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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category:
Gen
Fandoms:
Parahumans Series - Wildbow亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
Characters:
Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverDanny HebertBrockton Bay WardsLisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
Additional Tags:
Canon-Typical ViolenceCanon-Typical Body Horrorshard-altered psychologytags to be added as we go
Language:
English
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Timballisto's Curated Works
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Published:2019-05-24Updated:2020-03-11Words:99,568Chapters:29/?Comments:226Kudos:730Bookmarks:266Hits:29,374
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Chapter 21: Wraith 3.5
Chapter Text
Tattletale and I walked back, myself in something of a daze. Was she right? It seemed impossible.
"You coming up?" she asked as we neared her team's base again.
"Don't want to," I said. I looked into the building, finding Alec on the sofa in front of the television and Bitch in her room, brushing out one of the dogs. Brian was gone, and there were dirty dishes in the sink. I formed Coryn in their kitchenette and set to work.
"Alright. We didn't really get to talk about what I wanted to tell you, but we can save it for another night. You have enough to think about." Tattletale smiled, her mask hiding the way it usually made her eyes crinkle at the corners.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Like, I get how you figured it out… but how do they know?"
She shrugged. "They have this think-tank of Thinker powers called Watchdog, and more resources than even I know about. Maybe there really are more people like you, and they know about them."
More like me , I thought again. If there were, did I want to know them? Would they really be like me, or would I be strange even to another immortal?
"I'll come by the apartment tomorrow." Tattletale said.
"See you then."
Alec had finally realized the clack of glassware and running water wasn't a part of his show, and turned around to see, from his point of view, a sponge scrubbing the enchilada pan by itself.
"Huh," he said. "Hope that's you, Lazarus." He turned back around.
I usually don't remember my dreams, but that night I didn't want to be conscious; I wanted to knock out, be fully out of my own head and thoughts for the first time since the locker. The same way I shunted my emotions out in to my Dust, I shunted myself back into my brain, which was hallucinating vividly.
I was aware and unaware at the same time, half of me in the dream following dream logic while the other half stood back, behind a pane of glass, watching with the full conscious knowledge that I was in a dream. The conscious part of me knew that I could step in and begin to affect the dream at any time, but it didn't care to. I was here to escape, not to meddle.
A dream of flying over the coastline of Brockton Bay in search of towels faded out into pleasant nothingness as I went through another sleep cycle. The next thing to fade in was familiar, although I couldn't place why at first.
I was in the back seat of the old family car, buckled in on the passenger side. Rain beat down hard on the roof and windows, reducing visibility to almost nothing on the road, just blurs of headlights and flashing red hazard lights.
"Son of a bitch," mom said as she twitched the wheel away from someone speeding so fast in the opposite lane that it rocked our car. "Sorry - don't repeat that, honey. You'd think people would know better than to drive like that!" she shouted the last few words. I couldn't even make out the faded lines on the road.
Where are we going? Where's dad?
As if on cue, my dream-self asked grumpily, "How long until we get home? I want to call Emma."
"Oh, her you can call," mom said, sarcastic. "I wouldn't have come to pick you up if you'd answered my calls, or my texts. The plan was that if you didn't call before three, I'd come pick you up. Well, missy, it's far past three. I drove out once, I'm not going back home alone just to come back in a few hours."
"Mom!" I complained.
I remembered by this point, of course, but it was wrong. It didn't happen like this. She was on her way to pick me up from the Barnes' when it happened, so why was I in the car?
"Don't even start with me, Taylor!" mom said, turning her head away from the road for a moment to look at me. The lines between the lanes were washed out with gray pounding rain.
"MOM!"
A horn blared in front of us, headlights leaving bright smears across my vision as an oncoming car swerved wildly. Even from behind glass I could barely keep track; either mom had drifted or someone else had, and in slow motion the car was sliding, fishtailing across the road. As though it had been planned, we slid between two more cars with an inch to spare and finally stopped on the shoulder, facing the opposite direction from where we had been going but with the flow of traffic.
