Horizon
Beta'ed and/or revised by;
Contradicting-Whispers
Pendragoon
Heather Shadelight
My most heartfelt thanks.
— O —
2009 December 21st, Monday. Boston, Sarah's House, early morning.
The sound of a fist pounding on wood woke Sarah with a start, her body feeling as if it had been thrashed by a sixteen wheeler with a particularly unpleasant driver.
That is, she felt like shit.
She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her blankets and hoodie and forget that the world existed.
"Sarah Livsey, get up in this instant! You have classes today and I'm not letting you
play hooky like some deranged, shameless
guttersnipe!"
She couldn't hold it in. Not now.
"Fuck off!"
An enraged scream was Mother's answer, followed quickly by the thunk-thunk of her slippers on the wooden floor quickly retreating from her door. Sarah didn't care in the slightest, she knew that she could still push quite a bit before her parents snapped at her and probably threw her into a closed elite boarding school for nuns or something else that ridiculously over the top.
Sarah deflated. She just… couldn't care at the moment. She felt drained and
lesser, as if someone had just ripped away a chunk of her and made off with it in the dead of night, leaving nothing but a jagged outline of a missing
something that
should but
wasn't there.
Her thoughts were a jumbled mess of half formed concepts bathed in the everpresent panic that now simmered just below the surface, waiting for a single slip up to froth forth and drown her, smothering any and all levels of conscious reasoning and leaving nothing behind but a scared, wounded animal.
Tears came to the corners of her eyes, and Sarah forced herself to look again at her phone. A phone that still yet had to beep or emit a single sound that wasn't the sharp click of a message sent and no response given or her fingertips frantically tapping at the cr… what?
She cocked her head in her phone's direction, ideas slowly taking more and more space in her mind, crowding her thoughts and creating small bursts of static when a pair melded to make something different.
Her gaze slowly slid from her phone to her computer – she couldn't do much with the phone; too small and too underpowered to create a drone design.
Everything seemed to revolve around things that made other things. Or something like that. The majority of the ideas she had were iterations and variations of various types of machine or program that made by themselves smaller programs or machines, from the size of her closed fist to ones as big as a car. There was something farther beyond, but it felt like sand slipping away from her mental fingers.
Sarah sat on the soft padding of her chair, turned on her computer and started… doing nothing. Because the thing couldn't support the idea she had. The coding tool to even
begin didn't exist yet, so she had to punch down her irritation and make do with what she found on the net at the moment. She had to take into account the specifics of her own computer too as she didn't want to fry it to hell and back, at least not before she found Taylor.
Because she would find her. She
would. She
had to.
Otherwise, what would even be the point of getting powers?
She spent the next five hours cobbling together a program that would create and execute its little subprograms at her behest. She could directly control the 'Leader' of her small digital swarm, but it had little use aside from acting as a hub for recollected information and giving/querying for new directives. What she
couldn't control were the little subprograms that actually did the job.
Oh, yes, she could give the order to the Hive to designate a directive or mark something as a priority or something to avoid or a dozen other little markers – none of them too specific, mind you;that would fry everything – which would tell the 'workers', or 'scouts' in this case, given that the sub-programs that her digital Hive was currently spawning were ones geared towards retrieval of data, that something needed doing.
What would she say to Taylor about her power? 'I make things that make other things'? That seemed a bit lame.
She still was too nervous, too jittery to truly stop and
think, but she didn't care. This was only another tool in her hands; a tool more versatile than most if not any, true, but a tool nonetheless and one that would help her find her friend
or else.
When had she started pacing, she didn't know. What she
did know was that her computer had just pinged her phone about the keyphrase – Taylor Hebert – she had inputted in the search directive of the 'Hive' – she still didn't like that name.
She began to read, and excitement along with dread gave way to confused happiness.
"Taylor Anne Hebert: admitted to Brockton General Hospital the 18th of November at 22:43 P.M."
What? How!?
She had already called the Hospital and they knew
nothing about Taylor! No new admittances, no new cases of anything, nothing
at all!
She kept reading. There was something that stunk here and she was going to rip it open, whatever the cost.
"Cause of admittance: sudden fainting spell followed by a coma of unknown cause."
Her blood turned into ice, dread clawing her heart out and shoving it down her throat again. Taylor was in a coma? Why!?
Sarah's breath turned frantic, her mind whirling with every bad possibility and scenario, plausible and implausible both. When she came down from her panic attack she was clutching their hoodie once more, shivering beneath her blankets.
She needed another half an hour before she could bring herself to sit at her chair once more, her already exhausted mind starting to fray at the edges. She kept reading anyway.
Beneath that she had another tidbit of info that her little workers discovered deeper than anything else that turned the ice inside her into a raging volcano of pure, molten
hatred.
