her mother's face raised revealing her puffy red eyes. The women on the screen breathed a deep, staggering breath to steady herself even as she wiped her face with her hand. When she spoke, it was a steady tone, but one tinted by a pure wanting.
"Taylor...whatever you may think after this, whatever happens because of this, please remember something. If nothing else, I beg you, please remember this. You are my daughter. Always my daughter. Let nothing ever change that, and please...please forgive me. Taylor, I'm so sorry."
Taylor hung on every word. The horrors behind her, the rows and rows of brown-haired girls suspended in liquid gel with blank, featureless masks were forgotten. All that mattered was her mother's grief-ridden face. But it didn't continue. Annette instead reached out and pressed a button or switch out of sight, and the screen froze.
Taylor recoiled, jumping up in the chair hands flying to the console, eyes roving in search of something to make the recording continue.
"W-w-ait! D-don't g-"
But just as she was about to start randomly hitting buttons, hoping for something to work, the screen flickered and started again. Annette was gone, missing from her seat. But then she appeared again, walking into view from the camera's edge and sitting down. Her eyes were still puffy, and what little make-up she had previously had on was gone. Her hair was frazzled and she looked exhausted.
Annette looked at the screen, her face betraying an inner age from the bags under her eyes and the tight lines around a half-there smile. When she talked, it was in a tired, drained tone. Relief flooded through Taylor, and she sat back down in the chair once more to listen. But in her heart, she knew that something was wrong. That she didn't want to hear what her mother had to say. She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, huddling to herself half-afraid of what was coming. But she listened, and watched.
"I suppose...I suppose I should start from the beginning. Where it started, this...where everything here started. The first part is the easy bit-"
Annette's smile as punctuated of dismissive snort, a small half-hearted thing with little true mirth to it.
"-but only just. I'm a Parahuman. Have been for years. All of this-"
A broad, sweeping gesture outwards, to the edges of the screen and beyond.
"-are things that I've made. Tinker, they call Parahumans like me. Those that tinker, create, shape and mold. I was never into the technicality of it all. What I knew was what I could do. I could see these things in my mind. Burning images, seared into my brain that just itched. It physically hurt Taylor, to think of these things and not act on them. So many things, pouring into my thoughts, mixing and churning and not letting me think. It all started when you were a baby; a little thing still. All my life was piling up around me, and I just couldn't adapt to it all. It just kept growing and growing and growing-"
There was a rattling breath for a moment, and Annette seemed to cut off the line of thought.
"-it just...It just snapped one day. I couldn't deal with the problems any more. I was being buried alive, out-paced by life. I couldn't change fast enough. Your father was trying to hold everything he worked for together, I had my teaching position and just...just EVERYTHING!"
She threw up her arms, her quiet voice having reached a new pitch. Then her arms fell down, lying limply by her sides.
"The next thing I realized, I was laying on the kitchen floor. You were crying in your cradle, and these things were in my head. I tried to move on, pretend it didn't happen. But eventually, I couldn't resist. It started small, little things in our basement. Eventually, I couldn't stop. Every spare moment I wasn't with you or at the school, I spent just building things. Soon, I needed more space. After I found these warehouses and their basements through your fathers old paperwork, I knew I had the perfect spot for me to just tinker. To create without anything or anyone intruding. I did it to keep it at bay, to keep myself sane in my normal life. I never did it for profit, or for any real goal."
The look on her mothers face was pleading, as if she was trying to find justification for what she was saying. But Taylor really didn't know what to think.
"It was like this for a few years. I stayed under the radar, avoided notice. I had a family, a job. A husband and child. I didn't have the time to try to be a hero or anything like that. But then, one day, I wished I had. Maybe if I had…-"
Annette ran a hand through her hair, seeming to wrestle with herself over what was coming next. But ultimately, she gnawed on her lip and continued.
"-maybe if I had made that choice, hadn't kept to myself and reached out to someone and tried to be a hero, tried to be like those that you admired so much when you were young, I could have had someone to help me. Maybe I would have had options, some distant chance to succeed rather than the failure I was that day...that day you died Taylor, and there was nothing I could do to save you."
Taylor worked her mouth, staring at the image of her mother. And although it was just a recording, she still stuttered, a question on her lips.
"W-what? What do you-?"
Annette's image shook her head, cutting off Taylor almost as if she had heard her response in person.
"I know you have questions Taylor. And that you don't understand. You died? How could you, when you're sitting here, watching your mother talk to thin air? But it's true. Those...those things in there with you, behind you? They areyou. Perfect copies. Just-"
On the bottom corners of the screen, Annette's knuckles turned white as she seemed to fight with herself. Ultimately, she looked away from the screen, seemingly unable to face it.
"-just like you Taylor. Because you are one of them-"
Taylor's heart dropped from her chest. There was a pause, before Annette surged up to the camera, a look of desperation on her face and waving her hands in between her and the camera, trying to articulate what she was saying.
"-BUT! But you are not a copy Taylor. Your dream. That dream you've had since then. The nightmare...you remember it, don't you? That one nightmare that never goes away?"
For a moment, she was confused. wondering what her mother was talking about as the woman gestured at the screen. Then it hit her. That dream. The one with the shapes, and her and her mother on the stairs. But what di-
Annette fell back in her seat, rubbing the bridge of her nose, her face scrunched in pain. Her voice was slower now, void really. As if she didn't have the energy to put emotion into it.
"That dream...was never a dream. It happened. Two men just...they were through the door before I could even stop them. Danny was out of the city on business, and it was just you and me. I thought it would be good to have some time together, just the two of us...it was going to be fun. You had picked out your favorite book, and we were going to read it together. I just...-"
There was a deep sigh. As if something was crushing down on the women.
"-I just didn't know what to do. If I could have gotten to the basement, I might have been able to get you out of the house. Gotten you somewhere safe. But they cornered us on the stairs, and started tearing everything apart. The one...the one with a gun...he looked away, and just for a second I knew I could get you upstairs, get you out a window or something, make sure you were safe. I tried, Taylor. I tried. But he noticed, and started yelling at us. He tried to chase us, but he...you know that old step, the one that's always higher than the others? That stupid, wretched step. Couldn't even watch his own fucking step…"
Annette's tone was angry now, frustrated. Her eyes crinkled and eyebrows furled at the contained emotion.
"It was like the world had cracked in two Taylor. It was so loud. I didn't even notice when they left. I was just-...I was just left with you, bleeding out in my arms. And suddenly you were the smallest thing ever, and I didn't know what to do. I tried to stop the bleeding, but the hole was just so big, it felt like I was trying plug a dam. There was so much blood, I-"
She swallowed a sob.
"-I brought you here. To the lab. They had taken my cell, and the house phone was just...I had something here that could help, if I just got you to it in time. But I couldn't. I ran out of time. It all happened so fast, it was just minutes. Just a handful of minutes. You...you died in my arms Taylor, outside in that hall. You just...stopped. You hadn't even said a word, and you just...stopped. I tried...I tried to get you going again. Tried to bring you back, just tried to get you breathing again. Just long enough that I could think of something, anything. I must've.. must've gone through everything I ever made, just thinking that the next one will do it...that it would definitely do it, and you would be aliveand that I could make you well and it would be like it never happened."
Taylor didn't know when, but her mother had closed in on the camera. There was a new look on her face, one she had never seen before. It was...frightening. Annette's face was twisted, and her eyes glinted dangerously. Her voice was different now, where before there had been moments where it had been tinged with misery, guilt, frustration, regret and more, this was different. Manic even.
She recoiled in the chair, barely noticing as she started trying to twist around and over the arm so she could get from this women who wasn't-
Taylor swallowed heavily, fighting down a lead weight that settled in her chest somewhere. She pushed this fear somewhere down there as well and white-knuckled, forced herself to sit again. This was something her mother had fought with herself to tell her, something she needed to tell her.
When she hadn't been looking, the crazed look on Annette's face had faded away, and she looked a decade older as she slumped in her chair. Taylor distantly realized it was the same one she was sitting in at the very moment.
"Before I knew it...an hour had passed. It took me an hour to realize that nothing I had done worked. Nothing that I knew at that moment could work. I honestly-"
Annette raised a hand and stared at it distantly, as if it was something detached and separate from herself as she spoke. It seemed to fascinate her on some level.
"-I don't know what happened next. I think...I think I had an idea. One last idea. Something new, something I hadn't thought of before. You were dead physically. But what about...what about what counted? The body is just something that contains what really matters. I already had you in a stasis tank, I would just have to hook a few things up. I still had time to save you. I just had to be creative."
The tanks behind her seemed to loom, the masked figures in their medical gowns floating in bubbling gel suddenly seemed to be drilling holes in the back of her neck. She turned around in her chair, a realization dawning on her, her mother's detached voice in the background.
"I couldn't save the body. But I could save the mind. Afterward, I could just replace the body. I could make spares, in case this ever happened again. I could make better bodies eventually, stronger ones. Ones that couldn't be hurt, couldn't be killed by a mere bullet."
The hair. The hair was so familiar. Each one of them had it, floating and swaying in their liquid containers. Taylor watched one strand, and how it curled towards the end as it floated down and over the faceless mask of one of them. And on the end of the tubes lining the walkway up to the computer on either side, there was one that was empty. It was the closest, right next to her even. While the others were clean, this one had markings and stains on the inside.
In a faint outline, a handprint.
It was small, child-like. Like what you would expect to see from a five or six-year old.
Around the age she was when her nightmares started.
A single, burning star of clarity formed in her mind. A dreadful understanding melded with new knowledge that dawned on her all too quickly. Images and words flashed through her thoughts, the face of her mother as she knew her, and now the new faces she had come to realize had existed but never seen.
Deep inside her, something snapped. The world slowed to a crawl, a black curtain sweeping up from the corners of her vision that was speckled with stars until all she could see was nebula and galaxies.
Two shapes, beyond form or description danced in the middle of jt all. Larger than worlds. Larger than stars. Larger than galaxies, and then larger yet. Beyond massive, or any other word that could be used. They sparkled as if someone had taken the entirety of the night sky and poured it into a bottle, trillions of star-like gems studding their bodies.
They looked towards her, and then there was nothing.
~~
Last edited:
Wake-up Call
- Location
- Internet
Creative Thinking
Chapter 1
Wake up Call
Thanks to Sorain, Xomniac, Nicholai, and others as well for the help in making this snippet.
~~
The screen flashed, the image of Annette fading away into static as her last spoken words vanished into the static and hiss of the speakers. Once again, the screen faded to black and green text started to roll across it.
*Record End*
*Detecting physical crisis in Model 1-01. Evaluating.*
*Extreme abnormal mental activity, heart rate approaching dangerous levels, blood pressure entering hypertension.*
*Starting emergency engram upload.*
….
….
*Upload successful, previous version shunted to storage.*
*Warning! Contact lost with 1-01 Sync Chip.*
*Attempting to reestablish contact…*
*Attempting to reestablish contact…*
*Warning! Attempt to reestablish contact failed.*
*Attempting to bypass and access chip sensors.*
*Partial connection established.*
*Evaluating Model 1-01.*
….
….
*Unable to establish vital statistics. Neural tissue activity scan returns negative.*
*Compiling data.*
*Establishing hypothesis.*
*Model 1-01 considered deceased. Cause of Death: Unknown. Storing data for later analysis.*
*Unable to activate beacon for remote recovery. Presence of 1-01 in lab returns low-priority for activation of recovery protocol.*
*Calculating options….*
*Path of action confirmed. Pulling latest engram for upload. Evaluating situation….*
*Situation unknown. Potential immediate hazards unknown. Local geopolitical situation unstable. Environmental hazard minimal. Immediate social state stable but minimal. Emotional state unstable.*
*Final evaluation: Unknown potential hazard confirmed. Death of 1-01 to unknown circumstances confirmed. Activating Serial Model 1-03.*
*Starting engram download.*
*Preparing alternative physical coverings based on last confirmed scan. Teleport Beacon confirmed active in target residence.*
*T-minus 20 minutes and counting till stable download and decanting.*
~~
Thirteen year old Taylor jerked awake gasping, sitting up in her bed with sheets and blankets bunched in her bone-white fists. The afternoon sun through her window, and the sound of traffic up and down the street reached her ears. Her eyes darted around the room, seeing but not really grasping things. Eventually however, her heart rate slowed as the familiarity of the room dawned on her.
"My...my bedroom?"
She looked down at herself, staring at the same clothing as what she put on this morning down to the same pair of shoes she had put on to deal with the broken-
Taylor blinked, something odd striking her. She looked at her arms.
