–A.D. 2011, April 10th–
At a very different location, and a very different time, there is yet another young girl in yet another jail cell.
Three months have passed since Taylor Hebert was locked into that dank, dark, fetid Winslow High School locker.
Three months since she was left there, longer than she ever should have been. Three months since her body was found rotted, festering. Three months since the Brockton Bay Protectorate’s Team Leader, Armsmaster, gave a public statement.
Shadow Stalker will be stepping down from the Wards, effective immediately. Taking time away from work, indefinitely.
He offered no further details, even when pressed.
No, she wasn’t injured. Please, exercise restraint in your speculation. Remember, the Wards are children. They deserve a normal life.
Thank you. That will be all.
Three months since Taylor Hebert died.
Two months, since a jury ruled unanimously in her posthumous favor. Two months, since her murderer was put away for good. Two months since justice was done.
Justice was done, but Winslow isn’t quite the same, anymore.
There’s…something in the air.
In the aether. A virus. Invisible, intangible, yet all-pervading. Everything’s grim, grey, dark.
Dead.
Taylor was hardly a socialite. She barely interacted with anyone. And yet, her absence, somehow, is felt. The Teachers are quieter. The students, too. Madison hasn’t been to school since the incident. Her friends say she’s near-catatonic. No one’s heard from Sophia Hess, either. And, most strangely of all, perhaps, one day Greg Veder just…up and disappears.
Just like that.
No one speaks it, but everyone feels it.
Something’s wrong.
They know it in their bones. Something’s wrong. They hear it in the scratchings on the chalkboard, in the rustling of their textbooks as they turn the page. Something’s wrong. They taste it in the blandness they eat at lunchtime every day, they see it when they look outside the window. Something’s wrong.
Something’s changed.
And they feel it.
They feel it in the way a field mouse’s scruff spikes when a raptor falls from high above. They feel it in the way a capybara’s eyes widen when it spots something reptilian moving beneath the river’s waves. They feel it in the way a gazelle’s haunches bunch and bundle when it catches an errant scent upon the wind.
They know it in their bones. They smell it in the air. They hear it in the voices on the screen. They can’t put it into words, but they don’t need to. It doesn’t have to be spoken aloud for them to know. For them to feel.
The world was already black, but it’s become just a subtle shade darker.
Darker, in the three months since Taylor Hebert died.
And yet, is it, truly?
Such things, such malaises as plague the students of Winslow High, are but passing fancies in the grandness and vastness of human experience. Three months since Taylor Hebert died, but what difference does the world truly know? Such things matter little to Capes and Autocrats, to Presidents and Chief Directors and Cauldronites.
And they matter particularly little to this one, young, girl.
The one in the different time, and the different location, and the different jail cell. The one who, like the time, and the location, and the cell, could scarcely be more different than Emma Barnes if she tried.
She is attractive, true, but her looks are more girl-next-door than supermodel. She has blond hair, not red, green eyes, not amber, and possesses that one thing Emma Barnes never had, no matter how much she might wish she did.
An active corona pollentia.
Her name is Lisa Wilbourne, and she is a cape.
A Thinker, to be precise. As is made all-too-obvious from the rather unique circumstances of her imprisonment.
Her arms are cuffed tight behind her back, so tight she cannot budge them even an inch from their current location, so tight that the circulation in them is nearly severed. Her waist is bound, her feet are fixed to the floor, she is wholly and completely stuck in this one, awkward, uncomfortable position. She cannot move. She cannot shift. She cannot do anything but wait.
Wait, and reflect upon the events that led her to this situation.
Her ears are covered in thick, deafening muffs, her eyes are swaddled in an entirely opaque cloth, and her mouth is gagged painfully. She cannot see. She cannot hear. She cannot speak. She can barely swallow.
At least, she is not paralyzed.
The room in which she sits uncomfortably, achingly, she cannot observe. She cannot survey, or examine. Obviously.
But, if she could, she would find little promising within its confines.
The walls around her are thick, and white, and padded. Labeled with thick, brutish orange numbers that spell out ‘thirteen.’ She is watched, from all angles, by a series of ever-rotating PRT agents through a thorough speckling of minute cameras, invisible to the naked eye.