Mom slapped the hazard light button at the same time her other hand undid her own seatbelt. "Taylor? Honey, Taylor? Taylor!"
"I'm fine!" I said quickly, my breath coming in quick gasps that threatened to spill over into nervous laughter or outright crying. "I'm okay, mom, I'm okay!"
"Oh my god, Taylor," mom shoved herself between the seats into the back, reached out and put her hands on either side of my face, kissing me on the forehead. "Oh my god."
What kind of sick trick was my subconscious trying to play on me? Replaying the circumstances of my mom's death with a few details altered, showing me how she could have been saved?
The me behind the glass stepped out of the car into the pouring rain. Two other cars had stopped and pulled over, one driver already halfway out of his seat. A bright red truck rolled past at a crawl, lights flashing.
No, that's not right.
I turned back to mom and the younger me. I was staring over mom's shoulder as she hugged me, and I met my own eyes.
"You should leave," I said.
"I think I should stay," I replied.
"You didn't want to know about this."
"I do now."
"Suit yourself," I shrugged. I looked back at mom, batting her hands away from my face. "Mom, come on, I said I was fine! Get off!"
A sleek black car came up behind the crawling truck, going far too fast. Its horn blasted in frustration as it swerved into the oncoming lane around the truck and then back. It kept going straight through the other side, wheels spinning on the wet road, and plowed into mom's car.
That's right, I remembered. Mom did pick me up. And then we got in the car, and we went home….
The black car was small and so low to the ground that it slipped under ours and neatly scooped it up. We went rolling down a shallow hill, landing on the roof and sliding.
When it came to a full stop, I stepped around to the passenger side. Mom's body was slumped backwards through the window laying across the wet grass, safety glass shattered around her. Her head hung limp to one side, jaw half-open and eyes staring blankly. Inside the car, I hung limp from my seatbelt, face bloodied beyond recognition.
But no, this was still wrong; I didn't die here.
And I didn't, I saw, as Dust came streaming through. I gasped awake as the first person reached our car, a man in his forties who had half-fallen down the wet hill to get to us.
He took one look at my mom's body and went white, jaw clenching. He hooked his arms under hers and hauled her body out the rest of the way, laying her behind the car.
"Where's my mom?" I asked, tears threatening to fall as he reached in to pull me out next, fumbling at the jammed seatbelt. "Where is she? Where's my mom?!" The younger me looked around, and caught sight of the watching me again. Venomously she demanded, "Why are you still here?"
I didn't know. I reached out through the glass and broke the dream.
"Morning," Lisa greeted. "Sleep well?"
I shrugged, then remembered she wouldn't see it over the phone. My eyes still felt gritty even after a breakfast of tea and toast, and a short shower. "Well enough. I'm going to go stake out that address you gave me for Victor and Othala. Any leads on Crusader?"
"Nothing on him. I'm thinking he might be with Victor and Othala - it's either that or he's slumming it living like a hobo somewhere, because there's no movement from his accounts and I've checked all the motels and hotels that'll take his cash no questions asked."
"And he's not just holed up in his own basement?"
"I should hope not, the PRT raided it yesterday. If he's in some secret panic room he'd better have a month's food supply in there with him."
I smiled, thinking of Crusader pacing around in a tiny room, slowly losing his mind from boredom.
"Thanks for the update. I'll call you again sometime tonight, hopefully when Victor and Othala are in custody."
It didn't take me long to find the address Lisa had written down for me; I knew where the street was, and when I was in range it was impossible not to notice the orange lights of PRT containment vans. I double-checked the house number against my paper to make sure, but there was little doubt in my mind that the Protectorate got to this one first.
On one hand, I should be glad. My goal was being accomplished, and I didn't even need to work for it. On the other, much more realistic hand, I was angry. I wanted to take them down myself.
