Chapter Text
Despite the fact that I had spent the entirety of Sunday doing low-effort tasks, I didn’t feel very well-rested for school on Monday. I had done some small-scale experiments with the greywash, ordered more computer components for ‘Snowgray’ to put into my surveillance network, and read through Dragon’s design document. All this from the comfort of my bed.
The school bus started off almost empty, most of the kids in my neighbourhood relegated to Winslow in the other direction. I spent the ride thinking about the message Kinsey had sent me last night.
The actual content was innocuous, ‘Hey, is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you since Friday,’ but my reaction to it hadn’t been. I had ignored it, thinking that I could deal with it tomorrow. What exactly ‘it’ was, I couldn’t really explain to myself. I just knew that the thought of answering that question honestly scared me, but the thought of lying wasn’t good either.
The problem was that I had now ignored a message from my girlfriend.
It was too late to reply now. Too late in the morning for, ‘Oh sorry, I had an early night and only saw this now,’ which was a lie anyway, and a more honest message would be long enough that I might as well tell her later in person.
My master/stranger protocols involved a constant self-checking process between my mental threads. I had to be absolutely honest with myself, but I was finding it hard to admit that I wasn’t being rational here. I knew that I wasn’t because there was an easy answer to my dilemma. One of the simplest tests one could do for influenced reasoning was to swap the actors in a scenario and see if the reasoning stayed the same. If I heard about someone in my position I would tell her to simply write, ‘Sorry for not replying last night. I’m not doing too well. I’ll tell you at school,’ but I was finding that very hard for some reason.
It was so hard, in fact, that I had caught myself doubting whether I really had feelings for Kinsey rather than confront my own fear of talking about this. If I found it so hard to reply, maybe it was because I didn’t really like her.
That thought set off so many error signals that it felt like an argument had broken out in my head for a second.
I resolved to avoid deliberately deceiving myself in the future.
My procrastination took me all the way to Arcadia, feeling all the more guilty for not having just sent the damn message. I kept having to stop myself from preemptively making up excuses – no, lies – that explained it away as a tiny thing she didn’t need to be concerned about; ‘I was in a hurry this morning’, ‘It slipped my mind’, and so on.
Only my multitasking saved me from being too distracted to notice the stranger by the bus stop.
This was a stranger with a lowercase ‘S’, not necessarily a cape. He was school-age, with a pair of bluetooth earphones in his ears, bobbing his head as if to music and watching the kids coming out of the bus.
The damning thing was his lack of a backpack. Sure, he could be an older student who had come to school early and was waiting for a friend, but something about him was setting off my sense of danger. That sense got twice as strong when his eyes met mine, widened in recognition, and quickly flicked away again.
Fuck... I really didn’t like the look in those eyes. That was the look of someone who was hearing her song, whites showing all around the iris. He had looked away, sure, and nothing had hit me yet, but—
“Excuse me?”
I whipped around to— “Oh. Sorry.” It was just someone wanting to get off the bus.
When I turned back, the guy was gone. I hadn’t even managed to single out his phone.
Class was torture.
I kept worrying about the guy at the bus stop. It was probably nothing, but I couldn’t stop his wide eyes from drifting into my thoughts and staying there. He had seemed kind of familiar. The only place I might have encountered a cape but not gotten to know them was South Africa, and that thought made my paranoia about her coming to get me all too rational for comfort. Who knew how long the capes on the bridge had been in contact with her? Was it long enough to map their future a full two weeks ahead? I didn’t know for sure, but it was plausible.
If that was the case, and he was a Simurgh bomb – I needed to keep reminding myself that these were ifs – then it could mean that either Renick or I were going to leak the information from the videos to another mapped person soon. It didn’t even have to be this guy, necessarily. She just needed to see that the information got out through someone and she could put the hit out through someone else. I put my head in my hands and allowed myself a shaky sigh. We should have waited longer. I’d feel a lot more sure that this was unlikely if we were four weeks out of the battle. Two was on the long side of plausible, but I’d prefer to be certain.
I calmed myself down a bit over the next period. If she didn’t want the information getting out, she would have had me killed before I told Renick. If she wanted it to get out, she wouldn’t be doing anything. This was probably just a garden-variety stalker from the Empire.
I refused to let myself get into a loop of, ‘But what if she wants me to think that?’ Instead, I motioned to Kinsey that I wanted to meet up before lunch. Usually I would have sent her a message – texting in class was easy with my power – but her message still sat at the bottom of our chat, unaddressed.
