And we're here. The climax of the second arc. One more chapter to go, and then we're onto the second half.
Please let me know what you think.
2.7
In the weeks that followed, and as winter slowly turned towards spring, Taylor began to increasingly settle into the comforts of the routine. She would spend her weekdays holed up in Winslow, bored and stifled if no longer bullied, while every weekend she would catch a bus to that Soup Kitchen and invariably she would find Lisa waiting for her. The two often worked together, holding kitchen duties together and serving meals side by side to the locals who came trudging in. But while Taylor still did not fully trust the blonde, they found themselves gradually settling into an easygoing camaraderie all the same, and on very rare occasions, Taylor even found herself imagining that, perhaps one day, the two might even become very good friends. It was a pleasant fantasy.
Her relationship with her father continued to improve, as she tried her hardest to salvage their once fraying bond. She made sure to involve him in her life, speaking to him about her frustrations with school, how she felt as if she was wasting her time there, or about her time volunteering: the tasks she performed and the people she'd met and gotten to know. And even though her dreams continued unabated, and even though she could still hear the muted murmurings of entities vast and bizarre which lingered on the very edges of her awareness, they no longer held such primacy in her mind.
It was burgeoning and ever so fragile, but at times, Taylor felt moderately human again, and in those moments her posture would straighten and her eyes would brighten and her smile would become something small but genuine.
And then, in the passing of a single day, everything changed once more.
***
Saturday, the nineteenth of March, began on an inauspicious note. She first woke up in the early dawn hours, breathing heavily as she sought in vain to resurrect the faint remnants of some forgotten nightmare. And while she did fall back into slumber, her sleep remained disturbed, and she tossed and she turned and she awakened frequently over the course of that long night until, finally, she resigned herself to waking up early and beginning her morning routine. Even so, she remained anxious but, unable to grasp onto whatever nighttime premonition lay at its source, she instead tried to banish her worries from her mind.
She showered, she ate breakfast and, seeing as she had plenty of time to kill and not much to spend it on, she decided to take a long run that morning, in an attempt to burn off some of her nervous energy.
Admittedly, it did help, and by the time noon beckoned, she was starting to feel more at ease, and she found that some of that vague trepidation had diminished. And soon, she was able to convince herself that those feelings had only been but a passing fancy, the minor anxieties of a stressed mind. In any case, terrible dreams were hardly new ground to her, and surely this was no different than the countless other strange dreams and disturbances which regularly tended to plague her.
Some small part of her subconscious remained unconvinced.
Taylor caught the bus a few minutes ahead of schedule, and she reached the shelter ten minutes early, and she found Lisa was standing by the front door, waiting for her. When the older teen caught sight of Taylor, her mouth drew into a small frown.
"Did you sleep okay?" she asked.
Taylor studied the freckled blonde for a long moment, and shook her head.
"Is it that obvious?" she asked.
"I do have superpowers," Lisa admitted in faux humility. More seriously, she said, "Look. If you want to talk about it, or anything, I'm here."
"I know," Taylor said. "Look, I'll be all right. I'm already feeling a bit better."
Lisa shook her head. "You know, I get the feeling there's a lot you're not telling me."
Taylor passed her acquaintance and jokingly said, "You're the mind reader. I'm sure you can figure it out."
Lisa followed her into the building, making sure to keep her eyes upon the younger girl. Taylor may have tried to play it off as unimportant, but Lisa was certain that there was much more to it than that. And as the day progressed, Lisa kept a close eye on the younger girl, and found that her discomfort seemed only to grow rather than diminish.
There were shadows underneath her eyes, signifying lack of sleep: terrible dreams perhaps? And although Taylor put on a strong front for the others, she would close up when she believed no one was watching, her focus turning inwards. She would do the tasks assigned to her, but she would do it mechanistically, with her mind elsewhere, probably contemplating whatever worried her so. And she wasn't being very subtle about it: Lisa could see her worries and fears etched clear upon her face, once the two were left alone.
It was nearing 3:00 and they were just finishing up their cooking duties when Lisa decided to confront her on it. Even if it was a normal teenager, Lisa might have been concerned, but Taylor was not a normal teenager. Not by a long shot.
Taylor had just turned off the stove, taking hold of the packaged sugars and salts to return them to the cabinet when she found Lisa blocking her way. "Lisa?" she questioned in a voice that sounded almost bemused.
"Spill," the older girl said.
