Sometimes, my muse can be a vindictive little bitch. Such is the case here. Don't worry, a new chapter of Fate Woven in Steel is still coming. I just desperatly needed to do this due to a combination of a fever, a vision and cold medicine.
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Impossible Thief
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It started with a pen.
After a rather vile and nasty little prank had been played played upon a student at a local high school, the victim was found hours later; dehydrated, half-mad from the isolation and oxygen deprived due to the the stench and temperature contained within the filth and metal of her could-have-been coffin. A stay in hospital to allow her recovery and the long-accepted practice of papering over the problem with hush money in exchange for her father not trying to take things further. How could he, when staff and students alike swore up and down that they had seen nothing happen, that no-one was at fault for traumatising and injuring his daughter.
With everyone focused on the rather hefty legal proceedings of the settlement, it wasn't surprising that people didn't notice the little details. Things that may have been caught otherwise slipped on through the cracks as organisations rushed to cover one another's rears and keep everything quiet.
The girl's throat had been raw and sore when she was brought in, her voice croaking and barely able to speak. The hospital staff had given her a pad to write with but had forgotten to provide a pen to go with it; that didn't stop her from providing a written note asking to see her father. By the time the nurses began wondering who among them had provided the pen in question, her father had arrived and the tableau that began playing out became more interesting than the mystery of the pen.
Which was why it wasn't noticed that one of the nurses happened to be missing the pen she'd been carrying around in her pocket, whilst passing by the room where the girl had been sitting.
Small little things continued to vanish from the hospital as time passed. In the nine days from the teen's admission to discharge, a total of ten pens, three pencils, two stethoscopes and around twenty dollars in change vanished from doctors and other patients in the hospital. They all turned up eventually, in one unlikely spot or another.
After that ninth day, the rash of disappearances ended as swiftly as it came, when Taylor Hebert was discharged and sent home with her father.
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Over the months of slow recovery from panic attacks brought about by enclosed spaces and the vomit-inducing revulsion at the scent and sight of blood, the girl slowly began to build things back up around her.
This involved quite a bit of time spent outdoors, running and jogging to clear her head and to move throughout the city, to see things with a fresh perspective. The city being Brockton Bay however, that perspective was of a city that was rotting away, with gangs fighting over the remnants. Of defenders who maintained the status quo rather than attempting any improvement out of the fear of negative consequences.
It is a sour thing, the realisation that the system you've been told your whole life exists to protect people, is incapable of doing even that. That the law does not always punish the guilty, no matter the severity of their crime. Such a thing can cause a young, traumatised mind to conjure ill thoughts.
It also caused a few rather fascinating cases of 'lost items' to be reported to the police, along with accusations of theft, though none of them aimed at Taylor herself. Those cases of theft were of course investigated but all the police could determine was that something had certainly been there before that was there no longer; no evidence, no trace of a thief to be found.
Taylor had no explanation for it at first. She simply thoughts of things, letting her anger and sorrow at the world around her guide her mind, to reach out and pluck things seemingly from nowhere and into her pockets and hands.
It didn't take too long for her to deduce the obvious; that she had powers. That she was something more than a normal human could be. Like any person suddenly handed a gift, she began to experiment with it, testing what she could do. But with no idea the extent of her abilities or what they entailed, she hit roadblocks and setbacks. Three long weeks of them, until around the beginning of February...
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What I was doing was stupid. I know that now but I didn't know it when I started testing what I could do.
I still wasn't sure if this was real; for all I knew I could still be in hospital or back in the locker. Everything from the moment that metal door crashed closed and locked me inside the hot, wet darkness could have been my mind desperately clawing at constructing a fantasy to help me stay sane. That possibility grew less and less likely with every passing day but it was still a hard thing to believe; that not only was I free from there, that I had...changed.
From the couch where I was laying, legs tucked under a warm but worn and beat-up old blanket, I could see Dad in the kitchen, taking one of his very few days off in the year - and one of the last one's he'd be able to take for a while. He spent a lot of them, trying to be beside me every day as I recovered - to stay at home while I recuperated. Truth be told, I was already feeling better physically; most of what happened in the locker had been superficial. A few scratches here and there, bruises from where I had banged and struggled, insect bites from the wriggling things nesting in that...filth.
All that had been taken care of in the hospital. We had the bill to show for it, though it had been paid in full by a part of the settlement Dad reached with the school. There was nothing physically wrong with me…
Not that it stopped me waking up at night in a cold sweat, the scene playing out in my head again. Only in my night terrors, the locker door never opened again.
As for the powers I had gained, I still hadn't quite figured out how they tied together...besides one factor. After a quick check to make sure Dad was still looking away, I moved my hand towards the cup of cocoa on the table...and watched as it blurred and vanished, appearing in my hand.