We walked to the storage closet / elevator together. It was out of the way enough that we could both hop in without being seen. She looked like she wanted to hug me, but something must have stopped her because we got to the roof without having touched.
There was a moment of silence once we were there. Her body language was questioning, but also a bit excited. She wanted to hear what I had to say, but she also wanted to tell me something.
I didn’t even know what I wanted to say, exactly, so I made it clear with my body language that she should go first.
Her smile was such a relief, “Hey Taylor, guess what?”
Thank god for mirroring. This was an easy conversational formula. I adjusted my expression to a conspiratorial smile and leaned in slightly, {This is fun.} “Tell me.”
“You are looking at,” she drummed her hands on her thighs for emphasis, “Brockton Bay’s newest ward!”
My heart dropped. I was such a bad girlfriend. I had completely forgotten that she was planning to join the wards. I let none of my guilt onto my face, instead hugging her and picking her up for a spin, “That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you. Were you keeping it as a surprise?” {Why not say something sooner?}
“I just didn’t want to bother you with the details of the registration process. You’ve had a lot on your plate the last few weeks.”
The feeling of guilt deepened. I hadn’t been there for her. “Sorry. So you’ve gone through the whole branding process already?”
“Yep.” She twirled her finger by her temple as if curling an imaginary strand of hair. It doubled very neatly as a gesture for crazy. “The image guys have some pretty strong ideas, and I had to threaten them with the Youth Guard to get them to give me a proper name. I’ll be going by ‘Locks’. ”
“Awesome.” This was an entire fight I had somehow missed, a challenge she had faced without me.
“I can show you the costume later,” she suggested with an eyebrow wiggle. “The debut is next week, but you get girlfriend privileges.”
I laughed lightly at her joke, still reeling from the realisation that I had dropped another thing due to lack of time. This one was so important too. Not the wards registration itself, though I was sad to have missed helping out, but being there for my girlfriend in general. I had failed at that, and if it had been another situation like her trigger I would have failed very hard indeed.
“You wanted to tell me something, right?”
I couldn’t ruin her good mood now. Honesty was important, yes, but I didn’t want to rain on her parade. I kept my voice perfectly steady, “Whatever. Something for later. We should go tell the others!”
She hesitated for just a second, then smiled at me and turned to walk back to the elevator.
I realised that I had just told her my first proper, full-throated lie. I realised that she believed me because I had never given her cause not to, but that that trust like that once broken would never be the same.
In that moment of her turning away, I saw her walking out of my life forever.
“Kinsey, I—” I still didn’t know what to say. How could I phrase this unbelievable knot that my life had become? How could I break down and simplify and communicate that in a way that wouldn’t hurt her or be loud or embarrassing or ugly?
She turned back. My stupid, stupid face – still under my full explicit control because I was fucking cursed – was frozen, {I want to say something.} It didn’t move while I desperately thought, but no matter how many parallel threads I started, they were all just going in circles individually. The silence stretched too long. She came up to me and took my hands, and somehow, without me changing anything about my body language, it suddenly meant “{I’m struggling,}” to her.
She had reinterpreted my expression. I hadn’t meant to communicate that. I just suddenly was, through no active change of my own. It was like when I blushed, when my hands shook, or when I was out of breath. She knew me well enough to tell that an unchanging blank face meant I was struggling with something internally. That was so— I couldn’t even phrase to myself how it made me feel. She knew me.
She knew me. What kind of an idiot was I being? She knew me. Why was I worried about appearances here? The primary guiding principle I needed to follow was honesty, if not anywhere else in my life, then here. I wouldn’t make a bad impression. She knew me.
I collapsed into Kinsey, sobbing.
She caught me in her arms, “Taylor?”
I felt so stupid like this, like I was acting, but fuck it. Those were feelings too, and I was trying to be honest. I opened myself up fully, laying all the hurt bare. I let all the stress and the worry and the guilt display itself on my body, in my choked crying, in the way I clutched her fine wool jumper like a lifeline.
“Oh my god, Taylor! What’s wrong?”
She wasn’t really asking me what was wrong. She was asking me if there was anything immediate she could do to help. I shook my head and let myself be led to a raised concrete wall. She sat down on it, but I didn’t want to be taller than her right now, so I slid down to the roof itself and buried my face in her lap. My legs were weak anyway.
She stroked my hair and made gentle shushing noises, her other hand unsure about holding me up or rubbing my back. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
It was barely cathartic. I felt like such a fraud, even when I was showing everything. Every thread of consciousness that held some unpleasant thought, every worried self-check I was constantly performing, all the bad things I was holding back or keeping to myself came crashing down into me in one go. It was like drowning.