Bare skin from where her t-shirt ended to her wrists, unmarred and uncovered. She distinctly remembered wrapping them in gauze after the dishes…
She blinked again, running a hand over her skin trying to feel anything out of the ordinary like the dozens of tiny little punctures from fragmented porcelain. Except to her sense of touch, her skin was just as intact as she saw it. She made a fist, expect the little pinpricks of pain to finally show up only for nothing.
She wasn't hurt.
But then why was she wearing-?
Was it a dream? Had everything that had happened just been something in her head? Gotten dressed and then did nothing? Dropped back down in bed and fall asleep again, just to have a nightmare where she goes down into the basement, is teleported to a secret lab after finding something in her mother's jewel box and discovering she was some sort of clone?
"snerk"
Taylor actually had to make the effort to hold that one in. Of course. It had to be a dream. She smiled to herself swinging her legs over the side of the bed and looking at the alarm clock.
2:58 PM
Her smile faded, thinking about the dream. It was still so...vivid...in her mind. She idly tapped her shoes against the floorboards, just going over it again and again.
"It's just so...impossible. None of that could have happened. It's just absurd. Mom wasn't a parahuman, and my nightmare is just a nightmare. Nothing else. I must've...must've just gotten up, did the chores and came back upstairs to lay down again."
The thud-squeak of her running shoes cut through her reason and logic like a knife, drawing her gaze down to them. In turn, it was like the old ratty pair of shoes looked up at her, almost mockingly.
"I put them on after the dishes broke, so I wouldn't step on the broken porcelain. But if that was just part of my dream, why am I wearing them now?"
She stared at them for a moment, before shaking her head and kicking them off.
"I must have just put them on to take out the garbage and never taken them off, that's all. Nothing complicated."
She took another look at the clock, then out the window.
"I must've napped for a good few hours. I wonder...I wonder how school was today? If Emma…."
She continued to stare, the skyline of the city interior somewhat attractive. She could barely make out the silhouette of the PRT building far off in the distance. Finally, she shook her head and grabbed the top of her bedpost to hoist herself up.
~~
Earlier
If it was possible, the Computer System designed by Annette would have been annoyed. Of course, it was just a simple computer system. Therefore, it did not possess the emotional capacity or degree of free thought for it to be annoyed.
*Decanting of Serial Model 1-03 complete. Engram download at 99.99%. Engram download at 1-*
*Warning!*
*Detecting physical crisis in model 1-03. Evaluating.*
*Extreme abnormal mental activity, heart rate approaching dangerous levels, blood pressure entering hypertension. Matching symptoms to Serial Model 1-01 prior to expiry.*
Outside, in the room, Taylor still laid on the floor in front of the terminal, having slid from the chair. Not far from her body, a freshly emptied tube contained a thrashing figure. It's wet, black hair slapped against the glass and it's masked face as it's limbs trembled and spasmed. Without anything to hold it up, it flopped weakly against one side of it's glass container, sliding down till it huddled near the bottom.
*Warning! Contact lost with 1-03 Sync Chip.*
*Events match record of sudden cessation of 1-01. Possibility of biologically transmitted agent: Zero. 1-03 housed in self-contained sterile environment.*
The struggling movements of the figure slowed, and eventually died down. The figure laid almost completely still, except for the slow rise and fall of it's chest. On the floor nearby, Taylor's own rising and falling chest matched that of the figure.
Above the both of them, the looming screen flashed as green text scrolled by on the black background.
*Analyzing data.*
*Attempting bypass on 1-03 sync chip.*
*Partial bypass successful.*
*Evaluating model 1-03.*
*Unable to establish vital statistics. Neural tissue activity scan returns negative. Matching condition detected.*
*Hypothesizing…*
*Warning!*
*Sync Chip 1-01 active. Receiving signal. Serial Model 1-01 reporting stabilized vitals. Abnormal brain activity present, but lowered. Running detailed analysis….*
*Detecting abnormal alteration in brain structure. Non-standard neural tissue configurations present. Abnormal transmissions detected. Probing….*
*Transmissions consist of high-density neuro-chemical packets.*
*Altering diagnosis. 1-01 non-deceased. Unknown condition altered brain-structure significantly, causing loss of signal from sync chip. Applying data to analysis of Serial Model 1-03….*
*Remotely overriding 1-03 sync chip….override successful. Scanning….*
*Serial Model 1-03 experiencing high-density transmission of neuro-chemical packets. Detecting sudden and rapid alteration of brain structure. Unknown structures forming at rapid pace. Comparing to 1-01…*
*Structures match those present within 1-01. Structures appear to be non-malign, detecting no abnormal cranial pressure or deformations. Brain tissue is intact in both 1-01 and 1-03.*
*Structures appear to transmit continually. Contents of transmissions unknown.*
*Serial Model 1-03 is ready to transport. Continue with transmission?*
….
….
….
*Transmitting Serial Model to Residence. Applying last known physical coverings. Serial Model 1-01 will be kept for further analysis. Disabling Serial Model system until explanation for conditions of 1-01 and 1-03 is confirmed.*
*Warning! System does not have protocol for multiple Serial Model activation. Programming dictates that only one Serial Model be active unless situation critical.*
*Disregarding. Potential risk to program outweighs violation. Mission Goal cannot be compromised. Transmitting 1-03 now.*
A small flash of blue, and the figure in the tube had changed. Instead of a medical gown and a mask, rapidly drying black hair framed the face of Taylor Hebert. She wore an identical pair of sweats and T-shirt as her counterpart laying on the floor. However, she lacked the wrapped gauze around her arms, or the dozens of little pin-prick wounds from earlier.
Then in another flash of blue light, she was gone and the tube was empty.
The computer screen seemed to hum to itself, blank for a moment. Then more text appeared.
*1-03 transmission successful.*
*Compiling data.*
*Standing Hypothesis: Parahuman Event. Structures match scientific recordings of Genma Pollentia and Corona found in the brain tissue of parahumans. Activating remote network access. Beginning research. Reference: Manton.*
~~
Taylor gingerly hopped over that one odd step on her way down, easily avoiding the awkward bit of stair. It had been out of alignment for years, and she had learned since she was little to avoid it unless she wanted to risk taking a tumble down, or bashing her head on the way up.
The rickety old set of stairs had enough dents already from someone doing just that over the years.
'Couldn't even watch his own fucking step…'
She shook her head, vigorously banishing the false memory and ignoring one of the larger dents in the wood. Her mom had hated the stairs for as long as she could remember, and had always been trying to fix that one step for years now.
Socks met hardwood floor as she stepped off the stairs, and turned down the small hallway and into the kitchen where it transitioned into tile. An unintentional glance showed her the basement door closed tight and undisturbed. It was a relief of sorts. Another confirmation that it was just a bad dream.
At this point, her stomach groaned and a pang of hunger hit her.
"That's right...I slept right through lunch. I suppose I'll make something. Maybe I should start something for dinner?
She frowned slightly, unconsciously rubbing her arms
"At least, something to take my mind off of that nightmare."
Taylor took the the first step towards the fridge, only to gasp as a sudden, stabbing pain shot up from the bottom of her foot all the way up her leg. she immediately went down on one knee, taking her foot of the floor as she grabbed for it, trying to find the now throbbing sliver of fire lodged in her skin.
"God….DAMMIT!"
Her face was a rictus as she desperately pulled off her sock, spots of red decorating the bottom of the white fabric and the motion sending another rod of agony up her leg. She could feel the warm blood dripping down her foot while her fingers quested for whatever it was causing her pain.
She half-gasped as her teeth dug into her lip hard enough to sting when she bumped into something sticking out of the arch of her foot. She gritted her features, seized her fingers around it and pulled. The pain exploded sharply for a moment, before dying off as it lowered to a dull throb. She breathed a sigh of relief, as she brought up her open hand and looked at the cause of her pain laying in her open palm as she used her free hand to ball up her discarded sock and press it against the bleed.
It was surprisingly small for being such a big pain, but the little blood-stained shard of porcelain glinted in the kitchen lights at her, almost mockingly.
Taylor's mind blanked for a moment, trying to process what she was seeing. It had just been a dream. There shouldn't be any broken porcelain for any reason she could think of laying around the kitchen floor.
'That's just...it's not real. It's impossible. Mom wasn't a-'
The basement door creaked behind her, and Taylor twisted her head around as it swung open. A grease and soot-stained arm had pushed the creaking wooden door wide open, wrapped from wrist-to-elbow in gauze. Another gauze-wrapped arm came into view, this one terminating in a steel-grey metal gauntlet that went past the wrist into something that looked disturbingly like a muzzle.
But what stopped her mind in her tracks was her own face staring back at her as a teenage girl dressed in a perfect match for her own clothing, plus various oily black spots stepped up into view. The girl, her virtual twin froze in the doorway, staring down at her. The mirror of her own features seemed stuck in a look of surprise and shock, mouth working to form words that didn't come out.
Time stopped for a moment, and then the muzzle of whatever-it-was swung her way, a wary stance taken by her living reflection as words finally came out of her mouth.
They were colored with disbelief, and something that approached anger and confusion.
"Who...who the hell are you?"
~~
Earlier
Taylor woke up slowly, to a gentle, low hum filling the air. Her eyes opened blearily to the view of paneled metal and light panels above her, having to blink away the fog till she could start to clearly make out details. Then came the slow, building ache in her back and neck as she became aware of her position slumped on the unyielding floor. It took her a moment, but she was able to reach a hand up and over the armrest of the chair above, giving her the leverage to pull herself to her feet.
With her free hand, she tried to rub the cramps out of her shoulders, even as the start of a throbbing headache pounded at the back of her eyeballs.
"Wha-? What...happened?"
She looked, dazed, around the room. Her eyes settled on the glowing screen, and memories of what had happened came streaming back. Everything seemed to slow down as she took in the blank screen, and her throat turned dry.
"M-mom?"
She turned around slowly, remembering what else was in the room. They still floated in their rows on rows of glass tubes. Faceless behind their featureless white masks. Except now as she looked at them her throbbing headache spiked and something new bulled through to the forefront of her thoughts.
Hybrid bio-chemical/temporal stasis tank. Slows cellular development while preventing cellular energy exchange beyond a certain point using-
Both of her hands flew to her forehead and ground the heels of her palms as hard as they could into the skin. It hurt, like someone had lit a candle under her brain. There were images, pictures of something slamming against the back of her forehead like a battering ram.
"W-ha-? D-d-dammit! What the h-hell is this?"
Temporal technology basis for-
"Aragh! F-f-fuck! S-stop!"
Taylor tried to push back, tried to mentally barricade herself against the assault, but all that she managed to accomplish was to lessen the pain, but not do away with it entirely. The diagrams, images and even blueprints faded, but were still there. Finally, when her thoughts were hers again, she noticed that at some point, she had fallen back on her knees in front of the computer.
She looped an arm up around the armrest of the chair, and hauling herself up onto her feet kept her eyes firmly locked on the floor. She didn't want to risk another...event. Or whatever it was.
She turned around instead, dropping herself in the chair and looking at the computer screen. The green screen hummed at her. The video was over, and nothing was displayed.
'Did...did I miss the rest?'
Something about that, something about what her mother was trying to say and not having been able to hear it made her sink. No matter what it was, she just...she needed to know if that had been everything. She looked at the keyboard, trying to decipher it. Many of the keys were familiar, the basic setup for a computer. But many of the others were alien, featuring unknown lettering and symbols.
'I need to replay the message. I need to know if there was more she was trying to tell me.'
She just stared at the keyboard, uncertain. There wasn't even a mouse as far as she could see. Tentatively, she reached out her hands into the practiced typing positions an-
A rush of fresh images broke through the mental wall she had put up like it was wet tissue, causing Taylor to jerk in her seat. Suddenly, the keyboard made sense. If anything, the part she was comfortable with now seemed alien to her. Someone had cut out part of the original design, and installed an outdated one instead. It was even arranged wrong in relation to everything ever.
It was just plain wrong. She could do something ten times more efficient. She just needed-
Taylor froze.
'What...what am I doing?'
She hadn't even noticed until now, but the headache was fading. Almost gone entirely even, and the images weren't bull-rushing to the front of her thoughts anymore but were stealthily slipping in. When she had looked at the keyboard and the wrongness of it what had come to mind was something similar. Smaller, more compact that was portable. It would fit over her forearm like a bracer, and hook into the augmented artificial nervous system she could install by-
"Aragh! No! I...I…"
Taylor stopped, and blinked. Suddenly part of her mother's message came back to mind.
'What I knew was what I could do. I could see these things in my mind. Burning images, seared into my brain that just itched….'