I'd been able to move small stuff to my pockets from other people's, from market stalls and off coat racks into my backpack. Bigger objects I hadn't had too much practice with though. I made sure to put anything very expansive back but I figured that most people wouldn't miss pens and the like. Besides, I'm fairly certain that a lot of what I did keep was already stolen. Don't ask me how I knew but I could almost sense when there was something valuable or stolen around.
The cocoa was still warm, the sweet chocolate bringing warmth deep inside, letting it spread. It didn't do too much for the knot in my guts but it did wonders for the cold that had settled into my arms and legs from being outside for a morning run. The one downside, I reflected as I reached over to carefully set the still gently steaming drink back down, was that once I had something I couldn't put it anywhere else by moving it, it was on my person until I dropped it somewhere. I also had trouble moving things through walls and across wider distances.
The sound of a chair scraping across the kitchen floor brought me out of my thoughts, seeing Dad rise and move for the sink. I moved my hand to bring the mug to it once his back was turned.
He spun around suddenly, in time to see the mug blur, vanish and reappear in my hand.
My legs went numb...my whole body locked up completely as we stared at one another.
'Stupid!' I berated myself, fear starting to take hold as he reached up, adjusting his glasses with a neutral, judging look upon his face.
I wasn't afraid of my Dad. His temper could scare me but I had never been truly afraid of him. Not even then did I feel tempted to run or try to hurt him out of fear...I was just terrified that he'd hate me, be disappointed in me or worse…I couldn't face that, not on top of everything else. My hands were trembling, the cup rattling on the table as I set it down slowly, feeling returning to my legs as I shakily stood. "Dad…"
I was expecting him to get angry at me for hiding it. Or to be disappointed that I didn't trust him enough to tell him about something this important. I'd rehearsed the speeches in my head over and over.
I never expected him to finally just...look at me, like he knew the whole time...and smile. "I'll admit...I'm a little disappointed you didn't come to me sooner."
I winced at that. It hurt, betraying my Dad's trust. "How long have you known?"
He came in from the kitchen, taking a seat on the couch as I stood, a few feet away. I felt ashamed of myself for backing away from him but I was more than a little confused at what was going on. "Well," He began, taking his glasses from his face. "I didn't really. I started suspecting things when I heard through some of the dockworkers guild members about things being lifted from stalls and people at the Boardwalk."
Now I was even more confused. Sure, that was suspicious - things got stolen at the Boardwalk all the time, though you had to be good at it if you didn't want 'security' breaking every bone in your arm - but not incriminating to me specifically. Before I could protest though, he continued.
"The other reason is because I knew someone who could do the same thing. Make things become theirs. Steal, move and make impossible things vanish." His head turned, looking at me with tears starting to form in his eyes. "There's something you need to know about your mother."
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The basement was dark and dusty as ever. What few excess things we had, we kept down here.
After nearly going into hyperventilating when Dad started talking about mom, he asked me to come down here, so he could show me. Show me that he was telling the truth about this.
The basement was solid concrete on all four walls, so was the floor. I had no idea how thick they were, just that they had to be pretty sturdy and solid. So you can imagine my surprise when Dad shifted some boxes from under the stairs and gently traced his fingers over the stone...and cracks began to form. Not spider-webbing cracks like the stone was breaking. Chunks of stone, neatly separating apart, to reveal a tunnel underneath the staircase and a ladder leading even further down.
Lights flickered as the stone drew back all the way, the tunnel now easily big enough to fit someone about Dad's size with room left over. "Annette...she was clear on this one. This is for you."
Now I was scared. The basement was bad enough but that tunnel...even lit by humming, flickering halogen lights it was making my breath quicken and I could hear the thumping of my heart in my ears as Dad's hand gently settled on my shoulder. "Easy kiddo...just take a deep breath alright? She had no idea…" His hand squeezed tighter as he choked on the last word. This was hurting him too. An old wound now as open and wide as that tunnel.
I won't pretend that this was the second I conquered my fears; I was still terrified. Just the thought of spending five seconds in that tunnel was enough to make my legs refuse to co-operate with the rest of my body. I had to force myself, each and every step towards it and every inch of motion it took to even get ready to go down. "I know Dad. I know."
Every rung was agony. My hands squeezed the old, worn metal so tight that I would be feeling the ache in the bones and muscle for a day or so afterwards. White-knuckle doesn't even begin to describe how tight I was gripping every metal bar. When my feet finally touched solid ground again, I finally took in a deep, heavy gasp of air into my burning lungs...and immediately regretted it when the dust caused me to start hacking and coughing.