“Jesus— Taylor!” I had hiccoughed, and the way my body spasmed had caused a frightened whimper to escape. Well, I had performed the fright I felt at the way my performance looked.
Either way, she needed an explanation. It came out in a tiny whisper, “I’m so scared. I’m so scared of her.”
She didn’t say anything about that, just gathered me up as tightly as she could and held on to me.
“I’m sorry Kinsey,” I tried to explain. “My power. This is just a performance.”
There was heat in her voice. Almost anger, but not at me. “I know how it works.”
Did she? Did she really? Would she still care if she understood how much control I had? If she knew how easily this could be a lie?
“Don’t do that!” she shouted. I had stopped the performance briefly, going blank.
I continued, holding her closer to me. I did want this comfort. It wasn’t a lie.
“Sorry,” she whispered into my head. “I know how it works. I swear I won’t ever be upset about you showing me what you really feel. I trust you to do that.”
“I haven’t been. I’m so sorry.” I sounded wretched.
“I know. It’s okay. I promise it’s okay.” She jumped when I sobbed again, “Jesus.”
I tried to get my emotions under control, but I couldn’t. Before I got my powers, I always just controlled my body, and my emotions had followed! If I forced myself to stop crying, I’d eventually stop feeling like I needed to cry. Now that everything was a performance, my emotions were completely decoupled from my physical actions. Nothing worked anymore!
“Did— Did something happen?” she asked gently, {You don’t have to answer.}
The things my body did to act out my emotions were surprising even me at this point. I had to dial it back just to get the words out. “The PRT—” I gasped, “showed me videos.” That wasn’t all. There was also Rachel robbing a store, Coil manipulating me, Dragon needing saving, Lisa needing saving, Emily needing a fake ID, me apparently going fucking crazy, and who knew what else? “It’s just— too much—”
I stopped speaking. I could speak – I could always speak – but talking made things worse while crying into Kinsey’s lap didn’t, no matter how embarrassing it was. She made a confused sound, “Videos? What kind of— No!”
I nodded. I had signed the waiver, no matter how much I wished I hadn’t, and it had...damaged me to see those videos. I felt so stupid. I had seen worse – done worse – in my real-life encounter with her, but a few tapes affected me like this?
“Those fuckers!” she shouted at nobody. I heard betrayal in her voice and felt it in the way her hands tightened on me. She felt helpless and small and scared for me.
I was starting to feel dizzy. Something about the emotional display was physically affecting me. Breathing deeply between sobs only seemed to make the situation worse. I lifted my head off of her jeans, where I had left a dark spot of snot and tears. Her hair tickled my neck.
Kinsey reached for me as I got up, a sudden desperate fear on her face, “No Taylor wait! I’m sorry.” {I didn’t mean to scare you.} She was crying too. When had that happened?
The world spun, despite the fact that I was completely blank again. “Something’s wrong with me.”
“What?”
I crumpled.
I woke up to shouting.
“What do you mean, you won’t!?” That was Kinsey’s voice.
Amy answered, “She refuses me permission to heal her every single time. Her life isn’t in danger, so I can’t ethically do it.”
“She’s unconscious!”
I was still dizzy as hell, and I honestly felt like I might puke, but I managed to speak just fine, “I’m awake.”
She rushed to me immediately, “Are you alright?”
No. I wasn’t. I opened my eyes into the bright noonday sun and found Amy. “CPR is billed at around five RVUs in Brockton General. Can I give you two hundred and fifty dollars to heal whatever is wrong with me?”
She crouched down and glared at me, blocking the sun. Without the glare, I could see her sister standing off to the side, a worried look on her face. “You’re a real idiot, you know?”
“Is that a yes?” I really hoped it was a yes. I felt like shit.
“It’s a no,” Amy waved off the cry of protest from both Victoria and Kinsey, “It’s a no because I can’t heal this. At best I can give you some drugs to help for a bit.”
I nodded, {Yes please,} and instantly felt a wave of calm rush over me. I was fine. I was better than fine. I was so fine I could go to sleep...
She jolted me awake, “Nope! You’re staying with us for now. I gave you the drugs because I need to tell you something, but I don’t want it to kill you.”
Woah, she was pretty upset. Kinsey was worried sick, I could tell. I should probably swap in a thread of consciousness that was less apathetic.
Amy startled, “Nope! Stop! Whatever you just did, don’t do that!”