"I really don't know what you mean by that," Taylor replied, trying to maneuver around her.
"Taylor," Lisa half insisted-half whined, continuing to block her way. "Look, I know you've been trying to hide it, trying to make out like you're okay, but something's bothering you. And it's something big."
Taylor opened her mouth to respond and Lisa interrupted her. "And if you dare pull that 'everything's fine' bullshit on me, I swear…"
Taylor shook her head ruefully. "Just bad dreams I suppose."
"Har har," Lisa said mockingly. "It's more than that and you know it."
Taylor tried to move past Lisa but, stubbornly, the blond blocked her way. "Lisa, move."
Lisa remained standing before her, feet spread apart and arms crossed. "You're not the only one who can be stubborn, you know."
Taylor studied the girl who blocked her path, and she seemed to see something there, perhaps a certain measure of concern, for she dropped the act, and was honest at last.
"Look, I really don't know," she finally relented. "It's been a long day, and it's not much more than a feeling. But I just can't help but think that something's going to happen. But I also can't help but think that I'm working myself up over nothing."
"Anxiety."
Taylor hesitated for a moment, but then the walls came down at last, and her words came out nearly as a babble.
"Hell, I was awful when I first woke up. Terrible nightmares I can't even remember, but I can't help but think it's important. But once I'd been awake for a few hours, it seemed to be getting better, like I was worrying myself over nothing, but ever since I got off that bus… I just can't help but feel like there's a clock counting down somewhere. As if something's going to happen soon, and I feel like I have all this knowledge bottled up somewhere in the back of my head which I just can't access, and I know that it's important but the harder I reach for it the more it slips away. It's unbelievable, I know, but still..."
"Do you regret coming in this morning?"
Taylor laughed, "There's no guarantee I wouldn't be feeling this way had I opted to stay at home, either. At least this way, I can distract myself somewhat. Keep my mind busy."
Lisa shrugged, "But you're still scared. And you don't know why."
Taylor nodded, and in pensive silence (which was rare considering that, while Lisa was many things, quiet was not one of them), they entered the serving area.
Lisa tugged on Taylor's shoulder and Taylor turned to give her attention. "Look, you don't need to go through this alone. I'll help you, if you let me."
After a long moment, Taylor nodded. And in a subdued, uncertain silence the two stepped up to the serving counter and began the next stage of their work.
***
"Will you be all right?" Lisa asked, looking up towards the clock beside the door. It was now Six, and still nothing out of the ordinary had happened, aside from a few drunken disorderlies and a drug addict, but such was the nature of the Docks. And besides, she could tell at a glance that Taylor was far from relieved.
"Yeah," Taylor said. A lie.
"If you want, I could walk with you?"
"I'll be fine. I can take care of myself." False reassurance.
"I insist," Lisa said, and Taylor relented. The younger girl had been nervous, terrified even, and some part of Lisa felt smug. She had been right. "Come on, let's go."
Taylor nodded, and wordlessly followed without resistance. Almost as if in a trance, and soon Lisa was starting to feel worried as well. Because Taylor was close to nonresponsive, and she had to practically be dragged into the street, and that was out of character, and didn't bode in the least bit well.
"You know," she said conversationally, pointing towards the opposite direction away from the bus stop, towards the docks. "I'm parked a few blocks that direction. It would probably be easier than catching the bus."
Taylor looked at her, or perhaps a more accurate way of putting it would be through her, silently judging, and then she nodded. Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. In the moment, she really just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible.
It was shortly past 6, and the skies were already darkening, as sunset began its approach, and that gave the neighborhood's decrepitude an even more menacing feel. Old buildings and dank apartments, small and squat, with boarded up windows and rusted hinges, loomed all around her. And the streets seemed ominously empty: a few teenagers sharing a drug induced high out on the side of the road, a mother, Asian by descent, scurrying with two young children in tow, trying to get off the street. She saw a few other people going about their daily business, worn out and resigned and looking not at all happy.
Honestly, it shouldn't have intimidated her. She had seen far scarier (between her time on the street and her time working with Coil) and yet it did. She felt helpless, as if something terrible was about to happen. But still she went on, for Taylor's sake if nothing else, even though she wanted nothing more than to run as fast as she could for her car, and for safety.
Lisa actively watched her surroundings, tracking the neighborhood for any potential threat, as Taylor shambled about beside her, lips quivering, practically in tears. Lisa didn't even want to even consider what that entailed. They just kept walking. Only one more block to go, and then perhaps she could finally put this entire day behind her.