After finally catching my breath I had a chance to get a look at where I was. The ladder had brought me to a large underground room, filled with old-looking technology - were those reels of magnetic tape? - dominated by a massive monitor that was larger than I was tall, attached to an equally large keyboard. Right next to it was a silver case, resting on a section of the machine.
"What is all this...was this mom's stuff?" The case did not have a lock or a combination tumbler. Instead there was just a small black box where a lock and latch should be. "What in the…" I reached out and when my finger touched the pad, the case beeped and let out a soft 'click', accompanied by the hiss of air as the seal on the case broke.
Inside was a series of folders and files, along with a dozen CD's and...floppy disks? Just how old was some of this stuff? One of them stood out, a single CD in a clear plastic case with a label stuck to it; 'For Taylor.'
I looked from the case in my hands to the massive computer terminal. Just under the keyboard I could see two slots; one for what I presume was floppy disks and the other I was more familiar with, a CD drive. I clutched the case tight, reading the simple, printed label over and over again, sweat making it slick in my grasp. Was this it? Was this what my mother had left for me, that she'd told my Dad about and that they had both kept hidden from me.
Would there be answers, more questions? Was this all just some twisted fantasy conjured by my brain that was high on adrenaline and terror from the tunnel?
I could just leave. Put it all back, head upstairs and tell Dad I didn't want to know. Forget these powers, just live...normally. No, that would be worse than dying right now. I had come this far, I had power's like all the heroes and villains that lived and fought in and for this city. Beyond that...I wanted to know. I barely remembered my mother, I would give almost anything to have something, anything to remember her by beside my hair.
I slipped the disk inside the machine and held my breath. A low, deep hum began to build, the floor trembling slightly under my feet as power began to pulse back into the chamber that was barely bigger than our basement. Lights flickered to life on the machinery as those massive rolls of magnetic tape started to whirr and spin, machinery clicking as power flowed from the parts farthest from the monitor and flowed towards it, culminating in the massive screen flickering to life...
I let all my breath out in a silent gasp as I stared at my mother's face for the first time in years. Speakers, hidden from sight, crackled to life as I heard a voice that I only remembered in dreams now.
"Hello Taylor. If you're watching this, then I imagine I've either disappeared or mortality has finally caught up to me." Despite the grim subject, she was smiling warmly at me, her long raven black and curled hair flowing out past her shoulders. She seemed to be standing in the same room I was now, meaning there must be a camera around here somewhere.
"Despite quite the search, I suppose there are some things in the world that are just too difficult to obtain, immortality amongst them."
The woman - Mom - paused, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear slowly.
"Before I begin...I want you to know, since the moment I first held you in my arms, I loved you. I will always love you and Danny and I hope you're both safe now. Tell him that no matter what happened to me...I will always be watching over you both."
I had to clutch the edge of the computer deck to avoid falling. It hurt...deep inside I could feel a part of me breaking and then building itself back up again. "Mom…" I felt tears on my cheeks but I reached up, wiping them on my sleeve. There had to be more. She wouldn't go through all this for just one little message. Sure enough, when I had cleared my eyes, she began to speak again.
"There's so much you don't know Taylor. I imagine Danny was watching for the signs carefully but if by chance you've kept your...skills..a secret from him, please tell him as soon as this recording finishes. He loves you Taylor and you can trust him. Just like I trusted him." Mom moved, the camera shifting to follow her as she stepped over towards a section of the wall, reaching up to touch a series of coloured lights on a plinking panel.
"I wasn't always who I am now Taylor. Once, a long time ago, I was alone and had to fend for myself on the streets. It teaches you things, skills that allow you to survive. How to read people, how to sense danger...and how to find the wealth you need to survive."
Mom used to be an orphan? A thief? My head was swimming now. I'd always thought of my mother as...well not quite perfect but this was a far cry from the image I had created in my head.
"Of course, you can only survive on the streets. Not thrive. Not live. I used the knowledge and skills I built up to escape from those dark alleyways and travel the world. I learned so much, how to accomplish great things. Things people thought impossible before Parahumans began to appear across the globe. I've been called by a few names...but there's one in particular I'm sure you'll find if you do a little digging." On the recording mom finished touching the last light and I heard a hissing from behind me. Half-turning, I saw that same section of wall starting to open up, as on the screen it did the same...there was a light inside, which illuminated a mannequin that was wearing a set of clothing; a dark, armoured undershirt with long sleeves, matching pants and a set of high heels. The heels matched the long trench coat and the wide-brimmed hat, both a brilliant red.
"You know me as your mother, Taylor. Annette Hebert...but once upon a time, I was called Carmen Sandiego. The World's Most Notorious Thief." A smile played across the recorded features of the older woman, one that spoke of mischief and delight as her eyes shone.
"And everything I ever was, I leave to you."
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Impossible Thief
Worm/Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