"PRT Notes: Possible cause: trigger event. Confirmed due to CAT scan. Father refused to give a statement. Possible cause of triggering? Could be convinced of his incapability of taking care of a parahuman daughter with more coaxing but is still holding onto guardianship. Low priority."
Sarah seethed, a hateful hiss sliding between tightly clenched teeth. She ignored the possibility of Danny being involved in the triggering of Taylor, pushing away the idea about a drone specialized in creating stealth kill squads that took
way too much time and exotic materials. She didn't need petty revenge at the moment, she needed money, materials, some time for herself and a ticket to Brockton Bay.
— X —
Afternoon, Boston.
Sarah would never admit to anyone – perhaps to Taylor – that when she got out of her house, a heavy backpack slung over her shoulders, that she had had absolutely no idea
where she could get materials for the Scout Hive that she had in mind. Just a little drone slightly more than her closed fist that made other small drones that fit in one's palm, maybe equipped with some kind of very small scale laser plus a camera for extra Big Sister effect.
The problem was that she had exactly zero of the tools needed to accomplish something like that. She would need to build, what, three iterations of drones whose only purpose was to build little helpers that aided her in building more advanced hives of tool-drones? Something like that, and she couldn't accept it. She hadn't wanted to set foot in Brockton Bay completely unarmed, but…
Her eyes slid over an alley with a dilapidated electronics shop that completely fit the phrase 'hole in the wall', and she thought that
maybe, she wouldn't have to go completely unarmed. Could she…? Yes, a drone with a taser that she just happened to leave unfinished was on the table.
She crossed the street and opened the door, her power immediately latching onto the quality of the materials present as well as what she could do with it. She pushed it all away and approached the counter, a hispanic teen with shoulder length hair on a ponytail – seventeen to eighteen, she'd wager – took off his eyes off his phone and gave her a single searching look, and not apparently finding what he was looking for, he got back to his own business while he spoke to her without looking up, his tone of voice the bored drawl of someone that very much did not want to be there. "Everything has its own price tag. Non negotiable. You don't like it, you can piss off."
She didn't mind it. If she was being honest, the blunt honesty reminded her of Taylor before fucking
Emma.
Great, now she was pissed off again, her mind whirling around the shop and thinking about all the wonderful things she could do with all of these materials before she could stop herself. Sarah took a deep breath and started rummaging around the 'for parts' section of the shop, coming back to the counter primarily with various broken phones and other random tidbits she could use. Maybe. With time.
She hoped.
The worst thing was that on top of not being able to purchase everything she wanted right now, she had had to stop herself from thrashing everything in the moment and start rummaging and building and-
stop.
The teen behind the counter gave her haul a single, unimpressed glance, then one more look at her with a raised eyebrow. She met his gaze, and after a few seconds he rattled off the price of everything, Sarah already with the cash in hand.
"Come back whenever," he said in a voice that screamed 'or don't. I don't care'. Weirdo. Still, she had made progress. Not much progress, by any means, but at least now she could actually build
something to defend herself.
The way home was short and plagued with nervous energy. She wanted to get there quickly and start tinkering the most basic weapon she could craft, then make a beeline straight towards Brockton Bay. Towards Taylor.
She expected an empty house, a cup of her strongest coffee and a working gun slash weapon slash
something in her hand by the end of the day when she reached the house. What she didn't expect were her parents staring in blank disbelief at the disassembled microwave, coffee machine and TV that she had attempted to turn into one of her 'Hive' drones – that name still didn't fit in her mind – whose guts were now merrily sitting in the coffee table smack dab in the middle of the living room.
Fuck. She didn't have time for this,
at all.
Her father looked at the assortment of cables and the start of a casing for a drone, less than half formed and nothing else than pure scrap at the moment, then his eye gained a glint she recognized quite easily after living with him for the entirety of her life and Sarah tensed, flight or fight kicking in. It was a glint that spoke of opportunity, of
hunger.
"I think," he began with a slow drawl, the way his eyes locked onto hers giving Sarah shivers, as if he didn't see a person or living being, just a stepping stone. "That you'd fit quite well with the War—"
She didn't let him finish. Sarah turned tail and
booked it, slamming the door to the street wide open and then leaving that as it were, starting to run away towards the bus station, her legs pumping as fast and hard as she could, the sounds of the city suddenly magnified to a roaring cacophony that had her flinching at every sudden someone she crossed on a corner or every loud noise near her that popped out of nowhere, be it the screech of a tire or just two people laughing.
She swore that she could hear her parents behind her nipping at her heels, hands full of golden chains and poisoned promises. She didn't want that, she didn't want
anything they or the Protectorate could offer, be it money or opportunities or anything else.
She just wanted Taylor.
