I tried not to think about last night as I stood in front of the huge, structurally reinforced cement truck, and watched it back carefully into the vault.
I'd chickened out of talking to Tattletale or Sveta, instead writing a note on my desk saying; 'Testing experimental sedative. Do Not Disturb.' And then I'd done just that. It did give me a lovely restful night's sleep, but it took nearly thirty seconds to come fully into effect, so it wouldn't be joining my normal library of formulas.
I'm pretty sure it was Sveta who tucked me into bed. If it had been Tattletale I fully expected to have some sort of drawing done in marker on my face, and I didn't.
I'd avoided talking with Sveta the next morning as well, simply by saying that I didn't want to keep the Travelers waiting.
Apparently this wasn't Coil's main base. It was his backup base. What did the guy do exactly? Re-purpose a couple of Endbringer shelters or something? These places were really massive, and very tightly locked down, and he had two or more of them? I did not think he was that well set up.
Anyway, I'd thought that the Travelers wouldn't take too much time, or present any real challenge. None of them had any obvious physical defects when I saw them, and the non-obvious could be fixed trivially. I was wrong.
They had asked me to fix the spine of the Master who projected Genesis, and that required a fairly standard fifteen minute operation. The girl, I think she'd introduced herself as Jess something, was still sleeping, but she'd be fine when she woke up. I'd even replaced her wasted leg muscle so she could start walking right away. Probably need a few lessons in balance, but she'd get there.
Then Trickster had started asking me how I'd managed to fix Sveta, and this truck showed up… and now I was learning why the Travelers really joined us.
I had been wondering what the huge, incredibly well reinforced room was doing in Coil's base anyway. Especially considering that it locked from the outside, not the inside.
The woman Trickster had referred to as Noelle shuffled out of the fake cement truck as it unfurled around her, and her friends watched her carefully as she moved into the vault. Trickster was babbling nervously about how she didn't have 'episodes' often, and that the armed guards really weren't necessary.
Of course they weren't, they'd be useless against any real cape, especially if her regeneration was as potent as Trickster claimed. Sundancer was the only guard here who was actually useful.
I took my time to look over the lower body, the single, drooling horse-head looked like it would soon have a mate, if I was guessing correctly about the bud-like growth on the first head's neck. The head had two long, flickering tongues, and the short, stubby protrusions of flesh that danced along Noelle's lower body seemed to serve the same function, tasting the air for prey. I wonder how she was able to process sensory input from that number of tongues and eyes? The same sort of multitasking that Skitter was capable of perhaps?
Well, I'd have to do some testing first, but I could really think of only one solution to this problem. It seemed like the robotic body I actually managed to send against the Nine was going to be third generation, which was just wonderful. I still hadn't finished Sveta's and I was fairly sure I'd managed to iron out most of the kinks with my first attempt. Sveta certainly hadn't complained about anything. Why couldn't this be something easy to fix, like cancer?
Wait, back up a thought, Sveta wouldn't complain, would she? Not really a complainer that girl. I should probably ask her at some point. Not to self, quiz Sveta about problems to current body before continuing to construct it. Also, I hadn't had the talk with her yet. I should be able to talk Purity into it maybe. That could work.
"…and then, while this new cape was throwing around these green beams, Chubster grabbed the grenade…" Trickster continued.
I wonder why he was telling such an elaborate lie? Sure, I might have bought it if Ballistic wasn't rolling his eyes nearly every time Trickster opened his mouth, but that had been the only clue I needed, and I wasn't exactly a social genius.
Ballistic thought I couldn't see him merely because he was standing slightly behind me and I wasn't faced his way, so I guess it wasn't a deliberate attempt to undermine their leader. Still, I was wearing what looked like a blindfold. They could have figured out I had enhanced senses if they actually thought about it.
"Stop being ridiculous Krouse. I'm some sort of weird Case 53, I'd prefer not to talk about my exact circumstances." Noelle said, talking with an odd sort of hollow echo. She hadn't moved much, still slowly shuffling her bulk out of the cement truck. She seemed like she was concentrating deeply on something, and the expression in her human eyes was slightly wistful, though her mouth was frowning.