If she could see, which, of course, she can’t, her power might also allow her to make out the nozzles dotting the corners of the white, padded room. It might lend her insight into their purpose, their internal mechanisms. Containment foam dispensers. Anti-cape. Efficient. Effective. Brutal.
Dragon’s design.
Like all of hers, they do their job well.
But, again, Lisa can’t see them. Lisa can’t see, at all. She can’t hear. She can’t move. She can’t speak. All she can do is think.
Think about the choices that led her to this moment.
For indeed, the only thing that Lisa shares in common with the red-headed tormentor, the murderer, the manslaughterer interrogated three months hence, is that she, too, is in state of disbelief, and despair.
And that she, too, is responsible for manslaughter.
She trembles. She quivers. Even hours later, she finds it hard to breathe. And not because of the awful-tasting gag shoved down her throat.
She still remembers the fire.
She didn’t know anything could burn that hot, could travel that past. She remembers the smoke, thick and choking, making her weep black tears that stung her cheeks. She remembers the screams, no matter how she tries to forget them. She remembers the scent of burning flesh. How it smelt strangely, sickeningly like pork.
Seared pig, and the shrieking screams of her only friends as they burnt down to ash.
To ashes.
Her fault.
All her fault.
Ash to ashes, and dust to dust.
Her power speaks to her, jarringly.
The Book of Common Prayer. Thomas Cranmer. 1549.
Dumbly recites a quote she read a lifetime ago.
Fucking thing.
It’s hard to control in the best of circumstances, hard to turn off, and now is not the best of circumstances. Her mind is racing, rioting, raging out of control. Unbalanced, lopsided, topsy-turving, tearing itself apart.
Fucking thing.
Lisa feels her chest quiver, again. In that awful way.
Fucking useless thing.
Even the thick, opaque cloth isn’t enough to absorb her tears. She feels them run, hot, down her cheeks. She tastes them, salty-sweet and stomach-churning, through the gagged mouth she can’t quite close.
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Fucking useless power.
Her body shakes and shivers miserably against the restraints that bind her tight. Her torrid sobs emerge as muffled moans and groans through the gag that suffocates her, echo hauntingly in-between her own deafened ears.
How could this happen?
It was meant to be a simple gig.
Just a simple gig.
Her fucking useless, fucking lying power activates again.
Little Laowai. Pawn shop and Go parlor. Known front for Azn Bad Boys. Center for local trafficking operations. Opium. Heroin. Humans. Tactical strike on this location will represent significant damage to ABB infrastructure.
Enemy threat presence, minimal.
Even amidst the sobs, Lisa almost laughs. It’s a high-pitched, hysterical giggle that escapes frantically, rebelliously from her trembling lungs and chest.
Enemy threat presence, minimal.
What a fucking joke.
Enemy threat presence, minimal.
Her power confirms, all the same.
Lung otherwise occupied. Oni Lee otherwise occupied. A successful hit on this target will elevate your standing in Coil’s regard. Will allow for greater trust, greater power, greater responsibilities. Will allow for eventual freedom.
Freedom.
Ah, yes.
All Lisa’s ever wanted. All she’s ever worked towards.
Ironic, that.
Lung otherwise occupied. Lung should not be there. Lung should not have been there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung otherwise occupied. Lung should not be there. Lung should not have been there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung otherwise occupied. Lung should not be there. Lung should not have been there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung otherwise occupied. Lung should not be there. Lung should not have been there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung was there. Lung was not there. Lung wa–
Lisa’s power devolves into a meaningless drivel that pollutes her mind, garbled static on a radio she can’t turn off, filling her ears, swelling her brain, driving her mad.
“Just shut the FUCK UP!” She shrieks at it, or tries to. The gag turns her screech into yet another mumbling moan.
She shuts her eyes tight, biting down on the bit that gags her hard, too hard, so hard she feels a flash of pain and tastes hot iron on her swollen tongue, and still she flexes her jaw muscles, harder, harder–
When suddenly, there is light.
Blindingly, glaringly, without warning, vision and sound are restored to her. Her gag is torn out, roughly, and her restraints are removed.
Lisa blinks her eyes frantically, panickedly, desperately taking in the world around her with great and mighty swivels, deep and gulping breaths, wrist-rubbing movements. She sees the white room. She sees the cameras hiding beneath the thick, padded walls. She sees the little gouts of foam-dispensers menacingly pointing her way.