In the end, there were no Government thugs, no parents chaining her to said government, and no one that stopped her from buying her ticket with some of the money she had had the forethought of getting out of her bank account before going home. No one stopped her from collapsing in her seat and dissolving into a puddle of stress, frayed nerves and an edge of mania that she was sure wasn't healthy for her or anyone nearby. A sudden laugh threatened to bubble up from her chest, tears prickling at the edge of her eyes. Brockton Bay, here she went.
At least I still have our hoodie.
— O —
11-21-09, Mon.
Late afternoon, the Bay.
Sarah shuffled into the cheap hotel room she got near Brockton General, a quaint little thing that cost more than it should given its size. It wasn't exactly
cheap, but she could afford it until she scouted around town and made sense of how much of a shithole she had jumped into feet first and without taking a breath beforehand. Which, if Taylor's past descriptions were anything to go by, the answer was probably ranging between the marvelous metrics of 'this sucks' and 'I'm completely
fucked'.
Scion, she was tired.
That she had needed to stretch what she could do and change her phone's coding in a way that made all calls directed to her get deviated to the other side of the city hadn't helped her mental exhaustion. She absolutely did
not want to wake up with her phone screaming in her ear.
Sarah stumbled around the cold floor in the general direction of the unimpressive, plain bed that was nothing like the one that was in her room back in Boston.
She looked at the backpack that had slid off her shoulders in her carelessness, full of juicy electronics that she could turn into her own armada of little spies or homicidal murderbots with enough time and more materials, then she turned around and collapsed in the bed.
Only psychopaths refused sleep. She had all day tomorrow to tinker up something, but for now, Morpheus was calling.
She was out like a light before she could blink twice.
— X —
11-21-09, Tue.
Late afternoon, the Bay. Hotel near B. General.
Sarah woke up with a groan, her back, neck and somehow, legs, aching. The bed had been stone cold the entire night, the bedsheets were thin and she didn't have any kind of coffee nearby. In summary, she was pissed, tired, and nursing a budding headache.
Marvelous, just the thing she needed following the absolute clusterfuck that had been yesterday, with all its highs – finding that Taylor was ali-
okay – and all its lows, which were, basically,
everything.
She wanted breakfast. She really, really wanted a cup of scalding hot black gold and something to munch on while the caffeine ravaged her brain, but once again, this was the
Bay, and she didn't trust anyone here as far as
Eidolon could throw them
through a portal.
Her eyes slid off the ceiling and she cut off her internal whining. She once again set her gaze on the bag full of broken phones and other bits and bobs and got up with a grunt, promptly grabbing the offending bag and digging into its guts and assembling what she had at the foot of the bed, where the sheets weren't as disturbed by her fitful rest.
Five phones of medium-low value, a pair of slightly mangled flashlights, and an almost completely broken digital camera. That one had doubled the value of the purchase, alone. Even if she still had quite a lot of money saved up and safely secured in her backpack – thank you, Past Sarah, for not trusting in our parents. Or the Bank – the memory still made her wince slightly. As much as she wanted it to be, her money wasn't infinite.
Could she…? Yes, yes she could. If she just started creating a Hive drone that just happened to have a taser strapped to it, and she started at said weapon but didn't continue her creation, she now had a perfectly functional non-lethal weapon – and no, she hadn't tried to rip off the lightbulb with cord included because she had gotten distracted by the idea of a drone that interfaced with other technology vi–
shut up brain! Now she just needed to add a button from one of the flashlights and… done.
She looked at her phone, noticing that that little bit of cleverness had taken her a good hour and a half. Then she scanned the rest of her materials, trying to come up with something else and failing spectacularly. She simply had no materials to speak of. Maybe she could create a very basic Hive that made workers with special tools that–
ARGH!
Sarah slammed the palm of her hands into her forehead, a growl of frustration building up in the back of her throat. The need to build something and the distracting thoughts were reaching a frankly annoying level and she didn't know how much time she could hold on before she ripped apart the next thing she laid eyes on, but she hoped that she could hold it together for a while more.
She sighed and got up from the bed, intent on getting something hot to drink.
And then, a long overdue visit to the hospital.
— X —
The Bay. Near B.General, late afternoon.
Sarah was busy digging her metaphorical mittens inside her phone's system, trying to make something better suited to her needs than the frankly uninteresting piece of tech currently in her hand. After all, a lot of its actual value was emotional from all the time she had spent with the screen glued to her face, be it researching stupid things with Taylor, or discussing books with Taylor, or – yeah. Taylor. In general.
God, how far was that stupid hospital? She had selected the hotel bas–
Sarah's thought processes promptly crashed, caught fire and were summarily executed out of existence the moment she read the next line of code.
//CO_OWNER; QUEEN_ADMINISTRATOR
What the
fuck did that even mean!? Who was that!?
