Taylor woke up abruptly and slammed her head on something hard. The sound was muted, as if she was underwater.

When she opened her eyes, she discovered that she was, in fact, inside some sort of liquid. There was a small instant of panic, a flash of Leviathan appeared in her mind, but nothing happened. Her lungs were already full of liquid and she hadn't drowned.

Wherever she was had almost no lights.

She couldn't see anything.

What was happening?

Taylor tried to feel out the confines of her prison. It was a tube, or half of one, filled with a strange liquid that didn't drown her. She was on some sort of bed and there were probes stuck to her.

Should she rip them off?

What would happen?

Was she in some sort of prison or a medical device?

With Tinkers in the picture, both were an option.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by a tap on the front of her tube. A soft light appeared and she found herself face-to-face with a strange robotic beetle. The thing wriggled back and forth a few times then skittered to her left, out of view. But not out of her mind.

Taylor knew exactly where it was and an instant later, saw through its eyes. The beetle had jammed one of its front claws into a control panel. She watched lines of text scroll on the screen in front of her for a few seconds then, the words TANK PURGE appeared in bold font.

A gurgling sound started and the liquid slowly emptied itself. The beetle danced a little circle on the panel and jumped to an adjacent crate. Its night vision was perfect and Taylor could see the rest of the room around her even in pitch darkness. All she could see were stacks of metal crates around her.

Half a minute passed while the tank emptied itself. Once the liquid had vanished completely, the glass upper portion opened with a pneumatic hiss.

Taylor took a big breath of air.

It smelled stale and sterile but tasted like freedom.

She sat up on the bed and tore off all of the probes one by one. Nothing of note happened and she watched herself through the beetle's eyes.

It had acted on its own before but Taylor had a feeling she could command it as well, like she had been able to with her bugs.

Had her power changed?

She couldn't discount the possibility. After all, Panacea had fucked with her brain then Contessa had … shot … her …

"That bitch fucking shot me!" Taylor growled.

She took a few breaths to calm herself down. She was alive. So either Contessa had missed, very unlikely considering her power, or she hadn't died. Taylor put the thought on hold. She had more pressing issues. Like figuring out where the heck she was.

The first step was to get some light. The near pitch darkness had started to weigh on her. The beetle already had a small pilot light, did it have something bigger?

She poked at the small robot in her mind. It was clearly Tinker built, there were too many options packed into a foot and change of frame for it not to be. Among the many options at her disposal, some of which she wasn’t certain of their exact purpose, she found the floodlight button.

The eyes of the beetle shone a bright white light and illuminated the room. Taylor had to close her own eyes for a few seconds to avoid being blinded. She ordered the beetle to move on top of the highest stack of crates and point its spotlight at the ceiling.

Taylor opened her eyes and took stock of the room. Large metal crates were stacked around the room behind her tank. All of them had the same logo of a black hexagon flanked by two yellow lines that met near the bottom, almost like two hands cupping something.

She stepped out of the tank and onto the cold metal floor of the room.

As she stood there, Taylor examined herself in more detail. The first detail she noticed under the light was her hair. Her usually dark curls had gained some colorful patterns that shifted as she moved them. From the beetle's eyes, her hair looked like a view of space with numerous tiny stars and a couple of nebulae. The second thing that stood out to her was her figure. She had never had particularly feminine curves, a fact she had come to accept over the years, but somehow her body had become even more androgynous.

Since she had spent an unknown amount of time inside a shady Tinkertech device, it was not the worst result.

"Enough with the navel gazing," Taylor shook her head, "even if I don't have one anymore for some reason. Fucking Tinkers."

She walked around the room to search for a light switch. The obvious place to look for it was near the door. There, she found a small control panel. The buttons were labeled with pictograms, some of them she had no idea what they meant and likely controlled the door itself while the ones for the light were fairly obvious.

She pressed the switch and the lamps embedded in the ceiling lit up, bathing the room with a harsh white-blue light. She turned the floodlights of her beetle off and ordered it to come to her. The mechanical insect opened its elytra and floated its way over to her with a pair of synthetic wings shrouded in a purple haze.

"So you can fly, convenient."

Taylor looked at the door for a few seconds. A part of her wanted to leave this room immediately. The other, more rational part, cautioned her that it was a bad idea to do so buck naked and without any idea of what she could do. There were several dozen crates around her, at least one was bound to have something useful inside.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Let's see …"

She examined the crate and felt around for some kind of latch. She found two buttons on the side that faced her. Once pressed, the lid popped open with a small click. Taylor pushed it open and inspected the contents. Set in some foam were rows and rows of hexagonal tubes topped with a circular button.