She looks in front of her, and sees the person standing there.
It is a woman.
She’s pale-skinned. Well-dressed. Long, brown hair so dark it’s almost black falls past her shoulders loosely. She wears an immaculately-tailored suit, and tie, but neither appear particularly lavish, extravagant, or expensive. The holster for a silver-plated handgun rests easily at her hip. She is expressionless. She barely looks at Lisa.
Atop her head rests a lone, grey fedora.
Lisa’s never seen this woman before. Lisa doesn’t recognize her. She doesn’t like a cape, or high-ranking PRT. If anything, she looks like an office worker, stepped away for lunch.
Lisa’s eyes rove nervously up and down the woman. Her power’s strangely silent.
“Well?” She snaps. “Are you here to make me talk?”
Her words hold far less bite than she’d hoped they might. Her voice is tremulous. Weak from abuse. Haunted by the memories still fresh in her mind.
The brown haired woman doesn’t reply. She stares, silently.
“Don’t bother,” Lisa hisses, regardless. She’s committed to the role, now. “There’s nothing you can offer me. I’m fucked, no matter what you do.” She tries to give the brown-haired woman her trademark, vulpine, smarter-than-thou grin, but all that emerges is a shaking, anemic grimace.
“Coil’s gonna kill me.”
Despite everything she’s gone through, everything she’s lost, Lisa still finds the sentence difficult to deliver. But then, the truth always is. Lisa doesn’t want to die, but what she really fears is somehow falling into the supervillain’s hands alive.
“He’s already here. In your fucking joke of paramilitary force. The Protectorate can’t protect me from him,” she promises. “No one can.”
Lisa stops, breathing heavily, searching her enemy for a response.
But the brown-haired woman just stares at her. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t do anything. She is…unsettling, in a way difficult for Lisa to describe.
Most people are so full of emotion. Countless emotions. All fighting for dominance, all flickering across the face. Driven by base, fundamental instincts, no matter how they might pretend otherwise. Lisa’s power makes that clear. It’s why she finds them so revolting.
But the woman in the fedora is different.
She doesn’t look happy, or sad. She doesn’t look angry, or afraid. She doesn’t look startled, or alarmed. She doesn’t even look bored. She doesn’t really look like anything. She doesn’t really look alive.
Behind the brown-haired woman’s eyes, there is nothing but Lisa’s own reflection.
A Stranger?
No.
No, unlikely.
Despite the flash of fresh pain it drives in her, Lisa pushes on her power, hard, forcing it to give her something, anything, she might use.
A nine-year-old girl.
Lisa frowns. The output is unhelpful, incorrect. A trademark sign of too little information. Her cognition is potent, but it isn’t magic.
She pushes again.
A nine-year-old girl.
Lisa’s eyebrows furrow. She glares at the woman.
She pushes a third time, as hard as she can. She feels a pressure pop between her temples. Something starts leaking from the corners of her eyes, but she doesn’t think it’s tears, this time.
A nine-year-old woman. A thirty-year-old girl. A two-point-three-billion-year-old monster. A computer-that-cannot-be. An endless, grassy plain filled with infinite, earthen Paths, all disappearing into the distance. An ancient prophetic engine, a sword smelt from fallen stardust, tempered through millennia of blood and war and ritual sacrifice, a–
Lisa clamps down on her power, shutting off the flow of madness. Wide-eyed, she glances once more towards the brown-haired woman.
Who finally begins to speak.
“I killed Thomas Calvert and Oni Lee.”
The woman recites the words in a deadened monotone that makes Lisa’s skin crawl. She speaks the name, the real name, the civilian name, of Lisa’s psychopathic employer without a whisper of hesitation.
Impossible. No one can kill Coil.
Smoothly, the woman’s arm raises. Extracts a series of photographs from a pocket in the lapel of her well-tailored suit. Her wrist flicks, scattering them across the table. Lisa’s frantic eyes flit over and across them.
Sure enough, it’s Coil. Or rather, it’s his body. Taken from the room inside his vault, the one Lisa’s only seen a handful of times before.
It’s covered in blood, and the head has been removed. Placed upon his desk.
It’s captured in seven separate cinematic angles.
And still, the woman continues.