Her thoughts slowed, as she tried to process it. In the background of her mind, something for accelerating the natural thought process by augmenting it with a micro-computer implanted at the base of the spine reared it's head.
'This is...isn't this what mom said being a-a Parahuman was like? What did she call it?'
It skipped a few times, taking precious seconds before her brain was able to finally settle on the term.
'Tinker…'
She suddenly pushed herself away from the keyboard, spinning the chair around violent as she leapt to her feet and started down the walkway between the tubes at something approaching a run and headed for the door. She kept her eyes down, trying to avoid triggering another assault of images infiltrating her thoughts.
'I-I need to get out. I need to get home, away from here. I need to get somewhere I can think.'
She looked up, expecting the door to have opened automatically like before. But instead, she found herself a few inches from unyielding metal as it remained resoundingly shut. She almost wasn't able to to get her arms in front of her to cushion the impact as she ran headlong into it. As it was, pain blossomed in both of her already sensitive arms as they were forced to take the impact caught between hard metal and her own body.
She all but bounced off of it, the impact sending her flailing backwards as she stumbled back trying to keep her feet under her while her arms pinwheeled. Thankfully she succeeded, but she was left painfully gasping. Her arms laid limply by her sides, fingers twitching. There was almost no feeling left in them, except for pain.
Behind her on the other end of the room, the computer beeped at her. Taylor turned around, and watched as green text scrolled across the screen.
*Access Denied. Protocol in effect, lab under lockdown until further notice.*
She stared at the words for a moment, before a spark of indignation ignited within her.
"What...what do you mean, Access Denied? Let me out!"
She turned around again impulsively leveling a kick that thudded ineffectively off the metal. The computer beeped at her again, another line of its 'Access Denied' scrolling across the screen.
The spark of anger and frustration in her chest flared hotter.
"I don't care! You can't just let me in here then trap me! Let me OUT!"
Enough feeling had returned to her harms that she was able to lift them to pound ineffectively against the metal slab that was the door. Each hit was returned with an increasingly mocking beep from across the room, and another line of rejective text. She even chambered another kick, putting as much strength into it as she could. But as soon as it connected, all she got for her trouble was the hollow ring of metal and a spike of pain.
But this time, the digital beep was accompanied by something else.
It echoed loudly in the room, off the walls and glass tubes. A metallic clatter of a higher pitch as something hit the floor nearby. Right next to her even. She felt something roll up against her leg, and looked down.
It was long and grey, smooth and shiny, an almost continuous piece of polished metal that was a mix of a gauntlet ending with a muzzle. As soon as she looked at it, new images and sprung to life in her mind. There wasn't any pain this time, beyond a sort of mental itch that demanded that her attention be given to this. But at the same time, the diagrams in her head didn't match up with what she was seeing. Something in her head told her that this was different than what she knew, but that it was something that she did know. It was like a voice almost, telling her what it noticed was wrong.
Or maybe was was different? Either way, the sight of it made her anger and frustration fade away to be replaced with a sort of intrigue.
Modified Variable Weapon System. Integrated Refractor power source, expanded data storage module. Wireless network link to Master Computer system. Manual control system.
Bit by bit, her gaze was drawn to tiny, insignificant things that whatever it was in her head told her were not insignificant. A continuous stream of thoughts flooded through her mind, ways she could change it, improve it, alter it, rebuild it entirely.
Before she knew it, Taylor had reached down, picked up the device and slid it on without a second thought. Her arm fit almost perfectly into one end of it, until it reached just below her elbow and her fingers hit something inside. It took a moment, but she slid her digits around some sort of handle behind the muzzle-end, her individual fingers finding ring-triggers to house themselves in. With her thumb, she found a button and a wheel dial easily enough. An experimental push of the button yielding a hiss, and the cushioned padding she hadn't even noticed inside inflated around her arm till it was snug and tight. Not painful, but it wasn't going anywhere easily.
She blinked, finally registering what she had done.
"Buh? W-why did I-?"
Her thumb accidentally rolled across the wheel-dial inside, and a chirpy, artificial voice happily rang out.
"Kinetic Lifter selected!"
The device vibrated, causing Taylor to recoil and with her free hand reach to try and tug it off. Before she could, the muzzle of the thing sprung into life, spinning and separating into different pieces. For a moment, she could see inside the part of the device her arm didn't occupy. Thousands of small, tiny parts bursting into motion, changing and shifting as new ones appeared and others vanished. Coming together and taking themselves apart into new shapes and formations.
It started to piece itself back together. Four flat, metallic fingers in a cross formation spring from the end, and a powerful thrum vibrated up her arm and into her shoulder. Sparks arched between the projections of metal, and an odd glow could be seen. It all came to an end, and Taylor was left standing there in confusion.
Eventually, when she was sure that it hadn't tried to take her arm off, Taylor actually brought it closer to look at. At first glance, it looked like what one would expect to see in a typical if comical representation of a robotic hand. Four flat hinged fingers of equal length, spread across the round section of the end in a cross so that if flexed they would met in the middle perfectly. Twisting it around showed that in the middle there was a glowing panel of some sort that was sparking energetically.
As soon as she looked, she pointed it away, muttering under her breath. "Rather not point this near me….."
Experimentally, she gave one of the triggers inside of the gauntlet a pull. In response, the upper most finger flexed inward. She gave the others pulls-and-pushes in turn, and each of her own fingers corresponded to a metallic one. They were actually rather dexterous, the rings having leeway that let her control them as naturally and easily as her own as she got the hang of it. But as she did, she had a thought.
'What did it say? Kinetic... Lifter? Does that mean it uses force to….lift things?'
Taylor's curiosity at this point needed to be sated. She frantically glanced around, until she spotted a small box beside her, tucked into a nook beside the door. There was a layer of dust on it, except for a oblong spot in the middle. It took her a moment, but she realized that this must have been where the device had been before her beating on the door knocked it off.
Still, it presented an opportune target.
She tentatively pointed her gauntlet-covered arm at the box and, unsure of what to do, started to randomly pull on the triggers.
All this accomplished was causing the metallic counterparts to waggle back-and-forth ridiculously and Taylor to frown. She looked between her arm and the crate, before she remembered the button inside.
She pointed her arm at the crate, relaxed her fingers and pressed the button. The device's thrum amplified, turning into a deep bass hum. The sparks became more frequent, and for a brief second, it kicked against her arm with a thump that caused her to recoil and take a step back to compensate.
But her attention was on the crate and the crackling white nimbus that surrounded it. Experimentally, she lifted her arm. In turn, the crate hovered into the air like it was tethered to end of her arm. At this, Taylor actually smiled.
"Yes!"
But then she blinked, and actually looked at what she was doing. She was..playing with it? Wasn't she just trying to leave? She shook her head.
She was right. She was trying to leave. But the door was locked…
A switch flicked in her brain, and Taylor looked between the metal box, and the door. A devious smile came over her, and she looked at the computer screen from the corner of her eye.
'Access denied, huh? I'll show you Access Denied...'
~~
"Raaagh!"
The sound of crunching metal filled the lab, along with a snarl of frustration. Beside her, the former metal box, now more of a crushed pancake of deformed metal, clattered on the floor as Taylor glared hatefully at the door. Behind her, the computer beeped it's now rage-inducing sound of denial.
Her breath came in strangled bursts, sweat pouring off her like a tide. Inside the gauntlet-thing, it was actually surprisingly cool. As fast as she sweated, it seemed to just vanish. At this point, her arm was probably the only dry and clean part of her as she had pounded away at the door for what felt like the last half hour, or maybe more? The surface of the door was now a riot of dents, but it still refused to open even if it was now capable of doing so.
"This…isn't…working…"
Her mind ran in circles, while her eyes roved for something new to batter down the door with. She flexed her fingers, trying to keep stiffness at bay while making the metallic counterparts on the end of the device mirror the action menacingly.
'There has to be something else I can use. Something better, something…"
She paused, intently analyzing the gauntlet. This time, she was able to bring up the images and thoughts intentionally, her mind seizing on a certain part.
'Variable...that means...I think…'
She used her thumb to expectantly flick at the little scroll-wheel set inside the handle. She was rewarded when that same chirpy artificial voice sounded again.
"Variable Driver selected!"
The end of the device sprang into motion again, coming apart and then putting itself together into-
"A screwdriver? Seriously?!" She protested.
Taylor frowned, near-disgusted. She didn't want a screwdriver. She wanted something to absolutely wreck this door, not fasten a loose hinge! She flicked the wheel again.
"High Density Plasma Cutter selected!"
The smile on her face as the device rearranged itself into a sharp, pointed nozzle was the kind that children would have had nightmares about.
"Oh, Oh yes."
She pointed it away from herself and pressed the trigger button. Nigh instantly, a crackling green edge of something burst from the end, almost as long as her arm. It cut into the wall faster than she could release the button, leaving a seared scar through the metal paneling when she did.
The smile, however, did not fade. If anything, it had grew wider and more manic.
"Hello, Christmas morning. Protocol this you hunk of junk."
The door's demise was quick and painful. Within a minute, its remains fell back into the hallway and onto the cement floor. Taylor carefully stepped through the hole in the now glowing edges of the door and stood triumphantly over the the slab of metal.
"That, is what I say to your protocol."
Taylor breathed deep, savoring a breath of fresh air. The front of her clothes now had small blotches of oily soot, the smoke that had resulted from her impromptu modification to the door sticking to her clothes but it had been worth it. Ultimately, the high of her success started to fade and she let out a sigh as she looked at the remains of the door somewhat bashfully.
"I guess...guess I'm out. God, that was corny. Why did I even-?"
She shook her head, and looked forward to the end of the hall.
"That doesn't matter, I need to get out of here, and get back home. I don't even know what time it is. What if dad's home already? I just dont…"
Taylor wilted slightly, her unoccupied hand crossing over to hold her other one. She was like that for a moment before nodding.
"Right. Home. Maybe...maybe that room I showed up in? That pad I showed up on might be able to send me back."
A moments pause, and then quietly, to herself:
"I hope."
What choice did she have but to hope? At the same time, she looked at the tool she was wearing and smiled. At least she also had something concrete to rely on. If this didn't work, she'd just have to make another exit. One she could get through, one way or another.
Hope reaffirmed, Taylor took down the hallway. Reaching the turn, she looked both ways.
'Which way did I come from? That way? Or this way?'
She combed through her memories, trying to pinpoint the exact sequence of events. Until…
'When I exited that one room I had come down from…"
Realization hit her eyes locked on to the left path.
"That way!"
She took the turn at a jog, running down the hallway.
'I passed a few doors on my way to that place. I just need to…"
Something caught her eye, and Taylor stopped dead in her tracks. It was this door! This was the one that she had come through when she had arrived here. That meant she just might be able to…!
As soon as she stepped up to the door, it opened with a hiss, revealing the same metal-paneled room, and the same raised pad as before.
"Yes!"
She made to step through, smiling widely only to stop. For a moment, she didn't know why. But then, as she looked not through the door, but at it, she realized why. A spike of paranoia shot through her happy and hopeful thoughts.
"It...opened?"
She actually froze, stepping away from the door and back into the hall. The door stayed temptingly open, waiting for her to pass through. But Taylor couldn't bring herself to do it. Her mind went back to not too long ago, trapped in that room with her...self?
She shook her head violently, her hair whipping through the air. She didn't want to think about that right now. Maybe later, she could try and face this. She just wanted to get home.
She looked down at the...multi-tool? she supposed. There was this. With her thoughts drifting in conflict, more of the images and diagrams came to the forefront, along with a niggling feeling.
Yes. There was that.
She had...what was it called? She didn't even remember. But now she was what? A parahuman? Or was she just going insane? She brought up and turned her arm over, looking at the polished silver-grey metal covering it.
'Mom built this…what does that say about whatever it is in my head right now that it wants to change it? Am I like mom was? Am I going to end up like her in that video, so different from what people normally see? Breaking down one second, manic the next?"
She thought back to when she had found the device, and the sheer elation she had felt when she had used it first to try and batter in the door, and then cut through it with emerald light like a knife through butter. It had been the best feeling in the world. Like in that moment, she had won everything ever. It had been such a high…
But at the same time, her mom had talked about it like it had been a curse. How it had hurt to try and resist it. Was that what she was fated for? Fighting it off a day at a time in seclusion? Just trying to stay sane?
Then there was this door. She shook her head, banished the thoughts and just looked at it, stared at it from every angle she could. It was wide open and waiting. Innocent. But she couldn't forget how she had been locked in another room by a similar door and those maddeningly frustrating denials from the computer. Was it trying to trap her again, lure her in?