“You gave me too much,” I protested. One of my threads was now giggling away dreamily, but I was fine. The only effect was a bit of sluggishness in my body.
“That’s fucking freaky...” she murmured, looking distracted for a moment, “like your gemma just—” She caught herself.
“What’s wrong with me?”
She seemed to remember that she was supposed to be angry with me, “Right. I was calling you an idiot. How in the world can you give such good advice and fail so miserably to follow it yourself? What did you tell me in containment?”
“Uhh, that your power was cool?” Did she want to talk about her plants in front of Kinsey? She had been so secretive about it back then.
“No you dumbass!” she shouted. “You told me to take a break. You told me I was overworking myself, juggling too many plates. I took your advice to heart, you know. I cut my hospital hours a bit, and I picked up a hobby or two and it worked. I feel way better!”
“That’s amazing, Amy.” How did it relate to me though?
“So you can maybe imagine a quantum of my shock when I get called to the roof in the middle of lunch and find you recovering from a fucking syncope because you’ve somehow managed to dump a week’s worth of emotional responses into your body AT ONCE!”
“Ah.” That did explain it.
“You don’t get to ‘ah’ at me after this stunt!” she poked me in the forehead. “You had an arrhythmia! Your blood pressure was in the ground! I know your cardiovascular system wasn’t this stressed two weeks ago, because I rebuilt the damn thing for you!”
“Isn’t being shouted at usually a bit of a stressor?” I tried weakly.
Amy rolled her eyes, “Pull the other one. I have your endocrine system by the short and curlies right now. I’d be surprised if you manage mild worry, nevermind stress.” She seemed to be calming down a bit. “Despite my better judgement, I actually care about you. So please take this seriously. Whatever this thing you’re doing is? It’s killing you.”
I looked at Kinsey, who was chewing her cuticles; at Amy, with a tired expression on her face; and at Victoria, whose perfect curls were out of place above her forehead. Whatever Amy had given me let me think about things calmly, at least. “Sorry for scaring you. You’re right.”
Amy let out a sigh of relief, “I’m going to excuse you from school for the day.”
“I’d prefer to stay.”
“You need rest and, I don’t know, a therapist or something.”
It was nice, the way I didn’t freak out at the thought of that. For once, my emotions were as placid as my face. “You’re probably right, but I don’t think being alone would be good for me right now.”
“Whatever,” she grumbled. “Vicky! Go away for a second.”
Her sister left for the other side of the roof. Amy glanced at Kinsey, but I silently communicated that I wanted her here.
Amy finally let go of me and scrubbed her hands over her face, “I’m billing you more than five piddly RVUs for this fucking counselling session, by the way. I know you can afford it.”
“I’ll throw in a Number Man account if you like.”
“Arent those free?”
“Yeah, but you need a referral and the cards are four hundred dollars each.”
“Fine. Whatever. Vicky tells me they put you through infohazard containment. Did they give you the pills?”
I nodded.
“Why the hell didn’t you take them?”
Kinsey interrupted my answer, “What pills?”
I explained, “Something called amnestics. They remove part of your memory.”
“Jesus Christ,” she swore. “They mind-wipe you afterwards?”
“It wasn’t so bad,” the enforced calm from Amy was wearing off a bit. “It was just videos of the— of her—” I took a deep breath, my hands steady on the floor, “—her previous battles.”
I wasn’t as subtle as I thought. Kinsey took one of my hands and held it in both of hers.
“How do I fix this?” I asked Amy.
“Ask the fucking VA or something, I don’t know! Beyond the usual psychological stuff, which I am not remotely qualified to deal with, I’d guess you need to stop bottling your feelings into your power so much. I don’t know what the hell it is, but whatever you do when your corona gemma takes full control of your brain? It’s just papering over the problem. Maybe just try expressing your emotions normally?”
I nodded, chagrined. I had no idea it was building up like that, but in retrospect I had been experiencing a lot of physical stress symptoms recently. My intellectual capacity was basically infinite, but maybe my total emotional capacity was still that of one person? I could partition different bits of my emotional reactions to different threads, but it would make some sense that those bits still needed to be hosted in my meat brain. My power was an unemotional thing. It might just not simulate them at all.
Either way, my model of myself as an infinite parallel processor was not quite right. I had an infinite parallel processor to host some of my thoughts, but the essence of me was obviously still physically locatable in my body. I wasn’t some gestalt entity, floating in my superpower like a ghost.
With how dampened my emotions were at the moment that was actually quite comforting, somehow.