"What do we have here?"
Fuck. Lisa turned around, to find two teenagers dressed in ABB colors, relaxed on the other side of the street, sharing a smoke, leaning against a parked truck in almost as poor a condition as the neighborhood it was parked in. Perhaps this wasn't her best plan ever.
There were two of them, a guy and a girl, with a long standing casual familiarity. The male was watching her, his eyes cold and harsh beneath his shaggy here. Psychopath. Both of them were.
"Look, we don't want any problems," Lisa prevaricated, turning towards Taylor who still seemed spacey, and seemed almost entirely unaware now of her surroundings.
"What the fuck do we have here?" the girl asked, approaching them, a knife held in one hand. They were carrying worse than that. The boy had a concealed hand gun hidden away at his waist, concealed beneath his oversized shirt, and the girl carried three more knives hidden away on her person. This was so not good.
"You two seem awful casual to be wandering around in our turf," the girl continued, stepping in front of her.
"Your turf?" Lisa asked, unable to help herself, but before she could say anything truly damaging, the girl slapped her, hard.
"Our turf," she said. "You lot have no right to be walking around here like you own it."
"Jay. Yan." Taylor's words came out almost as a whisper, freakishly calm despite the circumstances, and she wasn't looking at them at all. Rather she was looking through them. "Please, leave Lisa alone."
The two paused, and they both turned their attention upon Taylor, and Yan's expression turned into one of utter rage.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, talking down at us?" she exclaimed, walking closer, tightening her grip around the handle of the knife. "Think you have it made, don't you white girl?"
Taylor looked past them and she actually relaxed, and she suddenly wondered if this encounter was what had her so terrified. No, it couldn't be. They were so petty. Insignificant.
"Hey, bitch!" the girl yelled, now right in Taylor's face and brandishing her knife at her. "I'm talking to you!"
Taylor still paid her little attention, looking instead towards Lisa. "Lisa, let's go."
Lisa stared in shock at the utter apathy Taylor was showing, and both gang members boggled as well. Jay smirked, and his expression did something truly ugly to his features.
"Hey Yan," he said casually, taking another drag from his cigarette. "Since the bitches want to go that route, why don't we play the game? See how uppity they get then?"
Yan smiled like a shark and nodded. Switching the knife to her other hand, she grabbed Taylor's forearm, finally gaining her attention.
"Fine then bitch. Since you like looking down on us, you pick. Left or right."
Taylor gazed at her, uncertain, and Yan's smile widened.
"Which eye? Your left or your right?"
Taylor's eyes widened in horror and she then spoke, though she still sounded as if she was in some trance. "You've played this game before. Many times, to many girls, out of jealousy and hatred and sadism. You did this to Emma. Made her choose. All those years, and it was you."
Yan's anger intensified, and she kicked Taylor in the stomach, and Lisa watched horrified as Taylor fell stumbling to the ground, and Yan smashed her knee into her back, raised the knife above her head, only to find in an instant that the knife had disappeared from her hand, and that Taylor no longer lay face down on the ground but now stood unharmed before her.
"It was all your fault. The both of you," Taylor said but Lisa could tell that something essential had shifted. She was far too calm, too composed, not at all like the girl she knew. "With help from a third party of course."
For the first time, Yan showed fear, and she looked towards Jay helplessly. "Bitch never told us she was no parahuman."
Taylor wasn't listening, in fact she didn't seem to take note of either Yan or Jay. She kept speaking, still so chillingly calm, but underneath that clinical tone Lisa was sure that she could discern the rage of a fifteen year old girl. "How many girls? Dozens? Hundreds? And yet you feel nothing for the trauma you've caused."
And suddenly, Lisa felt an arm wrap around her, and the cold nozzle of a pistol press against her forehead. She heard Jay's voice screaming in her ear. "Stay back or I shoot your friend!"
"What friend?" Taylor asked and, in that moment, Lisa felt a terrible chill, and she blinked in surprise, for she suddenly stood on the other side of the street, beside Taylor, safe from his clutches. And Lisa was holding his gun in her hand.
"Look," Jay said backing away, "Please. We didn't know. Didn't mean anything by it…"
He stopped, for a great vortex had opened up in the space around him, a tear in the very fabric of reality, and just looking at it made Lisa wish she was blind, for she could see just a hint of what lay on the other side. And it was terrible, and it was something that should not have been able to exist.