She didn't want to be locked in again. But she had to pass through to find out if she get home. Her fingers tightened around the triggers in the tool.
If the computer tried again, she'd just cut through it and go right to showing what she thought about that.
Taylor screwed up her courage, and stepped through the door. It closed behind her with a quiet hiss, and Taylor tensed, anticipating some sound to signify that it had locked her in. She waited seconds, shoulders tight and stance ready, then almost a full minute. Tentatively, she turned around and took a step back towards it.
The door hissed open, the hallway in clear sight.
The unease melted away, and Taylor smiled shakily as she stepped back and the door closed again.
"Thank...thank goodness. It isn't locked. Now I just have to figure out if this can send me back home first, wherever home is. Mom said that this was in a warehouse somewhere or something…"
The first thing she did was examine the pad in the center of the room. Almost instantly, whatever it was that had changed in her came slithering to the front bringing more of it's mysterious knowledge.
Teleporter Network Hub. Operates on the basis of-
Taylor shook her head.
"No no no, I don't want to know why it works, I want to know if I can-"
Something glinted in the corner room, catching her eye. She focused on it, and suddenly recognizing sunk it.
"Thats-"
A metallic disc rested in a corner of the room. In its center, a familiar red gem glinting in the lights. It was the same thing she had accidentally used to bring herself here in the first place. If there was anything in here that could help her figure out a way back home, that just might be it.
She scrambled over to grab it, almost dropping to her knees to pick it up and turning it over in her hand. It was just as featureless as before, but this time it had the quality of hope. She desperately pushed down on the gem, starting the the same flashing pulse of crimson light as before. Behind her, a building whine started to sound.
She looked. and the pad behind her was lighting up from below. By first pulse, it was bright. By the second the sound was vibrating in her bones and light was incandescent. By the third, the world was washed away in white as she shielded her face with crossed arms..
Then white turned to blue, and everything shifted.
~~
Present
Taylor blinked, trying to banish the spots from her eyes. But already, there was a high of hope in her blood. She could feel the difference in location as she stumbled forward, and felt the familiar pock-marked cement wall of her basement as she reached out with her free hand to catch herself. As the lingering glare vanished, she looked behind her.
The side of the old water heater that had long since been disconnected and simply left to rust when it had been replaced slid smoothly shut, barely giving a passing glance at it's hollow inside, lined with high-tech panels.
Taylor stared for a moment, trying to comprehend what she had seen. She had always wondered why they hadn't simply gotten rid of it, instead of just sticking it a remote corner of the basement. It had been that way for...years?
How long had her mother said she had been…?
She stood there, lost in thought, one hand still in the tool she had claimed from the lab, the other tightly clutching the metal that had started it all.
"God….DAMMIT!"
She jerked around, facing the stairs as the curse rang through the closed door and down the stairs. It sounded...it sounded like her own voice. Taylor didn't know what to think. It hadn't sounded like Dad. Or Emma. Maybe...maybe it sounded like her mom. But that was just…
She rejected that train of thought right away. No matter what, it had not sounded like anyone that should be in the house. She didn't know what time it was, but there was someone...there was someone in her house! Her fingers tightened around the triggers inside the tool, and she slipped the metal disc into her pocket for safe keeping and ever so quietly started to make her way up the stairs.
She had been up and down them enough times to know where the wood creaked. Enough to avoid those spots with a bit of careful movement. It took a minute or more, but she managed to sneak her way up the stairs. Whatever she had heard, it had definitely come from the kitchen. She put her free hand on the door, and brought up the tool ever so slightly. It was still set to the Cutter mode she had used to get through the door, and felt confident that whatever was through the door, she could handle it.
Lightly, she pushed open the door and stepped up into the doorway.
Of course, the door creaked as loudly as possible.
She had barely seen the figure kneeling on the kitchen floor before recognition set in. Her head was turned towards her, familiar brown hair framing a well-known face.
Taylor's mind went blank as it tried to process what it was seeing. There was a moment they both just stared at each. Taylor could feel her mouth move as some part of her tried to express words. Eventually though, she found herself and swung the end of the multi-tool towards…
Herself?
Somehow, she found words to say. Ones from the spark of anger that had lit in her chest.
"Who...who the hell are you?"
A moment of tense silence passed between them. Her doppelganger kneeling on the floor, a sock held to the arch of her foot. Her, standing in the doorway holding a glorified welding tool as a weapon. Neither of them said anything, just looked at each other. Something about the silence made Taylor angrier.
"I said who the hell are you?!"
As soon as she said it though, Taylor heard not the anger in her voice, but the edge of something else. Something scared. The mirror image licked her lips, eyes locked on the muzzle of her impromptu weapon.
"I'm...I'm Taylor. Taylor Hebert. This is...my house… isn't it?" The perfect spitting image of her squeaked out the last two words, an edge of panic in her voice.
Taylor didn't know why, but those words made her angrier than she had...then she had ever been. The spark that had been in her chest exploded into a full-out blaze. Before she knew it, she was screaming as her mind flashed back to the lab. The row on row of masked girls with black hair floating in glass tubes. Her mother's words rang in her skull. She turned and without thinking put her armored fist through the open door, the wood easily splitting apart around the metal with a sharp and resounding crack as her hand went in one side and came out the other.
Just as quickly, faster even to the point of her figure being almost blurred at the edges, her other self leapt at her from the side. Long, willowy arms that matched her own wrapped around her and before she could try to resist, seized around where the metal ended to meet skin and pulled.
She yelped, her scream cut off as the inner cushioning caused the bandages around her arm to scrap painfully against her skin and her fingers almost twisted when they were wrenched from the inner triggers. One hand grabbed her shoulder in an iron grip as the other pulled on her arm, the feeling like being caught between cars going different ways. She could almost hear the groan of her bones as they resisted, fighting to stay in their sockets.
Perhaps thankfully, the tool gave up first and her arm slid free albeit against her will. She tried to lash out, anger still hot in her heart, but an open hand came up faster than she could see and caught her fist like it was nothing. It felt like punching a brick wall if nothing else, and the other hand still around her shoulder pushed her away, out into the kitchen.
She just about bounced as she hit the floor. But she managed catch herself in time to watch as her other self slammed the basement door closed and shoved the metal tool back through the hole. The sound as it fell and hit the stairs, and then as it bounced down each step to skitter to a stop somewhere on the cement below was like gunshots one after another.
She stared wide-eyed and panting as the copy stood there panting as well, even as she turned towards her and stood in front of the basement door with clear intent to not let her past. The two just stared at each other. In the space of a few seconds, everything had changed. Now Taylor was the one on her hands and knees on the floor, and the double was the one standing in a position of control.
Eventually, the one standing broke the silence. She looked at the table, and nodded her head in the direction.
"Sit."
Taylor stared at her for a moment, before she repeated herself more forcibly.
"Sit!"
Taylor flinched. But bowed her head and nodded. She pushed herself up on one arm, the other still aching. Carefully watching the girl in control as she circled to sit at the nearest seat.
The girl shook her head, and pointed to the table at the far end, away from her and the door.
"That side…"
There was a pause, and the girl's face softened into something like regret.
"Please, just over there…"
Taylor looked at her for a moment, before pushing the chair back in and moving to the other end. The wood squealed against the tile as she pulled it out and sat down, her less injured arm cradling the other. Her replica waited until she had pulled the chair in, before gingerly moving towards the table herself. She pulled the remaining chair out, and gingerly sat down.
For a moment, they just stared at each other. A tense silent in the air. Or maybe it was an awkward one. Two Taylors, sitting at one table. One with a bare foot, the other in grimy clothes with bandaged arms that was resisting the urge to glare daggers at the table's other occupant.
Eventually one of them broke the silence. The one missing a sock.
"So….it wasn-"
The other snarled.
"No."
She recoiled at the others violent tone, but tried to keep a calm face. Still, her heart sank.
"That means that it really happened and I-"
Another snarl, anger in the eyes of the bandaged Taylor.
"No!. That was...that was me! Who….what are you even doing here. Why?!"
There was a dense quiet after that. Both of them looked at each other, deep thought written across one set of features.. Eventually, the bandaged one spoke up.
"After...after the message...I passed out. Mom had said that if anything happened, then there would be...spares. Just in ca-"
The other Taylor seemed to snap, smashing her fist against the table causing it to creak dangerously even as it bounced up slightly as her voice rose to a fever pitch.
"I AM NOT A SPARE!"
Silence settled over the table again. One Taylor stared at the other. Finally, a loaded question hit the air.
"Then what are you?"
Another moment, before the anger seemed to fizzle and the girl collapsed into the table, cradling her head between her arms.
"I... I don't know. I woke up this morning and then I…"
The bandaged Taylor shook her head. All the anger in her own features had faded as well. Now there was a regret and distant sadness in her eyes.
"That was me. I woke up, did the chores and-"
The other one chimed in.
"Broke the dishes. After cleaning up, I went downstairs to try and-"
"-go through Mom's things. Then I found the stupid disc and it just..."
There was a pause. A cautious moment as they eyed each other, moving to speak only to stop as the other tried. Eventually, they spoke together. Their two voices harmonizing together.
"Ruined everything."
The bandaged Taylor careful stood up, but her double stayed staring at the table as she moved towards the fridge. Opening the old relic with the pop-hiss of the seal, she reached in and pulled out a pair of pops before sitting back down at the table and sliding one over to the other Taylor.
"So... what does that mean for us? Did me passing out... maybe even becoming a parahuman do this?
The other perked up, shock on her face.
"A Parahuman? What do you mean.?
Taylor shook her head.
"I don't.. I don't really know. I have... these things in my head. Pictures and designs and blueprints and when I look at stuff, I can't help but think about how to take it apart and turn it into something like a-"
There was a strange look on Taylor's face as she cut in suddenly, like she was zoned out. Her eyes weren't focused on anything.
"A Variable Weapon System connected to an alternate nervous system interlink with the brain?"
Both Taylor's stared at each other. Finally the dirtier one nodded slowly, a look of realization on her face.
"Yes… I was actually thinking... about that as well... Oh god."
The other nodded solemnly.
"I've been thinking about it... since I saw you come up from the basement with that thing on your arm. I was thinking… I could add a remote matter retrieval system, hook it up to something and feed continuous ammo into it via teleporter…"
A strange look came over the other Taylor's face as well, as if she was losing touch.
"Well, you'd only need to do that if you couldn't manage a matter replication system and a few pattern microfoundries…"
"But the energy cost-"
"-is offset by the self-charging energy source we can install easily enough once we get a magma crucible going."
Both stopped for a moment before doing the impossible. It was small at first, and grew, but soon both were smiling. And then they were laughing. They leaned back and laughed out loud. They both sat there, laughing for almost a minute straight till they both laid sprawled out on the table panting.
Then the crunch of gravel as a car started up the driveway.
Both Taylor's froze at the sound, fear running up their spines like a bolt of electricity as they looked at each other with panic on their faces. One word came out of their mouths simultaneously.
"Dad!"
They bolted up from their seats, chairs skittering across the tile. The bandaged Taylor grabbed the other by the shoulders and pushed her towards the basement door.
"Quick, Hide!"
However, her counterpart easily reversed it so she was the one pushing.
"No, you hide! What do you think Dad will think if he see's you? You look like you went through a warzone! He'll keel over!"
Then the bandaged Taylor reversed the positions again, pushing harder as they slowly made their way towards the door. She started to fumble in her pocket, reaching for the metal disc.
"I can explain that! But if he see's two of us, that'll be worse! Now hide!"
Another reversal, this time the cleaner Taylor pinning the other's arms behind her back as she started to frog-march her twin.
"You can't explain that! You look like you got mauled and thrown in a burning building! At least I look normal!"
The other Taylor managed to wrench her arms free, but instead of a reversal she turned around and grabbed the arms of her double. Just in time as well, for the slam of a car door and the grind of heavy boots.
"Look, one of us has to hide now! What do you think will happen if he finds us both in here? 'Oh, I'm sorry, your daughter apparently died years ago and your loving wife has been lying to you all this time, while she was really a parahuman and cloned her so she wouldn't die?'He still hasn't... still hasn't…"
Taylor nodded.
"I... I know. But please, think. You can't possible clean up in time. If he see's you, he'll ask questions. Questions I don't think either of us can answer."
There was a moment of silence. In the distance, keys and a doorknob rattled. The bandaged Taylor stared off in the direction of the front door, visibly split, but eventually nodded reluctantly.
"Al... alright."
She pulled out the metal disc from her pocket, the red gem glinting.
"I'll use this, and hide in the lab. I'll be back later. Just... just don't get comfortable alright? This is still... this is still my life. Even if we might have to share or something... this is still mine first."