Sarah tried in the middle of the street to frantically close what appeared to be a perfect backdoor into her phone and
none of it worked. Someone had access to her phone, her things, her conversations, her notes on her own schematics and she could do
nothing to fix it. She was starting to panic, her vision closing in around the edges and breath coming in ragged, strangled gasps. She fumbled around the edges of the device, finding what she was looking for after a moment of panicked flailing, and forcing a hard shutdown.
She didn't know exactly when she had gotten to the outskirts of the hospital, nor when she had taken a seat at one of the outdoor little tables, she just knew that she had found somewhere where she could sit down and shut down in peace, her mind a whirlwind of ideas brought up and discarded as quickly as they came. She couldn't do anything at all about that backdoor, so she pushed it out of her mind as much as it freaked her out. Later… later she'd find a solution, maybe. First came Taylor.
When she came down with her second panic attack in as many days – was this a trend? Because she didn't want it to be, not at all – she noticed that the sun had moved a tiny bit, now around three quarters down the horizon.
Sarah got up in shaky legs but firm steps, a goal solidly placed in her mind. She needed to see Taylor, to see with her own eyes that she was ali-
okay, to cup her cheek and hear her breathing. She needed reassurance, the knowledge that she could reach out and know that she was there, that she wasn't, somehow, hallucinating.
Sarah reached the reception desk and cleared her throat, the eyes of the nurse attending it softening ever so slightly when she took in the distress that showed in her face, as much as she tried to suppress it.
"I- I am here to visit a patient, Taylor Hebert. I," no, no. Stupid Sarah don't say that you know her room, that's a good way to fuck up
massively.
The nurse looked at the computer, her lips pressing and a frown forming in her face and deepening with each second. It made Sarah fidget and want to rip open the screen and-
stop.
"And your name was, dear?" She asked with a sort of terseness in her voice.
This… didn't bode well.
"I'm…" she thought for a moment about using a fake name, but she backed off. Nothing good could come out of it, not now. "Sarah. Sarah Livsey. I'm her best friend and I got here from Boston as soon as I knew something was wrong, she's like – she's very important to me and-" she shut up, noticing that she had started rambling, the tightness in her chest just a tad bit more accentuated than before. She wanted to see her
now.
The nurse looked once more at the monitor, her face turning slightly stony before speaking, and Sarah's heart sank into the bottom of her feet. "I'm afraid that you can't…" then something chimed on her computer, the ping barely audible over the crowd, but Sarah heard it anyway. The nurse – Alice, read her tag – looked at her screen and her face gave way from coldness to utter confusion, the shift so fast that it gave Sarah whiplash and just a tiny bit of hope. "Uhm," she seemed out of her element, but continued speaking nonetheless, if reluctantly. "Room 214."
Alice made a vague motion with her hand towards the elevators, but Sarah had already taken off before she could even lift her hand, the nurse's weird attitude out of her mind in favour of getting to her most valued person in this shithole of a world as fast as possible. She reached the one that was currently empty, pressing the second button and waiting, leaving as fast as she could without being rude.
204, 206, 208… 212, 214, there!
She stopped just in front of the door, her hand outstretched and an inch away from the doorknob, paralyzed. What if she was really hurt? What if she woke up and didn't recognize her? What if, what if,
what if. They had her suddenly constricted in coiled hesitation, each and every doubt she had had in the past attacking her with a vengeance and locking up her every thought.
She bit her own lip as hard as she could, drawing a bit of blood and snapping her back into the moment, where she could take a moment to center herself, and if not banish, push down and into a corner her doubts and general stupidity. She wanted to see Taylor, and that was exactly what she was going to do.
Fuck everything else.
She opened the door and Sarah's breath catched on her throat. She looked so… peaceful. Like a sleeping beauty, a curtain of ebony hair splayed beneath her, her breathing soft and smooth, the beep-beep of the heart rate monitor making a bit of background noise that managed to drown out whatever noise came from outside the window.
Sarah approached with careful steps, as if afraid of waking her up suddenly, as ridiculous as the thought was. Before she knew it, she was at Taylor's side with one hand reaching hesitantly towards her face, only stopping a fraction of an inch before she made skin contact, and
then plowing through her doubts and self hatred, finally touching her skin and feeling the familiar warmth. Tears started to come to her eyes.
She was okay.
She was
alive.
She was
real.
Sarah cried the day away holding Taylor's hand.
— O —
She did the same thing the next day, standing by her side all the hours she could, doing her best to be with Taylor and make her company even if she couldn't acknowledge it. Sarah was sure that she would appreciate it.
The next day, she started looking for a cheaper hotel and a temporary job while she was at it, obtaining a tentative interview scheduled in a couple of days at a bakery near the hospital.
The next one, November 24th of the year 2009, the Endbringers sirens blared loudly into the world…
…and the Simurgh made her accursed landfall in Boston.