“I wiped Armsmaster’s memory. I sent Lung to the birdcage. I removed all evidence of your presence here. Cell thirteen is empty. There’s no one here. There never was.”
The brown-haired woman does not move as she speaks. She does not gesture, or gesticulate. She sits still as a statue, and intones the words as if reading them from a script. There are no changes in her pitch, or tone, nor hesitations in her verbiage.
The woman rises from her seat opposite Lisa. Her motions are at once robotic, and impossibly smooth.
“You have your freedom, Sarah Livsey,” she drones. “Enjoy it.”
She turns to walk away. She could be lying, of course. Pictures can be faked. Records fabricated.
And yet, the woman is here.
Here, in the very heart of the Protectorate’s most secure facility. Here, despite all their safeguards. She’s not asking for anything. Lisa’s power might be broken, but her brain works just fine. She doesn’t get the sense any information she possesses might be of value to the brown-haired woman.
“Wait!”
Lisa calls, before she even thinks to do so. Her breaths come ragged, halting. Her mind is racing. Her eyes are still bared wide. She has so many questions, but one comes first of all.
“How…how do you know my name?”
The brown-haired woman stops. She turns back around. Her movements, however, are still smooth. She doesn’t seem surprised by Lisa’s question.
If she’s a Thinker, she’s one Lisa’s never heard of before.
“Sarah Livsey,” she recites in that hollow manner. “Daughter of Fred and June Livsey. Alias, Tattletale. Affiliation, Undersiders. Age, seventeen. Ability, Pericognition. Blood type, AB positive. You have a pair of moles six inches south of your left scapula.”
Lisa’s breaths no longer come fast, or frantic. They’re slower, now. Dull. She listens to the woman speak, but can’t believe what she’s hearing.
“Your favorite song is Dancing Queen, by ABBA. Your favorite meal is beef bourguignon. Your first childhood crush was Evan Gilmore. Nowadays, though, you can’t ever see yourself loving someone, not really. Maybe it’s your power. Maybe not.”
Despite the impossibility of her current circumstances, a number of witty remarks come to Lisa’s mind. She opens her mouth.
“Your brother killed himself.”
And freezes in place, before any can emerge.
“Your parents blamed you for it. And you did, too. To an extent. But even after the suicide, you still resented him. You still think he lied to you, but you don’t know for sure. It eats away at you. The one answer you’ll never have.
Lisa’s mouth hangs open slightly. Has been, for a while now. She’s at a loss for words.
She feels, in this moment, perhaps for the first time in her whole life, on the receiving end of what she’s done to others. And it’s awful. Miserable. Like someone’s sifting through her life with a fine-toothed comb. It’s always been a habit of hers, to claim herself a psychic. Set her enemies off-balance, on edge.
She’s never once thought they actually might exist.
“You don’t think you’re a hero, Sarah Livsey. In fact, you don’t even think you’re a good person. And, you are correct. You are not a good person, and you will never be a hero.”
Her empty, deadened eyes bore into Lisa’s own. She isn’t using the information in any apparent strategic manner. She isn’t trying to manipulate. She’s just reporting it, as one might the weather.
And that makes it so much worse.
“But heroes cannot save the world.”
At this, the brown-haired woman pauses. Her monologue, it seems, is ended. If only momentarily. Lisa’s lips feel dry, and cracked. Absently, she wets them.
“Who…are you?”
Lisa’s voice is quiet as a mouse.
“I am the answer,” the brown-haired woman replies, simply. “Every answer. To every question you’ve ever had, have, will have. I am a world of secrets that can be yours. If you wish. Or, you can walk away. You can live your life, short, and happy, and free.”
She stops then, once more, waiting. Still, she shows no emotion. She demonstrates no particular attachment to Lisa’s reply.
But then, perhaps she already knows what Lisa’s reply will be.
Lisa swallows.
She doesn’t move an inch.
She contemplates feigning hesitation, but ultimately decides against it. There is no choice, here. Not really. She has nothing left. And the idea of a normal life, after what she’s done, after what she’s seen, fills her with a thick revulsion. Her mind, such as it is, is decided.
She raises her eyes anxiously, hesitantly, and nods.
The brown-haired woman doesn’t smile at her, or offer any acknowledgement other than another, stilted, monotone phrase.
A question.
“Miss Livsey,”
She asks,
“Would you like to help me save the world?”