Front door started to creak. Taylor replied in a forced whisper even as she reached around and opened the basement door, shoving her twin through.
"No. It's both of our's first. We'll sort it out later. Now go!"
The basement door closed, and through the hole a blue light flashed just as the front door opened and a tired voice called out.
"Taylor! Are you up?"
She looked at the hole in the basement door. The two chairs thrown across the room, the drinks on the table and the spots of blood on the floor. She looked down at her feet. Her feet that only had one sock on.
"Damnit!"
~~
"Taylor! Are you up?"
Danny rolled his shoulders as he hung up his jacket, and put down the armful of paperwork he was carrying on the side-table near the door. He looked around the corner towards the kitchen, calling out again.
"Taylor?"
A familiar voice called out back to him.
"Here dad! Just having… just having some trouble…"
He frowned, a spark of worry. This is the first he had actually heard more than two words from Taylor in days. And trouble?
He took the corner and stopped, staring at his daughter, before looking at the basement door and the fist-sized hole in it.
"Taylor…what happened?"
The look on her face as she pushed a chair back in from where she had been sitting was a mix between the sadness of earlier, and bashfulness.
"... Chores?"
~~
~~
Chapter 1
Wake up Call
Thanks to Sorain, Xomniac, Nicholai, and others as well for the help in making this snippet.
~~
The screen flashed, the image of Annette fading away into static as her last spoken words vanished into the static and hiss of the speakers. Once again, the screen faded to black and green text started to roll across it.
*Record End*
*Detecting physical crisis in Model 1-01. Evaluating.*
*Extreme abnormal mental activity, heart rate approaching dangerous levels, blood pressure entering hypertension.*
*Starting emergency engram upload.*
….
….
*Upload successful, previous version shunted to storage.*
*Warning! Contact lost with 1-01 Sync Chip.*
*Attempting to reestablish contact…*
*Attempting to reestablish contact…*
*Warning! Attempt to reestablish contact failed.*
*Attempting to bypass and access chip sensors.*
*Partial connection established.*
*Evaluating Model 1-01.*
….
….
*Unable to establish vital statistics. Neural tissue activity scan returns negative.*
*Compiling data.*
*Establishing hypothesis.*
*Model 1-01 considered deceased. Cause of Death: Unknown. Storing data for later analysis.*
*Unable to activate beacon for remote recovery. Presence of 1-01 in lab returns low-priority for activation of recovery protocol.*
*Calculating options….*
*Path of action confirmed. Pulling latest engram for upload. Evaluating situation….*
*Situation unknown. Potential immediate hazards unknown. Local geopolitical situation unstable. Environmental hazard minimal. Immediate social state stable but minimal. Emotional state unstable.*
*Final evaluation: Unknown potential hazard confirmed. Death of 1-01 to unknown circumstances confirmed. Activating Serial Model 1-03.*
*Starting engram download.*
*Preparing alternative physical coverings based on last confirmed scan. Teleport Beacon confirmed active in target residence.*
*T-minus 20 minutes and counting till stable download and decanting.*
~~
Thirteen year old Taylor jerked awake gasping, sitting up in her bed with sheets and blankets bunched in her bone-white fists. The afternoon sun through her window, and the sound of traffic up and down the street reached her ears. Her eyes darted around the room, seeing but not really grasping things. Eventually however, her heart rate slowed as the familiarity of the room dawned on her.
"My...my bedroom?"
She looked down at herself, staring at the same clothing as what she put on this morning down to the same pair of shoes she had put on to deal with the broken-
Taylor blinked, something odd striking her. She looked at her arms.
Bare skin from where her t-shirt ended to her wrists, unmarred and uncovered. She distinctly remembered wrapping them in gauze after the dishes…
She blinked again, running a hand over her skin trying to feel anything out of the ordinary like the dozens of tiny little punctures from fragmented porcelain. Except to her sense of touch, her skin was just as intact as she saw it. She made a fist, expect the little pinpricks of pain to finally show up only for nothing.
She wasn't hurt.
But then why was she wearing-?
Was it a dream? Had everything that had happened just been something in her head? Gotten dressed and then did nothing? Dropped back down in bed and fall asleep again, just to have a nightmare where she goes down into the basement, is teleported to a secret lab after finding something in her mother's jewel box and discovering she was some sort of clone?
"snerk"
Taylor actually had to make the effort to hold that one in. Of course. It had to be a dream. She smiled to herself swinging her legs over the side of the bed and looking at the alarm clock.
2:58 PM
Her smile faded, thinking about the dream. It was still so...vivid...in her mind. She idly tapped her shoes against the floorboards, just going over it again and again.
"It's just so...impossible. None of that could have happened. It's just absurd. Mom wasn't a parahuman, and my nightmare is just a nightmare. Nothing else. I must've...must've just gotten up, did the chores and came back upstairs to lay down again."
The thud-squeak of her running shoes cut through her reason and logic like a knife, drawing her gaze down to them. In turn, it was like the old ratty pair of shoes looked up at her, almost mockingly.
"I put them on after the dishes broke, so I wouldn't step on the broken porcelain. But if that was just part of my dream, why am I wearing them now?"
She stared at them for a moment, before shaking her head and kicking them off.
"I must have just put them on to take out the garbage and never taken them off, that's all. Nothing complicated."
She took another look at the clock, then out the window.
"I must've napped for a good few hours. I wonder...I wonder how school was today? If Emma…."
She continued to stare, the skyline of the city interior somewhat attractive. She could barely make out the silhouette of the PRT building far off in the distance. Finally, she shook her head and grabbed the top of her bedpost to hoist herself up.
~~
Earlier
If it was possible, the Computer System designed by Annette would have been annoyed. Of course, it was just a simple computer system. Therefore, it did not possess the emotional capacity or degree of free thought for it to be annoyed.
*Decanting of Serial Model 1-03 complete. Engram download at 99.99%. Engram download at 1-*
*Warning!*
*Detecting physical crisis in model 1-03. Evaluating.*
*Extreme abnormal mental activity, heart rate approaching dangerous levels, blood pressure entering hypertension. Matching symptoms to Serial Model 1-01 prior to expiry.*
Outside, in the room, Taylor still laid on the floor in front of the terminal, having slid from the chair. Not far from her body, a freshly emptied tube contained a thrashing figure. It's wet, black hair slapped against the glass and it's masked face as it's limbs trembled and spasmed. Without anything to hold it up, it flopped weakly against one side of it's glass container, sliding down till it huddled near the bottom.
*Warning! Contact lost with 1-03 Sync Chip.*
*Events match record of sudden cessation of 1-01. Possibility of biologically transmitted agent: Zero. 1-03 housed in self-contained sterile environment.*
The struggling movements of the figure slowed, and eventually died down. The figure laid almost completely still, except for the slow rise and fall of it's chest. On the floor nearby, Taylor's own rising and falling chest matched that of the figure.
Above the both of them, the looming screen flashed as green text scrolled by on the black background.
*Analyzing data.*
*Attempting bypass on 1-03 sync chip.*
*Partial bypass successful.*
*Evaluating model 1-03.*
*Unable to establish vital statistics. Neural tissue activity scan returns negative. Matching condition detected.*
*Hypothesizing…*
*Warning!*
*Sync Chip 1-01 active. Receiving signal. Serial Model 1-01 reporting stabilized vitals. Abnormal brain activity present, but lowered. Running detailed analysis….*
*Detecting abnormal alteration in brain structure. Non-standard neural tissue configurations present. Abnormal transmissions detected. Probing….*
*Transmissions consist of high-density neuro-chemical packets.*
*Altering diagnosis. 1-01 non-deceased. Unknown condition altered brain-structure significantly, causing loss of signal from sync chip. Applying data to analysis of Serial Model 1-03….*
*Remotely overriding 1-03 sync chip….override successful. Scanning….*
*Serial Model 1-03 experiencing high-density transmission of neuro-chemical packets. Detecting sudden and rapid alteration of brain structure. Unknown structures forming at rapid pace. Comparing to 1-01…*
*Structures match those present within 1-01. Structures appear to be non-malign, detecting no abnormal cranial pressure or deformations. Brain tissue is intact in both 1-01 and 1-03.*
*Structures appear to transmit continually. Contents of transmissions unknown.*
*Serial Model 1-03 is ready to transport. Continue with transmission?*
….
….
….
*Transmitting Serial Model to Residence. Applying last known physical coverings. Serial Model 1-01 will be kept for further analysis. Disabling Serial Model system until explanation for conditions of 1-01 and 1-03 is confirmed.*
*Warning! System does not have protocol for multiple Serial Model activation. Programming dictates that only one Serial Model be active unless situation critical.*
*Disregarding. Potential risk to program outweighs violation. Mission Goal cannot be compromised. Transmitting 1-03 now.*
A small flash of blue, and the figure in the tube had changed. Instead of a medical gown and a mask, rapidly drying black hair framed the face of Taylor Hebert. She wore an identical pair of sweats and T-shirt as her counterpart laying on the floor. However, she lacked the wrapped gauze around her arms, or the dozens of little pin-prick wounds from earlier.
Then in another flash of blue light, she was gone and the tube was empty.
The computer screen seemed to hum to itself, blank for a moment. Then more text appeared.
*1-03 transmission successful.*
*Compiling data.*
*Standing Hypothesis: Parahuman Event. Structures match scientific recordings of Genma Pollentia and Corona found in the brain tissue of parahumans. Activating remote network access. Beginning research. Reference: Manton.*
~~
Taylor gingerly hopped over that one odd step on her way down, easily avoiding the awkward bit of stair. It had been out of alignment for years, and she had learned since she was little to avoid it unless she wanted to risk taking a tumble down, or bashing her head on the way up.
The rickety old set of stairs had enough dents already from someone doing just that over the years.
'Couldn't even watch his own fucking step…'
She shook her head, vigorously banishing the false memory and ignoring one of the larger dents in the wood. Her mom had hated the stairs for as long as she could remember, and had always been trying to fix that one step for years now.
Socks met hardwood floor as she stepped off the stairs, and turned down the small hallway and into the kitchen where it transitioned into tile. An unintentional glance showed her the basement door closed tight and undisturbed. It was a relief of sorts. Another confirmation that it was just a bad dream.
At this point, her stomach groaned and a pang of hunger hit her.
"That's right...I slept right through lunch. I suppose I'll make something. Maybe I should start something for dinner?
She frowned slightly, unconsciously rubbing her arms
"At least, something to take my mind off of that nightmare."
Taylor took the the first step towards the fridge, only to gasp as a sudden, stabbing pain shot up from the bottom of her foot all the way up her leg. she immediately went down on one knee, taking her foot of the floor as she grabbed for it, trying to find the now throbbing sliver of fire lodged in her skin.
"God….DAMMIT!"
Her face was a rictus as she desperately pulled off her sock, spots of red decorating the bottom of the white fabric and the motion sending another rod of agony up her leg. She could feel the warm blood dripping down her foot while her fingers quested for whatever it was causing her pain.
She half-gasped as her teeth dug into her lip hard enough to sting when she bumped into something sticking out of the arch of her foot. She gritted her features, seized her fingers around it and pulled. The pain exploded sharply for a moment, before dying off as it lowered to a dull throb. She breathed a sigh of relief, as she brought up her open hand and looked at the cause of her pain laying in her open palm as she used her free hand to ball up her discarded sock and press it against the bleed.
It was surprisingly small for being such a big pain, but the little blood-stained shard of porcelain glinted in the kitchen lights at her, almost mockingly.
Taylor's mind blanked for a moment, trying to process what she was seeing. It had just been a dream. There shouldn't be any broken porcelain for any reason she could think of laying around the kitchen floor.
'That's just...it's not real. It's impossible. Mom wasn't a-'
The basement door creaked behind her, and Taylor twisted her head around as it swung open. A grease and soot-stained arm had pushed the creaking wooden door wide open, wrapped from wrist-to-elbow in gauze. Another gauze-wrapped arm came into view, this one terminating in a steel-grey metal gauntlet that went past the wrist into something that looked disturbingly like a muzzle.
But what stopped her mind in her tracks was her own face staring back at her as a teenage girl dressed in a perfect match for her own clothing, plus various oily black spots stepped up into view. The girl, her virtual twin froze in the doorway, staring down at her. The mirror of her own features seemed stuck in a look of surprise and shock, mouth working to form words that didn't come out.
Time stopped for a moment, and then the muzzle of whatever-it-was swung her way, a wary stance taken by her living reflection as words finally came out of her mouth.
They were colored with disbelief, and something that approached anger and confusion.
"Who...who the hell are you?"