Velocity, Armsmaster, and Alexandria were all apparently supervising as people in black hoods were led out of the house in handcuffs. I watched a man with Victor's build get in and be foamed into the bench seat from shoulders to toes.
I turned around, unwilling to get into another talk with a hero so soon after my last one. Too late: somehow they'd been alerted to my presence. Velocity and Armsmaster stayed where they were, but Alexandria took off in my direction.
I'd walked this whole way from Lisa's apartment, but the time for subtlety was gone. I raised Dust wings and took to the air as well, planning to lose her in flight.
"Lazarus, hold up!" Alexandria shouted, only audible because I had a sensor on her.
"What?" I asked, from a voice right next to her ear. I was vindicated to see her startle slightly and jerk away from it. If she was talking, she wasn't chasing me. I edged out of line-of-sight.
"You can still hear me, right?" she looked around, eventually pinpointing the sensor my voice was coming from.
"Yes."
"We got Victor and Othala here. You got Krieg and Stormtiger, and Crusader turned himself in yesterday."
Crusader had turned himself in? That might explain why Lisa couldn't track him down.
"That's the end of them. Have you given any more thought to my offer?"
"Still thinking about it," I lied. I had not given it much more thought, too wrapped up in other implications.
"You should have called the number," she said. "I told you we've been investigating, and we've found out some things that you might want to know."
"What things?" I checked, but she wasn't looking around for me. Armsmaster and Velocity were still where they had been.
"About the Empire and your father, what really happened."
What really happened?
Purity said that they hadn't released the site, but that they had taken my dad, and I knew what happened after that. I'd seen it.
"We're still gathering the pieces of it now, Victor and Othala may hold the key. If you call the number."
"...I'll think about it," I said. I did want to call, both to find out what she was talking about and to ask her if she knew about other people like me. Immortal people.
I moved away, losing Alexandria from my range.
What now?
What I wound up doing was going back to the Undersiders' base and playing the game that Alec had left running last night. It was apparently too early for him to be awake, and Lisa and Rachel were both out. Brian, I knew, slept at his apartment.
Alec eventually wandered out of his room, yawning as he pulled a soda out of the fridge and popped the tab with a satisfying crack. Then he noticed me.
"Hey! Is that my save file?"
"New game," I said, concentrating on dodging some PRT-esque agents as they fired nets at my character. "Don't worry, I saved yours before I started it."
He flopped down on the couch next to me and watched for a minute. "Are those the hero powers? Fuckin' figures you'd pick the good route."
"Hero's late game is more fun than villain's," I retorted. I'd escaped the PRT ambush and run straight into a mini-event to find and defuse a bomb. As a hero, I couldn't really afford to just ignore it.
"Yeah, but the villain powers let you suck the life out of people. Beating the last bosses is hard if you just suck up electricity from random light poles."
I grinned. "Not if you're good enough."
"Oh, fuck you. I bet you complete all the objectives, too."
I did, but I wasn't going to confirm it. "Where's Lisa and Rachel?" I asked instead.
"Not my turn to watch them," he said automatically. "Bitch is probably walking her dogs, though."
I let that topic fall, and for a few hours we played video games, trading the controller back and forth. It was a few hours where I could forget the hole my life had dropped into, and I didn't have to think about what to do next. In the back of my mind my comment to Armsmaster brewed, about throwing myself at Ellisburg or another threat, but it was held back by Alexandria's offer and Lisa's theory about my powers. I needed more information.
"Hey, Alec," I began, while browsing through the list to choose my next power-up, "If you could be immortal, would you want to?"
"What, like you?" He put his empty can on the ground and stomped on it, expertly flattening it next two the previous one. "Maybe. Not really. You don't get to pick, right? So even if there's a time when you wish you could die, you can't. Like, what if you get trapped in lava or something? Or tortured? Pretty shitty situation."
Choosing to die. It was just as incomprehensible to me now as it had been when Dennis said his father didn't want to be rewound. Even at the moment I watched my father die on a little screen, I hadn't wanted to die with him. I'd just wanted to retaliate.
