In room 402. To any outside observer, Taylor Hebert was simply a convalescent teenager, a victim of unimaginable cruelty, resting after the horror.
But inside her skull, the Queen Administrator processed threads of information coming from flies and the occasional mosquito that hovered in corners of the hospital or flew through its corridors, serving as small sentinels just in case.
"(Shaper. Let's begin)" Taylor thought, a little amused to feel the aforementioned figure salivating at what they were about to do. "(QA, monitor our progress just in case we make a mistake.)"
[Agreement.] QA.
[Agreement. Emotion.] Shaper.
Taking a deep breath, the bio-tinker master gripped her body's father's hand a little tighter. And through the pores of her skin, Taylor extended her will.
The connection lit up in her mind. Shaper projected a vibrant and complex three-dimensional map of Danny's system, where Taylor saw the man's neural pathways: the synapses firing, the adrenal glands exhausted by years of cortisol, and the overactive amygdala that kept him in a constant state of alert without his awareness.
Curious, but without losing sight of her objective, Herbert began the reconfiguration. She felt a strange sensation of vertigo, a sharp dizziness originating at the base of her neck. She didn't know if it was from Shaper, from herself, given the magnitude of what she was doing, or from both.
As she prepared to take her first step, she felt Shaper try to increase the range of control, only to be quickly suppressed by Administrator.
Even as images of epithelial cells dividing at a frenetic rate, or white blood cells generating a widely manipulable pathogen, appeared in her mind. They were quickly dismissed, either by Herbert, who, had she not been busy projecting her emotions onto insects, would have chuckled, or by Administrator, who seemed to vibrate slightly instead.
[Support. Proceed] resonated QA.
Through the tactical merging of her fragments, Taylor was able to interpret and understand what she was seeing with perfect attunement, feeling each cell as if it were a single entity.
Therefore, confident in having someone as a safety net behind her, she commanded the neurotransmitter receptors in Danny's brain to adjust with ease.
It wasn't a magical or instantaneous change; it was more of a direct command to the brain cells. These received orders to move, change their protein structure, alter their behavior, and the way they received both dopamine and cortisol.
All subtly, with the aim of pruning the emotional charge of his memories.
It was a precision operation. Where the memory itself wasn't being erased, Taylor knew that erasing years of history would cause too abrupt a cognitive blow, a mental void the brain would try to fill with madness or trauma, and she wasn't willing to risk it on her first attempt without prior experience.
Instead, she was severing the synaptic connections that linked those memories to pain or responsibility. She commanded the cells to weaken the connections between the hippocampus and the amygdala.
The image of Annette in Danny's mind began to lose its color. The face of his late wife, once a blazing sun of pain and love, began to flatten, like an old photograph stored in a basement no one visits anymore. It was still there, but it no longer burned when it assaulted his thoughts in moments when he wasn't paying attention to something else or wasn't exhausted.
[Redirect the protective impulse.] Background QA instructed to coordinate the logistical effort with Shaper.
[Redirect the protective impulse.] Danny's paternal instinct, that visceral need to stay by her side to protect her from the world, which seemed to surface with full force, was his greatest obstacle.
It was a variable Taylor couldn't control if he was physically present, watching over her with his guilt-ridden eyes. Taylor manipulated her father's hormones at a cellular level.
She commanded the cells in his adrenal and pituitary glands to suppress anything connected to her. Every time Danny looked at her, the biological pull that compelled him to protect her vanished, replaced by a functional coldness that was more of a disquiet.
Then she inserted the catalyst. She replaced that void with dopamine directed toward an external goal.
She created an artificial obsession by rewiring his reward circuits, ensuring they didn't become addictive, stemming from a need for self-sufficiency, the belief that his worth as a man depended on a distant mission to live life to the fullest.
The concept of New York was implanted as the only cure for his inner malaise. Every thought of the Big Apple sent a signal of happiness and purpose to his neurons, while reinforcing the thoughts that staying in Brockton Bay felt like stagnation.
All of this took two hours, a time mostly extended by Taylor herself, who wanted to ensure everything was done properly and patiently.
.
.
.
Danny blinked, his gaze lost for a second. His eyes, previously clouded by faint traces of tears, regained an unnatural clarity.
A strange feeling of detachment began to appear in his chest, an emptiness where before there had been suffocating anguish. He wasn't frightened; his brain, now reprogrammed, interpreted that emptiness as the calm after the storm, as if he had finally found peace.
"Go and rest for a moment, Father," Taylor spoke with calculated gentleness. Just what Danny's new brain needed to hear to obey without question. "Remember, the doctor said you have to sign some papers downstairs. I'll be here; I'm not going anywhere."
Danny nodded, wiping his eyes with a mechanical gesture. He stood, feeling his body lighter, and bent down to kiss his daughter's forehead before leaving.
Taylor didn't flinch. She kept her skin receptive, allowing the cells of her lips to touch those of her forehead. It was a brief contact, but enough for Shaper to perform a final, deep scan. It captured the last data from Danny's bloodstream, ensuring the biological seeds were properly planted and the suggestion process was irreversible without Layer-level intervention.
[Subject identified. Genetic mapping is complete. Biological Suggestion Design stored.]
[Data obtained. Data secured.]