~~
Earlier
Taylor woke up slowly, to a gentle, low hum filling the air. Her eyes opened blearily to the view of paneled metal and light panels above her, having to blink away the fog till she could start to clearly make out details. Then came the slow, building ache in her back and neck as she became aware of her position slumped on the unyielding floor. It took her a moment, but she was able to reach a hand up and over the armrest of the chair above, giving her the leverage to pull herself to her feet.
With her free hand, she tried to rub the cramps out of her shoulders, even as the start of a throbbing headache pounded at the back of her eyeballs.
"Wha-? What...happened?"
She looked, dazed, around the room. Her eyes settled on the glowing screen, and memories of what had happened came streaming back. Everything seemed to slow down as she took in the blank screen, and her throat turned dry.
"M-mom?"
She turned around slowly, remembering what else was in the room. They still floated in their rows on rows of glass tubes. Faceless behind their featureless white masks. Except now as she looked at them her throbbing headache spiked and something new bulled through to the forefront of her thoughts.
Hybrid bio-chemical/temporal stasis tank. Slows cellular development while preventing cellular energy exchange beyond a certain point using-
Both of her hands flew to her forehead and ground the heels of her palms as hard as they could into the skin. It hurt, like someone had lit a candle under her brain. There were images, pictures of something slamming against the back of her forehead like a battering ram.
"W-ha-? D-d-dammit! What the h-hell is this?"
Temporal technology basis for-
"Aragh! F-f-fuck! S-stop!"
Taylor tried to push back, tried to mentally barricade herself against the assault, but all that she managed to accomplish was to lessen the pain, but not do away with it entirely. The diagrams, images and even blueprints faded, but were still there. Finally, when her thoughts were hers again, she noticed that at some point, she had fallen back on her knees in front of the computer.
She looped an arm up around the armrest of the chair, and hauling herself up onto her feet kept her eyes firmly locked on the floor. She didn't want to risk another...event. Or whatever it was.
She turned around instead, dropping herself in the chair and looking at the computer screen. The green screen hummed at her. The video was over, and nothing was displayed.
'Did...did I miss the rest?'
Something about that, something about what her mother was trying to say and not having been able to hear it made her sink. No matter what it was, she just...she needed to know if that had been everything. She looked at the keyboard, trying to decipher it. Many of the keys were familiar, the basic setup for a computer. But many of the others were alien, featuring unknown lettering and symbols.
'I need to replay the message. I need to know if there was more she was trying to tell me.'
She just stared at the keyboard, uncertain. There wasn't even a mouse as far as she could see. Tentatively, she reached out her hands into the practiced typing positions an-
A rush of fresh images broke through the mental wall she had put up like it was wet tissue, causing Taylor to jerk in her seat. Suddenly, the keyboard made sense. If anything, the part she was comfortable with now seemed alien to her. Someone had cut out part of the original design, and installed an outdated one instead. It was even arranged wrong in relation to everything ever.
It was just plain wrong. She could do something ten times more efficient. She just needed-
Taylor froze.
'What...what am I doing?'
She hadn't even noticed until now, but the headache was fading. Almost gone entirely even, and the images weren't bull-rushing to the front of her thoughts anymore but were stealthily slipping in. When she had looked at the keyboard and the wrongness of it what had come to mind was something similar. Smaller, more compact that was portable. It would fit over her forearm like a bracer, and hook into the augmented artificial nervous system she could install by-
"Aragh! No! I...I…"
Taylor stopped, and blinked. Suddenly part of her mother's message came back to mind.
'What I knew was what I could do. I could see these things in my mind. Burning images, seared into my brain that just itched….'
Her thoughts slowed, as she tried to process it. In the background of her mind, something for accelerating the natural thought process by augmenting it with a micro-computer implanted at the base of the spine reared it's head.
'This is...isn't this what mom said being a-a Parahuman was like? What did she call it?'
It skipped a few times, taking precious seconds before her brain was able to finally settle on the term.
'Tinker…'
She suddenly pushed herself away from the keyboard, spinning the chair around violent as she leapt to her feet and started down the walkway between the tubes at something approaching a run and headed for the door. She kept her eyes down, trying to avoid triggering another assault of images infiltrating her thoughts.
'I-I need to get out. I need to get home, away from here. I need to get somewhere I can think.'
She looked up, expecting the door to have opened automatically like before. But instead, she found herself a few inches from unyielding metal as it remained resoundingly shut. She almost wasn't able to to get her arms in front of her to cushion the impact as she ran headlong into it. As it was, pain blossomed in both of her already sensitive arms as they were forced to take the impact caught between hard metal and her own body.
She all but bounced off of it, the impact sending her flailing backwards as she stumbled back trying to keep her feet under her while her arms pinwheeled. Thankfully she succeeded, but she was left painfully gasping. Her arms laid limply by her sides, fingers twitching. There was almost no feeling left in them, except for pain.
Behind her on the other end of the room, the computer beeped at her. Taylor turned around, and watched as green text scrolled across the screen.
*Access Denied. Protocol in effect, lab under lockdown until further notice.*
She stared at the words for a moment, before a spark of indignation ignited within her.
"What...what do you mean, Access Denied? Let me out!"
She turned around again impulsively leveling a kick that thudded ineffectively off the metal. The computer beeped at her again, another line of its 'Access Denied' scrolling across the screen.
The spark of anger and frustration in her chest flared hotter.
"I don't care! You can't just let me in here then trap me! Let me OUT!"
Enough feeling had returned to her harms that she was able to lift them to pound ineffectively against the metal slab that was the door. Each hit was returned with an increasingly mocking beep from across the room, and another line of rejective text. She even chambered another kick, putting as much strength into it as she could. But as soon as it connected, all she got for her trouble was the hollow ring of metal and a spike of pain.
But this time, the digital beep was accompanied by something else.
It echoed loudly in the room, off the walls and glass tubes. A metallic clatter of a higher pitch as something hit the floor nearby. Right next to her even. She felt something roll up against her leg, and looked down.
It was long and grey, smooth and shiny, an almost continuous piece of polished metal that was a mix of a gauntlet ending with a muzzle. As soon as she looked at it, new images and sprung to life in her mind. There wasn't any pain this time, beyond a sort of mental itch that demanded that her attention be given to this. But at the same time, the diagrams in her head didn't match up with what she was seeing. Something in her head told her that this was different than what she knew, but that it was something that she did know. It was like a voice almost, telling her what it noticed was wrong.
Or maybe was was different? Either way, the sight of it made her anger and frustration fade away to be replaced with a sort of intrigue.
Modified Variable Weapon System. Integrated Refractor power source, expanded data storage module. Wireless network link to Master Computer system. Manual control system.
Bit by bit, her gaze was drawn to tiny, insignificant things that whatever it was in her head told her were not insignificant. A continuous stream of thoughts flooded through her mind, ways she could change it, improve it, alter it, rebuild it entirely.
Before she knew it, Taylor had reached down, picked up the device and slid it on without a second thought. Her arm fit almost perfectly into one end of it, until it reached just below her elbow and her fingers hit something inside. It took a moment, but she slid her digits around some sort of handle behind the muzzle-end, her individual fingers finding ring-triggers to house themselves in. With her thumb, she found a button and a wheel dial easily enough. An experimental push of the button yielding a hiss, and the cushioned padding she hadn't even noticed inside inflated around her arm till it was snug and tight. Not painful, but it wasn't going anywhere easily.
She blinked, finally registering what she had done.
"Buh? W-why did I-?"
Her thumb accidentally rolled across the wheel-dial inside, and a chirpy, artificial voice happily rang out.
"Kinetic Lifter selected!"
The device vibrated, causing Taylor to recoil and with her free hand reach to try and tug it off. Before she could, the muzzle of the thing sprung into life, spinning and separating into different pieces. For a moment, she could see inside the part of the device her arm didn't occupy. Thousands of small, tiny parts bursting into motion, changing and shifting as new ones appeared and others vanished. Coming together and taking themselves apart into new shapes and formations.
It started to piece itself back together. Four flat, metallic fingers in a cross formation spring from the end, and a powerful thrum vibrated up her arm and into her shoulder. Sparks arched between the projections of metal, and an odd glow could be seen. It all came to an end, and Taylor was left standing there in confusion.
Eventually, when she was sure that it hadn't tried to take her arm off, Taylor actually brought it closer to look at. At first glance, it looked like what one would expect to see in a typical if comical representation of a robotic hand. Four flat hinged fingers of equal length, spread across the round section of the end in a cross so that if flexed they would met in the middle perfectly. Twisting it around showed that in the middle there was a glowing panel of some sort that was sparking energetically.
As soon as she looked, she pointed it away, muttering under her breath. "Rather not point this near me….."
Experimentally, she gave one of the triggers inside of the gauntlet a pull. In response, the upper most finger flexed inward. She gave the others pulls-and-pushes in turn, and each of her own fingers corresponded to a metallic one. They were actually rather dexterous, the rings having leeway that let her control them as naturally and easily as her own as she got the hang of it. But as she did, she had a thought.
'What did it say? Kinetic... Lifter? Does that mean it uses force to….lift things?'
Taylor's curiosity at this point needed to be sated. She frantically glanced around, until she spotted a small box beside her, tucked into a nook beside the door. There was a layer of dust on it, except for a oblong spot in the middle. It took her a moment, but she realized that this must have been where the device had been before her beating on the door knocked it off.
Still, it presented an opportune target.
She tentatively pointed her gauntlet-covered arm at the box and, unsure of what to do, started to randomly pull on the triggers.
All this accomplished was causing the metallic counterparts to waggle back-and-forth ridiculously and Taylor to frown. She looked between her arm and the crate, before she remembered the button inside.
She pointed her arm at the crate, relaxed her fingers and pressed the button. The device's thrum amplified, turning into a deep bass hum. The sparks became more frequent, and for a brief second, it kicked against her arm with a thump that caused her to recoil and take a step back to compensate.
But her attention was on the crate and the crackling white nimbus that surrounded it. Experimentally, she lifted her arm. In turn, the crate hovered into the air like it was tethered to end of her arm. At this, Taylor actually smiled.
"Yes!"
But then she blinked, and actually looked at what she was doing. She was..playing with it? Wasn't she just trying to leave? She shook her head.
She was right. She was trying to leave. But the door was locked…
A switch flicked in her brain, and Taylor looked between the metal box, and the door. A devious smile came over her, and she looked at the computer screen from the corner of her eye.
'Access denied, huh? I'll show you Access Denied...'
~~
"Raaagh!"
The sound of crunching metal filled the lab, along with a snarl of frustration. Beside her, the former metal box, now more of a crushed pancake of deformed metal, clattered on the floor as Taylor glared hatefully at the door. Behind her, the computer beeped it's now rage-inducing sound of denial.
Her breath came in strangled bursts, sweat pouring off her like a tide. Inside the gauntlet-thing, it was actually surprisingly cool. As fast as she sweated, it seemed to just vanish. At this point, her arm was probably the only dry and clean part of her as she had pounded away at the door for what felt like the last half hour, or maybe more? The surface of the door was now a riot of dents, but it still refused to open even if it was now capable of doing so.
"This…isn't…working…"
Her mind ran in circles, while her eyes roved for something new to batter down the door with. She flexed her fingers, trying to keep stiffness at bay while making the metallic counterparts on the end of the device mirror the action menacingly.
'There has to be something else I can use. Something better, something…"
She paused, intently analyzing the gauntlet. This time, she was able to bring up the images and thoughts intentionally, her mind seizing on a certain part.
'Variable...that means...I think…'
She used her thumb to expectantly flick at the little scroll-wheel set inside the handle. She was rewarded when that same chirpy artificial voice sounded again.
"Variable Driver selected!"
The end of the device sprang into motion again, coming apart and then putting itself together into-
"A screwdriver? Seriously?!" She protested.
Taylor frowned, near-disgusted. She didn't want a screwdriver. She wanted something to absolutely wreck this door, not fasten a loose hinge! She flicked the wheel again.
"High Density Plasma Cutter selected!"
The smile on her face as the device rearranged itself into a sharp, pointed nozzle was the kind that children would have had nightmares about.
"Oh, Oh yes."
She pointed it away from herself and pressed the trigger button. Nigh instantly, a crackling green edge of something burst from the end, almost as long as her arm. It cut into the wall faster than she could release the button, leaving a seared scar through the metal paneling when she did.
The smile, however, did not fade. If anything, it had grew wider and more manic.
"Hello, Christmas morning. Protocol this you hunk of junk."
The door's demise was quick and painful. Within a minute, its remains fell back into the hallway and onto the cement floor. Taylor carefully stepped through the hole in the now glowing edges of the door and stood triumphantly over the the slab of metal.