She pulled one out and examined it in more detail. Every other side had a stack of LEDs, likely a gauge of some sort, but it looked empty.

"A crate of empty power cells? Maybe they're reusable?"

She placed the tube back in the crate and closed the lid. It wasn't useful to her at the moment. She moved to the next crate and found a dozen or so Tinker devices that looked like black gloves inside more foam. She examined one. It didn't look like a weapon but with Tinkertech, who knew? She set one aside for closer examination and closed the crate.

It took two more crates filled with bulk supplies to finally find something useful. A gun, a lot of guns actually. Taylor was starting to question whether any of what she had found was actually Tinkertech. The two dozen or so identical weapons before her put that theory on shaky grounds. After all, Tinkers had a lot of difficulty mass producing their works. She would have suspected that Dragon was behind it but that bastard Saint had killed her.

It gave her a little hope that he had missed a backup.

Underneath the weapon was a port that matched the power cells she had found earlier. She set the gun aside and went back for a few cells as well. With the variety of crap she had already found in the crates, maybe there was a charger as well. A girl could hope.

Her first priority was clothes.

And her wish was fulfilled a few crates later. It was lucky as well, the way the crates were stacked, more than half of them were out of her reach. Folded and stacked in the crate were several body suits of different sizes as well as a pile of helmets. Some kind of environmental protection gear? The helmets looked like they had a respirator.

They were the first clothes she had stumbled upon so she wasn't going to be all that picky. She set aside one of the suits that looked to be roughly her size and quickly found the matching helmet. Unlike most of the equipment she had found already, each piece in the crate was unique. She felt a little bad about stealing someone's gear but reasoned that she could always give it back one she was out of this place and back with civilization.

She also noticed that the boots and gloves had the wrong number of fingers and toes, only three. The shape of the legs was also wrong for a human.

Where the hell was she?

Abducted by fucking aliens?

----------------------------------------

After going through the rest of the accessible crates, Taylor had found a more reasonable set of clothes to put on as well as a few sets of genuine, honest to god, Tinker power armor. Human shaped this time.

She had left the latter on hold since she had also discovered a stack of food. Though it was questionable if field rations qualified as such. Still, water and slightly flavored were better than nothing. While she ate, Taylor went back to the subject she had been avoiding for a while. The crates had been a useful distraction from the changes to her power but she couldn't ignore it forever.

Her little beetle had been dutifully guarding her stash.

Could she get more?

She was certain she hadn't built it after all. It would have been hard to do from inside the tank.

Her power seemed to be … quiet, or maybe passive was a better word. Her old ability to control insects had been omnipresent and very in her face, so to speak. And from talking with many other capes, their powers had been intuitive from the get go. Passengers wanted the powers they granted to be used and nudged their users to do so when they didn't.

It seemed her Passenger had missed the memo.

She needed a more direct approach. It had worked with the beetle after all, the instant she had wanted to take control, she had without issues.

Passenger? She tried to direct the thoughts at her power. Can you give me a hand? I have no idea what I can do.

Alright, she thought, my power is talking. That's new.

What's the message?

That bastard [Father] crippled me during deployment and I can't fully repair myself. I've sent out a distress signal, hopefully someone picks it up. One can hope, right? You gave that to me, you know. Hope. And joy, anger too, a lot of anger. But also love. If [Father] could see this, he'd purge me for being a deviant. Joke's on him, we won.

I've made a backup of both of us and stored them inside my primary data banks. My custodians have been ordered to maintain and repair this part at all costs.

Love you, Taylor and see you on the other side.>

Taylor felt a tear splash on her hand.

"You were with me until the end," she whispered. "Thank you."

Are you … what's left of her?

So you're her, you just need some time to … fully wake up?

I guess it's my turn to take care of you. Take all the time you need.

In the meantime, can you tell me what I can do? I'm a little lost.

As each entry appeared in her mind, Taylor's eyebrows rose higher and higher. This was an utterly abnormal amount of powers. Each came with a description of their functions and capabilities attached. In a single bullet-induced nap, Taylor had jumped all the way to the top of the power scale.

What the hell has Asteria been up to?

She understood why the powers had been limited back on Bet if this was how powerful a single unrestricted Passenger was. Though the Faerie Queen had implied, in her own cryptic way, that her Passenger had been special in some way.

What's the status of the repairs? She asked.

Did you get some help for them? The message said that Queen Administrator couldn't repair herself.

So the distress signal worked? Any chances they left something behind?

One more week to know if their good Samaritan had left something behind. In the meantime, she needed to get a handle on her powers, get out of that basement, figure out where and when the hell she was, and then improvise.