"But the torture eventually ends," I said, "And my power can dig me out of getting trapped in lava or molten steel. And at the end of it, I'm still alive to get back at whoever tried to trap me."
He shrugged. "Whatever. 'S your power, we don't get to trade them in or buy upgrades. If we could I'd definitely buy a reduction on the cast-time for mine."
"I thought you just twitched people's muscles."
Alec grinned and jerked his elbow. My own arm locked up in response, flicking out to the side and leaving me holding the controller one-handed. It was a very disconcerting experience.
"Yeah, but after enough time with someone's nervous system, I get full control, body-puppet style."
A strong but limited Master effect. "Damn. You're lucky the Protectorate has no idea, or you'd be a big target. They don't like Masters."
"Don't have to tell me," he complained. "I'm not supposed to do it anymore. I'm getting rusty."
A thought occurred. "Can you control me?"
"Haven't spent enough time yet, passively it takes a few days. If I'm concentrating and working on it, a few hours. Why, you wanna get kinky?"
"Okay, gross," I leaned away from him, and he crowed with laughter. "No, I was just wondering. Can you control dead bodies? Or powers?"
"No dead bodies, some powers. A mental power like Lisa's is iffy, but I could do Grue's darkness easy."
That was a little troubling. I wondered if my control of my Dust counted as a 'mental power' or not.
"Is the immortal dork afraid of me, now?" Alec asked, kicking at my ankle. "Hey, if you're not gonna play give up the controller. I wanna jump around on those ice powers you got."
I handed the controller over. "Not scared of you. Just don't do it to me and we won't have a problem."
"Ye-es ma'am," he drawled. In the game, he hit the wrong button, jumped off a bridge and straight into water. The character died immediately. "Fuck, that's such a stupid weakness. This retard could walk into a puddle and die. Why's he in Louisiana."
"I think they just didn't want to program in a swimming mechanic," I said consolingly. "Follow the quest marker, I want the next power."
The door downstairs banged shut carelessly, and Lisa's voice announced, "I'm here! What were your other two wishes?"
"This shitty genie just keeps giving me the opposite of what I ask for." Alec called back. "Fuck, just shoot him already!" This was directed to me, in a particularly difficult boss fight.
"It's called tactics, dumbass, if you wait the tanks blow off his armor plating and your shots are twice as strong," I countered, dodging another laser-shot. "I'm not wasting energy when he's fully armored."
"Shoot him enough and you blow off his armor plates," Alec insisted.
"Boy, I really hope you guys are talking about a game." Lisa commented as she came up the spiral stairs. She skipped the last step with a hop and came right for us. "Pause that for a sec, I got news."
"Fuck your news, this is a boss," Alec said.
"Fuck you, I'm the boss," Lisa leaned over the couch and flicked him on the ear. "Thank you, Taylor." I'd already hit the pause button, bringing up the menu.
Alec groaned, "You're just encouraging her delusions of power."
"Brian called me while I was out, the local news channels are blowing up with news that the Empire's been taken down. I've been out on random wifi networks doing research all day. We're probably going to have company."
"I am not sharing my room." Alec said quickly.
"Not that kind of company. The Teeth kind. Butcher kind. They've been itching to come back to the Bay since the Nine almost wiped them out. They're the worst of it, but we've also got the Elite sniffing around to see if it's worth fighting for a piece of our pie, and with the Nazis gone even Accord might try to get some people in."
Alec shrugged, and I felt about the same. It was unfortunate, but it was a villain problem. I didn't even know if I'd be staying in the Bay long enough to see the fighting.
"So we'll lay low for a little while, wait for them to duke it out, and then keep doing what we've been doing," Alec said.
"Yeah, about that," Lisa said. "Brian's on his way over with takeout, Bitch'll be here in a few minutes. We've got a job from the boss, one I think you're gonna like."
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