"That, is what I say to your protocol."
Taylor breathed deep, savoring a breath of fresh air. The front of her clothes now had small blotches of oily soot, the smoke that had resulted from her impromptu modification to the door sticking to her clothes but it had been worth it. Ultimately, the high of her success started to fade and she let out a sigh as she looked at the remains of the door somewhat bashfully.
"I guess...guess I'm out. God, that was corny. Why did I even-?"
She shook her head, and looked forward to the end of the hall.
"That doesn't matter, I need to get out of here, and get back home. I don't even know what time it is. What if dad's home already? I just dont…"
Taylor wilted slightly, her unoccupied hand crossing over to hold her other one. She was like that for a moment before nodding.
"Right. Home. Maybe...maybe that room I showed up in? That pad I showed up on might be able to send me back."
A moments pause, and then quietly, to herself:
"I hope."
What choice did she have but to hope? At the same time, she looked at the tool she was wearing and smiled. At least she also had something concrete to rely on. If this didn't work, she'd just have to make another exit. One she could get through, one way or another.
Hope reaffirmed, Taylor took down the hallway. Reaching the turn, she looked both ways.
'Which way did I come from? That way? Or this way?'
She combed through her memories, trying to pinpoint the exact sequence of events. Until…
'When I exited that one room I had come down from…"
Realization hit her eyes locked on to the left path.
"That way!"
She took the turn at a jog, running down the hallway.
'I passed a few doors on my way to that place. I just need to…"
Something caught her eye, and Taylor stopped dead in her tracks. It was this door! This was the one that she had come through when she had arrived here. That meant she just might be able to…!
As soon as she stepped up to the door, it opened with a hiss, revealing the same metal-paneled room, and the same raised pad as before.
"Yes!"
She made to step through, smiling widely only to stop. For a moment, she didn't know why. But then, as she looked not through the door, but at it, she realized why. A spike of paranoia shot through her happy and hopeful thoughts.
"It...opened?"
She actually froze, stepping away from the door and back into the hall. The door stayed temptingly open, waiting for her to pass through. But Taylor couldn't bring herself to do it. Her mind went back to not too long ago, trapped in that room with her...self?
She shook her head violently, her hair whipping through the air. She didn't want to think about that right now. Maybe later, she could try and face this. She just wanted to get home.
She looked down at the...multi-tool? she supposed. There was this. With her thoughts drifting in conflict, more of the images and diagrams came to the forefront, along with a niggling feeling.
Yes. There was that.
She had...what was it called? She didn't even remember. But now she was what? A parahuman? Or was she just going insane? She brought up and turned her arm over, looking at the polished silver-grey metal covering it.
'Mom built this…what does that say about whatever it is in my head right now that it wants to change it? Am I like mom was? Am I going to end up like her in that video, so different from what people normally see? Breaking down one second, manic the next?"
She thought back to when she had found the device, and the sheer elation she had felt when she had used it first to try and batter in the door, and then cut through it with emerald light like a knife through butter. It had been the best feeling in the world. Like in that moment, she had won everything ever. It had been such a high…
But at the same time, her mom had talked about it like it had been a curse. How it had hurt to try and resist it. Was that what she was fated for? Fighting it off a day at a time in seclusion? Just trying to stay sane?
Then there was this door. She shook her head, banished the thoughts and just looked at it, stared at it from every angle she could. It was wide open and waiting. Innocent. But she couldn't forget how she had been locked in another room by a similar door and those maddeningly frustrating denials from the computer. Was it trying to trap her again, lure her in?
She didn't want to be locked in again. But she had to pass through to find out if she get home. Her fingers tightened around the triggers in the tool.
If the computer tried again, she'd just cut through it and go right to showing what she thought about that.
Taylor screwed up her courage, and stepped through the door. It closed behind her with a quiet hiss, and Taylor tensed, anticipating some sound to signify that it had locked her in. She waited seconds, shoulders tight and stance ready, then almost a full minute. Tentatively, she turned around and took a step back towards it.
The door hissed open, the hallway in clear sight.
The unease melted away, and Taylor smiled shakily as she stepped back and the door closed again.
"Thank...thank goodness. It isn't locked. Now I just have to figure out if this can send me back home first, wherever home is. Mom said that this was in a warehouse somewhere or something…"
The first thing she did was examine the pad in the center of the room. Almost instantly, whatever it was that had changed in her came slithering to the front bringing more of it's mysterious knowledge.
Teleporter Network Hub. Operates on the basis of-
Taylor shook her head.
"No no no, I don't want to know why it works, I want to know if I can-"
Something glinted in the corner room, catching her eye. She focused on it, and suddenly recognizing sunk it.
"Thats-"
A metallic disc rested in a corner of the room. In its center, a familiar red gem glinting in the lights. It was the same thing she had accidentally used to bring herself here in the first place. If there was anything in here that could help her figure out a way back home, that just might be it.
She scrambled over to grab it, almost dropping to her knees to pick it up and turning it over in her hand. It was just as featureless as before, but this time it had the quality of hope. She desperately pushed down on the gem, starting the the same flashing pulse of crimson light as before. Behind her, a building whine started to sound.
She looked. and the pad behind her was lighting up from below. By first pulse, it was bright. By the second the sound was vibrating in her bones and light was incandescent. By the third, the world was washed away in white as she shielded her face with crossed arms..
Then white turned to blue, and everything shifted.
~~
Present
Taylor blinked, trying to banish the spots from her eyes. But already, there was a high of hope in her blood. She could feel the difference in location as she stumbled forward, and felt the familiar pock-marked cement wall of her basement as she reached out with her free hand to catch herself. As the lingering glare vanished, she looked behind her.
The side of the old water heater that had long since been disconnected and simply left to rust when it had been replaced slid smoothly shut, barely giving a passing glance at it's hollow inside, lined with high-tech panels.
Taylor stared for a moment, trying to comprehend what she had seen. She had always wondered why they hadn't simply gotten rid of it, instead of just sticking it a remote corner of the basement. It had been that way for...years?
How long had her mother said she had been…?
She stood there, lost in thought, one hand still in the tool she had claimed from the lab, the other tightly clutching the metal that had started it all.
"God….DAMMIT!"
She jerked around, facing the stairs as the curse rang through the closed door and down the stairs. It sounded...it sounded like her own voice. Taylor didn't know what to think. It hadn't sounded like Dad. Or Emma. Maybe...maybe it sounded like her mom. But that was just…
She rejected that train of thought right away. No matter what, it had not sounded like anyone that should be in the house. She didn't know what time it was, but there was someone...there was someone in her house! Her fingers tightened around the triggers inside the tool, and she slipped the metal disc into her pocket for safe keeping and ever so quietly started to make her way up the stairs.
She had been up and down them enough times to know where the wood creaked. Enough to avoid those spots with a bit of careful movement. It took a minute or more, but she managed to sneak her way up the stairs. Whatever she had heard, it had definitely come from the kitchen. She put her free hand on the door, and brought up the tool ever so slightly. It was still set to the Cutter mode she had used to get through the door, and felt confident that whatever was through the door, she could handle it.
Lightly, she pushed open the door and stepped up into the doorway.
Of course, the door creaked as loudly as possible.
She had barely seen the figure kneeling on the kitchen floor before recognition set in. Her head was turned towards her, familiar brown hair framing a well-known face.
Taylor's mind went blank as it tried to process what it was seeing. There was a moment they both just stared at each. Taylor could feel her mouth move as some part of her tried to express words. Eventually though, she found herself and swung the end of the multi-tool towards…
Herself?
Somehow, she found words to say. Ones from the spark of anger that had lit in her chest.
"Who...who the hell are you?"
A moment of tense silence passed between them. Her doppelganger kneeling on the floor, a sock held to the arch of her foot. Her, standing in the doorway holding a glorified welding tool as a weapon. Neither of them said anything, just looked at each other. Something about the silence made Taylor angrier.
"I said who the hell are you?!"
As soon as she said it though, Taylor heard not the anger in her voice, but the edge of something else. Something scared. The mirror image licked her lips, eyes locked on the muzzle of her impromptu weapon.
"I'm...I'm Taylor. Taylor Hebert. This is...my house… isn't it?" The perfect spitting image of her squeaked out the last two words, an edge of panic in her voice.
Taylor didn't know why, but those words made her angrier than she had...then she had ever been. The spark that had been in her chest exploded into a full-out blaze. Before she knew it, she was screaming as her mind flashed back to the lab. The row on row of masked girls with black hair floating in glass tubes. Her mother's words rang in her skull. She turned and without thinking put her armored fist through the open door, the wood easily splitting apart around the metal with a sharp and resounding crack as her hand went in one side and came out the other.
Just as quickly, faster even to the point of her figure being almost blurred at the edges, her other self leapt at her from the side. Long, willowy arms that matched her own wrapped around her and before she could try to resist, seized around where the metal ended to meet skin and pulled.
She yelped, her scream cut off as the inner cushioning caused the bandages around her arm to scrap painfully against her skin and her fingers almost twisted when they were wrenched from the inner triggers. One hand grabbed her shoulder in an iron grip as the other pulled on her arm, the feeling like being caught between cars going different ways. She could almost hear the groan of her bones as they resisted, fighting to stay in their sockets.
Perhaps thankfully, the tool gave up first and her arm slid free albeit against her will. She tried to lash out, anger still hot in her heart, but an open hand came up faster than she could see and caught her fist like it was nothing. It felt like punching a brick wall if nothing else, and the other hand still around her shoulder pushed her away, out into the kitchen.
She just about bounced as she hit the floor. But she managed catch herself in time to watch as her other self slammed the basement door closed and shoved the metal tool back through the hole. The sound as it fell and hit the stairs, and then as it bounced down each step to skitter to a stop somewhere on the cement below was like gunshots one after another.
She stared wide-eyed and panting as the copy stood there panting as well, even as she turned towards her and stood in front of the basement door with clear intent to not let her past. The two just stared at each other. In the space of a few seconds, everything had changed. Now Taylor was the one on her hands and knees on the floor, and the double was the one standing in a position of control.
Eventually, the one standing broke the silence. She looked at the table, and nodded her head in the direction.
"Sit."
Taylor stared at her for a moment, before she repeated herself more forcibly.
"Sit!"
Taylor flinched. But bowed her head and nodded. She pushed herself up on one arm, the other still aching. Carefully watching the girl in control as she circled to sit at the nearest seat.
The girl shook her head, and pointed to the table at the far end, away from her and the door.
"That side…"
There was a pause, and the girl's face softened into something like regret.
"Please, just over there…"
Taylor looked at her for a moment, before pushing the chair back in and moving to the other end. The wood squealed against the tile as she pulled it out and sat down, her less injured arm cradling the other. Her replica waited until she had pulled the chair in, before gingerly moving towards the table herself. She pulled the remaining chair out, and gingerly sat down.
For a moment, they just stared at each other. A tense silent in the air. Or maybe it was an awkward one. Two Taylors, sitting at one table. One with a bare foot, the other in grimy clothes with bandaged arms that was resisting the urge to glare daggers at the table's other occupant.
Eventually one of them broke the silence. The one missing a sock.
"So….it wasn-"
The other snarled.
"No."
She recoiled at the others violent tone, but tried to keep a calm face. Still, her heart sank.
"That means that it really happened and I-"
Another snarl, anger in the eyes of the bandaged Taylor.
"No!. That was...that was me! Who….what are you even doing here. Why?!"
There was a dense quiet after that. Both of them looked at each other, deep thought written across one set of features.. Eventually, the bandaged one spoke up.
"After...after the message...I passed out. Mom had said that if anything happened, then there would be...spares. Just in ca-"
The other Taylor seemed to snap, smashing her fist against the table causing it to creak dangerously even as it bounced up slightly as her voice rose to a fever pitch.
"I AM NOT A SPARE!"
Silence settled over the table again. One Taylor stared at the other. Finally, a loaded question hit the air.
"Then what are you?"
Another moment, before the anger seemed to fizzle and the girl collapsed into the table, cradling her head between her arms.
"I... I don't know. I woke up this morning and then I…"
The bandaged Taylor shook her head. All the anger in her own features had faded as well. Now there was a regret and distant sadness in her eyes.
"That was me. I woke up, did the chores and-"
The other one chimed in.
"Broke the dishes. After cleaning up, I went downstairs to try and-"
"-go through Mom's things. Then I found the stupid disc and it just..."
There was a pause. A cautious moment as they eyed each other, moving to speak only to stop as the other tried. Eventually, they spoke together. Their two voices harmonizing together.