And then it reached out from behind that portal, a great translucent tentacle which wrapped around Jay's body and, swifter than Lisa could follow the movement, it dragged him in. She only heard the thug scream, and only for a moment at that, before the portal closed and only a terrible silence was left behind. And she turned back to find Taylor watching the site of Jay's demise with what appeared to be detached fascination, and perhaps even satisfaction.
And Yan was running at Taylor, a second knife held high above her head, and she didn't even seem to notice until the Asian was upon her. Yan screamed with rage and brought the knife down while Taylor, reacting on instinct, lifted up her arm to ward off the strike. Yan drove it through Taylor's palm, but no blood spilled from the wound. There was no wound at all, for the knife had disappeared through another hole in space, and Taylor remained whole and unharmed, and peering at her assailant with eyes as hard as diamonds.
And then her form began to warp and to stretch, like something out of a fun house mirror. Her arms and her legs grew longer, as did her torso, and soon she loomed above Yan, six feet tall. Then seven, and then eight feet in height, and her lips drew monstrously wide, as she began languidly to approach the surviving thug. And as she took each step, the world seemed to warp around her, and Lisa watched as the buildings stretched and compressed all around her, and began to curve inwards upon themselves, as if they were being sucked in by some inexplicable force of gravity. Lisa could feel her own limbs begin to extend, and she could see Yan's features stretch as well, becoming just as horrible a mockery of a human being as Taylor herself.
The entire world began to lose cohesion, and all around her, this part of the Docks became a vague jumble of colors, and the street and the sky and the ramshackle buildings seemed to blend together, and then to fade. She could feel herself begin to stretch further, and she could not help but feel as if the universe itself was being ripped apart, and soon she could not see anything at all, for she found she no longer had a sense of spatial awareness, and she could not still say that she had a body at all. More than anything else, she felt as if she was dreaming, as if all of her surroundings had diminished into vague impressions holding no more substance than an idle thought. There was nothing. No space, no time, no Brockton Bay, not even the universe itself. Only oblivion.
And then the world snapped into place, and Lisa was herself again, and so was Yan and so was Taylor, though only Taylor seemed undisturbed by that experience. She stood there, calm as ever, while the other two scampered backwards, horrified to find themselves no longer on Earth, but somewhere else.
There was only darkness here, a formless shadow that pulsated all around them, a noxious odorless miasma that was the ground upon which they stood, and the air from which they breathed. It was a great abyss, which stretched out towards infinity, and the only light which Lisa could discern came from a hideous crimson sun. She watched as Yan scurried backwards, babbling to herself in terror, but Lisa stopped, and tried to reign in her panic, and figure out some way to make sense of her surroundings.
Then she started hearing the whistling, high pitched and eerie and emanating from an eternity away, a single inhuman voice which was soon answered by a second high pitched whistle, and then a third, and then a forth, and soon there were hundreds of them filling the space all around her, a symphony which sounded from all directions, everywhere at once. Dazed and afraid, she looked all about her, trying to find any sign of the creatures, but they remained hidden, and not even with the aid of her power could she detect them. But they were there nonetheless, gathering in ever greater numbers, waiting. They were waiting for Taylor to grow tired of her prey.
And then something struck at Yan, moving so fast Lisa couldn't even see it. But she did see something pulling Yan into the shadows, and she saw Yan's terrified expression (eyes comically wide, mouth slightly open, face pale as alabaster) and she heard a momentary scream, and then she heard nothing.
And in that moment, something shifted within Taylor's mind, and her eyes opened wide and she screamed, and in that same moment the universe itself fell back into place. The two teenagers were alone again in that lower class neighborhood in the Docks, but they had been moved through space, for they now were sitting upon the hood of Lisa's car, a full block removed from where the nightmare began.
Still shaken by the experience, Lisa watched Taylor carefully, trying to judge if there might be any further threat from the girl, but it seemed she was herself again. The fifteen year old and her eyes locked on her own hands, and her lips quivered while tears streamed down behind the other side of her glasses.
And then she turned towards Lisa, and Lisa found herself staring at the broken shards of Taylor Hebert. Without even thinking about it, Lisa reacted, and she pulled the younger girl into a gentle embrace.
The words came out as a whisper. "What the fuck did I do?"
Lisa held her and said nothing. She didn't know either.