Hmm, that certainly sounded more plausible. I might want to buy into the portion of the Espionage tree that let me figure out if someone was lying eventually… nah. Couldn't really see how it would be useful against the Nine. There wouldn't be any quarter when I fought them. No negotiations, hopefully they wouldn't even see me coming.
"Now you see that," I told Trickster, "is the sort of information that isn't going to lead me to a potentially fatal misdiagnosis."
The man winced, and nodded. I walked towards Noelle, who was now inside the vault itself.
"Was the part about the evil clones if I touch her true?" I asked Sundancer, who didn't look prepared for the question, and was therefore hopefully easy to catch in a lie.
"Yes." Sundancer confirmed. I nodded.
Coil had bought both Sveta and myself mobile phones, so I dialed Sveta's number, and spoke to Trickster while the phone rang.
"Trickster, I have a Tinkertech scanner in my lab, it's big, white, and glows slightly green when it's turned on. Sveta will be able to point it out. It's also incredibly delicate. Ask Sveta to find something less delicate with a similar density, and then I need you to keep swapping the scanner as we move the other object, so we can move the scanner here without disassembling or jostling it."
"Right. I'll get on that." Trickster said, stalking off quickly.
I'd already had to replace two components in that scanner. It had cracked when Coil's men moved it, and I didn't want to have to take it apart and put it back together again. Plus, I had the odd feeling this would go more smoothly if I got rid of Trickster.
I entered the vault itself, and Noelle backed away from me.
"I will need a blood sample. May I take one?" I asked.
"It would be better if Genesis does it. I can't clone her projection." Noelle said, in a voice that seemed to be straining to keep her calm.
It was odd, she was already trying to fit into that Sveta shaped hole in my head. Unfortunately, she was too big. Hah, it is to jest. Gods damn I was going to have to make some sort of assembly line for robotic bodies at this rate. Perhaps I could start a club for girls who had experienced extreme body horror. They'd probably get along famously. It wouldn't be hard to make Sveta a helmet, at which point no organic part of Sveta's body would be left uncovered. It should be safe for her to spend time around Noelle then, and I really doubted that Noelle would betray us, although she didn't seem quite as… innocent as Sveta did. From her last statement, I got the impression she was quite clever.
"Very well, Genesis will wake up in about half an hour, in the meantime I have a few questions. Can you see out of the eyes growing on your lower body?" I asked.
Noelle looked down, and the eyes blinked back at her. She blanched.
"No. But I can sort of… feel when people or things behind me move. Not consciously, but more so than normal."
"Hmm, so they are tied into your brain somehow. Trail your arms over the altered skin and describe it to me please."
Noelle did so.
"Rough, coarse, slightly sticky." She told me.
I nodded.
"The smell?"
Noelle sniffed.
"I'm sorry. There probably is a smell, but I'm too used to it. I can't smell anything."
Hmm, well this was all useless information anyway. The scanner would tell me a lot more about what I was working with than the five senses.
"And did this happen all at once, slowly… tell me if I need to stop prying."
Sveta hadn't told me much about how she ended up the way she did.
"No, I think I can answer that one. This… thing on me has been growing for some time. It makes me hungry, and I tend to lose control unless I gorge myself, and then it grows." Noelle said.
"Hmm, a progressing problem… have you tested the limits of your regeneration?"
"I threw a table at her once, when she lost control. The leg broke off and hit her arm and collar bone, pretty sure it broke both of them. The table itself hit her lower body, and I don't know exactly what it did to that stuff. She was fine in something like ten seconds." Ballistic volunteered.
"Interesting. I've worked around regeneration before. If Ballistic was able to harm you then you're not quite as tough as my last patient. If we can sedate you I predict a fairly simple operation." I told Noelle.
A normal doctor would be trained not to give the patient that sort of news so early, in case there were complications. My power let me skip all that training, but it had never advised me not to get a patient's hopes up. That really would have been a good thing to know, in this case.
Sveta walked in carrying several heavy boxes of what looked like the raw materials for my lab, and Trickster swapped her with my scanner, and Sveta walked in again. I chalked a circle on the floor for the scanner, and a circle on the floor for Noelle, and organized them both into their proper places.