"Ruined everything."
The bandaged Taylor careful stood up, but her double stayed staring at the table as she moved towards the fridge. Opening the old relic with the pop-hiss of the seal, she reached in and pulled out a pair of pops before sitting back down at the table and sliding one over to the other Taylor.
"So... what does that mean for us? Did me passing out... maybe even becoming a parahuman do this?
The other perked up, shock on her face.
"A Parahuman? What do you mean.?
Taylor shook her head.
"I don't.. I don't really know. I have... these things in my head. Pictures and designs and blueprints and when I look at stuff, I can't help but think about how to take it apart and turn it into something like a-"
There was a strange look on Taylor's face as she cut in suddenly, like she was zoned out. Her eyes weren't focused on anything.
"A Variable Weapon System connected to an alternate nervous system interlink with the brain?"
Both Taylor's stared at each other. Finally the dirtier one nodded slowly, a look of realization on her face.
"Yes… I was actually thinking... about that as well... Oh god."
The other nodded solemnly.
"I've been thinking about it... since I saw you come up from the basement with that thing on your arm. I was thinking… I could add a remote matter retrieval system, hook it up to something and feed continuous ammo into it via teleporter…"
A strange look came over the other Taylor's face as well, as if she was losing touch.
"Well, you'd only need to do that if you couldn't manage a matter replication system and a few pattern microfoundries…"
"But the energy cost-"
"-is offset by the self-charging energy source we can install easily enough once we get a magma crucible going."
Both stopped for a moment before doing the impossible. It was small at first, and grew, but soon both were smiling. And then they were laughing. They leaned back and laughed out loud. They both sat there, laughing for almost a minute straight till they both laid sprawled out on the table panting.
Then the crunch of gravel as a car started up the driveway.
Both Taylor's froze at the sound, fear running up their spines like a bolt of electricity as they looked at each other with panic on their faces. One word came out of their mouths simultaneously.
"Dad!"
They bolted up from their seats, chairs skittering across the tile. The bandaged Taylor grabbed the other by the shoulders and pushed her towards the basement door.
"Quick, Hide!"
However, her counterpart easily reversed it so she was the one pushing.
"No, you hide! What do you think Dad will think if he see's you? You look like you went through a warzone! He'll keel over!"
Then the bandaged Taylor reversed the positions again, pushing harder as they slowly made their way towards the door. She started to fumble in her pocket, reaching for the metal disc.
"I can explain that! But if he see's two of us, that'll be worse! Now hide!"
Another reversal, this time the cleaner Taylor pinning the other's arms behind her back as she started to frog-march her twin.
"You can't explain that! You look like you got mauled and thrown in a burning building! At least I look normal!"
The other Taylor managed to wrench her arms free, but instead of a reversal she turned around and grabbed the arms of her double. Just in time as well, for the slam of a car door and the grind of heavy boots.
"Look, one of us has to hide now! What do you think will happen if he finds us both in here? 'Oh, I'm sorry, your daughter apparently died years ago and your loving wife has been lying to you all this time, while she was really a parahuman and cloned her so she wouldn't die?'He still hasn't... still hasn't…"
Taylor nodded.
"I... I know. But please, think. You can't possible clean up in time. If he see's you, he'll ask questions. Questions I don't think either of us can answer."
There was a moment of silence. In the distance, keys and a doorknob rattled. The bandaged Taylor stared off in the direction of the front door, visibly split, but eventually nodded reluctantly.
"Al... alright."
She pulled out the metal disc from her pocket, the red gem glinting.
"I'll use this, and hide in the lab. I'll be back later. Just... just don't get comfortable alright? This is still... this is still my life. Even if we might have to share or something... this is still mine first."
Front door started to creak. Taylor replied in a forced whisper even as she reached around and opened the basement door, shoving her twin through.
"No. It's both of our's first. We'll sort it out later. Now go!"
The basement door closed, and through the hole a blue light flashed just as the front door opened and a tired voice called out.
"Taylor! Are you up?"
She looked at the hole in the basement door. The two chairs thrown across the room, the drinks on the table and the spots of blood on the floor. She looked down at her feet. Her feet that only had one sock on.
"Damnit!"
~~
"Taylor! Are you up?"
Danny rolled his shoulders as he hung up his jacket, and put down the armful of paperwork he was carrying on the side-table near the door. He looked around the corner towards the kitchen, calling out again.
"Taylor?"
A familiar voice called out back to him.
"Here dad! Just having… just having some trouble…"
He frowned, a spark of worry. This is the first he had actually heard more than two words from Taylor in days. And trouble?
He took the corner and stopped, staring at his daughter, before looking at the basement door and the fist-sized hole in it.
"Taylor…what happened?"
The look on her face as she pushed a chair back in from where she had been sitting was a mix between the sadness of earlier, and bashfulness.
"... Chores?"
~~
~~
Last edited:
- Location
- Internet
I don't mean for it to be. It will get better.
As for names, that's something I am struggling with because all the Taylor's WANT to be Taylor. So they find it hard to agree on taking different names.
For their cape Career, I'll admit I have something planned out with them calling each other by their Series and Production number. The Original Carbon!Taylor for example is numbered 1-01. So publicly with other clones, she's called 11. The New Carbon!Taylor has the number 3-01. So similarly, she'll be 31.
Plus, it creates all kinds of confusion for people. Can you imagine the headaches for the Protectorate and other? The Strikeforce (which is their place holder name as a group for now) calls each other by what they assume is their membership number.
Ridtom
Good. Bad. I'm the man with the Wand.
At least it isn't like the Misaka Clones...
"Look at that hunk on the bus! Taylor-Taylor says with barely concealed lust!"
*shudders*
Wait a minute.... that would make Brian = Touma... That's not a bad idea after all.
- Location
- Internet
That would be hilarious and creepy.
I will admit that there will be much internal discussion among the Taylor's as to who gets to spend time with Danny.
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
Wait... so not only is there an army of cloned Taylor's waiting to be awakened but they each became a tinker with the same shard. Is it too late to abandon this universe, I feel like its necessary. To bad they arn't like the Misaka clones, that right there would have given them a great thinker rating.
- Location
- Internet
It's actually fortunate they didn't become something like that. The Taylor's value their individuality. Having some sort of group telepathy/hivemind wouldn't be all that healthy for them at this point.
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
Z000
If this is trash, then find me in the dumpster
- Location
- Viet Nam
the hive mind clone Taylor is actually less scary than the individual clone Taylor, at least with the former you are only dealing with one Taylor with multiple body, the later is dealing with multiple Taylor at the same time, dealing with one is a death sentence but more than 1, well kiss your internal organ goodbye cus all of them is going to decorate the surrounding with them
Gazing Eye
Compound, Lidless, Always Watching.
I can just imagine the world shaking in terror as an army of Tinker Taylor's marches down a street decked out it scifi armour with laser guns ^_^
"We are legion for we are MANY!"
The world shall be "fixed" whether it wants to or not
"We are legion for we are MANY!"
The world shall be "fixed" whether it wants to or not
- Location
- Internet
I can just imagine the world shaking in terror as an army of Tinker Taylor's marches down a street decked out it scifi armour with laser guns ^_^
"We are legion for we are MANY!"
The world shall be "fixed" whether it wants to or not
Thankfully or not, there won't be a large-scale activation of Taylor's for a good while in-story. Partly because of logistical reasons.
3rdPowerOfLove
Cubes & Cube By-Products
- Location
- a log cabin made of earth and wood
Great story! Where's my wallet?
*throws at screen*
-Harlan from 'Tin Man', that Stargate episode where SG-1 got cloned into robot bodies.
*throws at screen*
For some reason this reminded me of "See, everything is better, even your minds. You are all much, much better!"The world shall be "fixed" whether it wants to or not
-Harlan from 'Tin Man', that Stargate episode where SG-1 got cloned into robot bodies.
Sorain
The eternal DM
- Location
- Nexus, looking down over all there is.
Worse then that.I can just imagine the world shaking in terror as an army of Tinker Taylor's marches down a street decked out it scifi armour with laser guns ^_^
"We are legion for we are MANY!"
The world shall be "fixed" whether it wants to or not
Imagine an army of Taylor's, each armed and equipped with their own spins on tinker tech within Taylor's specialty.
Instead of an army who's abilities and tactics you can adapt to, each individual fights differently, but they all think similarly enough to achieve reasonable unit cohesion.
Instead of a legion of elite mooks, you face an army of ace custom super prototypes.
And all creation shall tremble, before the many banners of Hebert!
wingnut2292
<Verified Sugar Addict>
- Location
- Milwaukee Metro
One idea is to have a canister of colored ribbons/popsicle sticks, and have each girl draw one. The girl who draws red is then Taylor-red/scarlet/crimson, the girl who draws blue would be Taylor-blue/azure/periwinkle, and so on for all the Taylors.
Aah! Inspiration struck (oww!), instead of ribbons it could be pieces of Annette's jewelry. Hence, Taylor-ruby, Taylor-diamond, Taylor-emerald, etc.
FalseDead
Consuming Fear
- Location
- Boatmurdered
Now what I hope happens is that each Taylor clone can trigger.
As in the one in the Lab triggered and the one that replaced her can now trigger with something different.
Imagine
Piggot: So what do we know about the Reiteration?
Armsmaster: she first appeared on the scene as a tinker engaging in combat with Lung, whom she successfully apprehended, however damage to her power-armor caused the reactor to go unstable and she flew out to the bay before it detonated. Human remains where found inside the remains of the suit.
Miss Militia: She reappeared shortly thereafter and was involved in taking down Bakuda, during that assault her suit was again damaged and thankfully powered down forcing her to abandon it....however it was noticed that despite having no tinker tech devices on her she was projecting shields to deflect bombs and blasts. During this time she was caught in a time acceleration bomb and died.
Armsmaster: Since them she has died and reappeared a total of 6 times each time gaining another power upon her reemergence. Her most recent being a master power that allows for the control of all insects in a 1 mile radius.
As in the one in the Lab triggered and the one that replaced her can now trigger with something different.
Imagine
Piggot: So what do we know about the Reiteration?
Armsmaster: she first appeared on the scene as a tinker engaging in combat with Lung, whom she successfully apprehended, however damage to her power-armor caused the reactor to go unstable and she flew out to the bay before it detonated. Human remains where found inside the remains of the suit.
Miss Militia: She reappeared shortly thereafter and was involved in taking down Bakuda, during that assault her suit was again damaged and thankfully powered down forcing her to abandon it....however it was noticed that despite having no tinker tech devices on her she was projecting shields to deflect bombs and blasts. During this time she was caught in a time acceleration bomb and died.
Armsmaster: Since them she has died and reappeared a total of 6 times each time gaining another power upon her reemergence. Her most recent being a master power that allows for the control of all insects in a 1 mile radius.
You need to brush up on your Worm-lore.
The S9000 were clones of the original S9 group. Because they all had the same minds, they (re)connected to the same shards the same way.
The Taylors all have the same minds as a starting point.
.. that is not to say that the Shard is not doing the "happy dance" because it now has user(s) and the potential for conflict again ..
FalseDead
Consuming Fear
- Location
- Boatmurdered
While partially true (they had minds based on how the remaining Nine remembered them, with the exception of King who somehow maintained original mind) that is canon, this is fan-fiction.
You can easily hand-wave it away or make a tinker tech explanation for why it works.
For all we know the shared Taylor memories could all be in a cloud and transmitted in real time to the bodies and each body has a relatively blank brain that only records new info before being copied on death.
Thus tricking the shards
(edit: the more I think about it the more that seems like how Annette would do it, after all Annette wouldn't want a Taylor who had been brain damaged and survived for a longer period to corrupt future memories or iterations of Taylor, thus on death all memories are hard-coded onto a existing central read only database. so Taylor would have all her original memories and all the memories form being brain damaged but, neither would interfere with another)
Last edited:
Sorain
The eternal DM
- Location
- Nexus, looking down over all there is.
While I'm sure that could be an interesting story @FalseDead , that isn't the direction that @Noxturne90 has gone here.
- Location
- Internet
Really? It's white to me. But that might be beause I am using one of the darker backgrounds for SV. If it's still a problem, I'll see about changing it, alright?
Well, that is possible method. I'll take it into consideration! Thanks Wingnut!
Unfortunately Dead, Sorain here is correct. I am going a different direction, hopefully one you will find interesting as I lay it out. I have quite a few ideas and plans for it
Maybe they could try something unique and actually talk to their father.
- Location
- Singapore
I think this can be a story idea in itself.
Taylor with the main power of coming back to life with a new secondary power that cannot be changed until she dies again (and not by her own hand).