Sveta seemed quite interested in Noelle.
"Were you in that place too? The one where they made us?" Sveta asked. Then she blinked out of the circle, to be replaced by the scanner. It was a fairly typical full body scanner, and there was no way that Noelle was going to fit into it. I was going to have to modify the thing, and possibly burn out the sensors to get one good scan of Noelle from fairly far away. Annoying.
"I'm sorry. I don't think so." Noelle said.
Hmm, what was that, Sveta was made? I had known that she didn't want to talk about her life before she was caught, so I hadn't pried, but I would have thought that she would tell me that.
Oh well, bombing that place would make a good practice run for bombing the Nine.
"This will require adjustments. How long do you think you can stay still?" I asked Noelle.
"I was fed before I was moved. I'm hungry, but under control, at least for another half an hour."
I got to work adjusting the scanner. Sveta stepped between us and told Noelle about her experience with makeup while I worked, which Noelle did seem to find interesting. It was nice that she wanted to protect me, but it wasn't a smart decision, and I wouldn't let her stand there if Noelle looked like she was losing control. A cloned Sveta would be a problem. A cloned Tinker, without any tools or ready made items, not really a threat.
One final, delicate adjustment…
I took out my lightsabre, cut through the metal that directed and reflected scanner beams, and kicked the thin strip of metal remaining until the sensors were facing the right direction. Wires strained, but held, and I pressed the activation button.
Apparently, Noelle's lower body saw the bright light pointed at it as some sort of attack, and what happened next happened very, very fast.
The main, lower horse mouth lashed out with a too-long tongue, the slimy piece of muscle streaming past Sveta to smash into the scanning machine. I, stupidly, reached out to stop the attack. I did have just enough sense to grab the limb with my left, robotic arm. Unfortunately the tongue simply wrapped around my wrist, smashed my arm into the sensory array once, and then started to drag me towards Noelle.
I grabbed the lightsabre at my belt, activated it, and cut off the tongue, but not before I felt a cold, rough lick on my elbow.
Noelle's lower body screamed, and the horse head threw up around the retracting remnants of it's tongue. A particularly large chunk of vomit stood up slowly, and I recognized myself, naked, but with oddly elongated fingers and toes. My clone fixed his eyes on me, and started talking.
"Step down protocol mark two. Goodb-"
Something flashed, and the clone was choking as his throat caved in. Ballistic palmed a second coin, and this one went through the clone's chest. I had to hand it to the man. He had quite good aim.
"They always say whatever they can to hurt you most." Ballistic said, as the clone knelt, gagging for air.
Noelle seemed to have gained a bit of control, she was backing out of her circle, putting distance between us and herself, her lower body was still twitching though.
"I see." I noticed Ballistic lining up a third shot, and interrupted him. "Leave the head please, I'd like to dissect his brain, it could prove vital for finding a cure." I instructed, trying not to think about how close I'd come to having my internal reactors blow. I should have been able to deactivate them even after the code was given, as they were building up energy, but I hadn't really tested that feature, and it would cause a cascading failure, requiring complete replacement of all those implanted parts.
Ballistic eyed the body, eyed Noelle, and then Trickster vanished from his side, and stood where the body had fallen. Ballistic cursed quietly, and picked up the body, while Trickster backed slowly away from Noelle.
I looked at the scanner. The sensors were the hardest part to make, the rest I'd already ripped apart and temporarily boosted to get it to function on a target ten meters away, instead of one lying on the bed of the scanner itself. Damn, I was going to have to make a new one. I grabbed the hard drive that would hold what little information the scanner might have gotten, and started backing out as well. Sveta stayed.
"I um, know it's not your fault. Do you need anything? Or do you want to talk about it?" Sveta asked.
"Thanks. I'll be fine. I'll be fine, but you'd better go." Noelle replied.
Sveta nodded slowly, turned and walked out. I was going to have to make her a helmet before I sent her in there again. If that tongue had wrapped around her face instead of slipping by her side…
This might be a little more tricky than I initially thought.