I'm grinning ear to ear...
The depressed button flashes as the sounds of alarms and red lights flash in the room. I shouldn't have done that...
I sag in my chair as I run the last twenty minutes through my head. As a one Taylor Hebert walked for the door, I felt my panic spike. Could I really blame myself, I just watch the dangerously unknown cape rip a solid steel chair from its moorings just by standing up only to chew it apart and spit it out. She even admitted to going toe to toe with a full power Lung and not only win but put the overpowered rage cape in the hospital rather than lock-up. Doctors aren't sure if he could recover with his regeneration off of machines! The sounds of fighting long since have stopped, and I fear what level of destruction could be waiting me outside the interrogation room.
Then there is the way she acts around people. Don't think that I didn't see her look at Special Agent Dagshaw like he was just meat. Her stares didn't recognize him, he could have just been another piece of furniture. The fact that she stares with some twenty plus eyes that form in her hair...I'm surprised that Dagshaw could keep such a level head. In that moment when she was talking about Izzy, her voice told me that she was showing concern, but her posture was a story of desperate hunger. Hunched over posture, eyes locked on objects like how predators watch for their prey, she looked like an animal, like she was a starving dog, and I was in front of her food. With what I had been told by Hannah... I played the game...
I look down at the glowing button, its flash mocking me as I stew in my regret. The pain in my leg flares as I feel my heartbeat fall to a slower pace. I should have been smart instead of dangle her girlfriend like some sort of prize in exchange for information. It was reckless and stupid, fuck I'm acting like Armsamaster for Christ sake...
"Director Piggot." I look up as the speakers for the interrogation room spit out Dagshaw's voice. In the room I can see the man sitting at the interrogation table, his head in his hands even as his back faces the window. His posture belied his stress, and I can see where the man gets his greys from. "Give it to me straight, did I just royally fuck up there?" I frown at the question.
I didn't like the man when he reported to my office last week. The man had the feel of a professional who was better than his current station. Like he had the arrogance to not step aside and take a desk job, like people would just mess up his work if he handed it over to someone else. In a way I respect the man more than I like him, but he was in the way of our own investigation and our cases were made linked through the complex system of bureaucrats and national secret keeping of our respected organizations. He was also a part of the investigation team at the FBI to look into the other three letter organizations, but despite all of that he had my respect for just how stubborn he was.
I pulled many strings to get the PRT and the FBI to have joint jurisdiction on this case. I also tried many things to get this man removed from the case, going all the way up to his superior and then mine, but apparently, he had already been there. Every one of my contacts respected the man, the older gruff stereotypical detective type who's done everything from solve serial killings to investigate corruption in the CIA. I scoff, he even fucking dresses like one too.
Guess I should explain the situation to him, professional courtesy and all that.
"You just let a cape you know nothing about," we know nothing about my subconscious interjects unhelpfully at my words, "loose inside the building, right now troopers could be risking their lives against a force they are unprepared for, armed with hoses of fancy instant cement." I watch the grey haired man slump further into his chair, looking pitiful in the red flashes leaking in through the open door. "You did a better job than me," I sigh.
I watch him still at my words, I just sneer as the painful thought manifest in my throat, "I'll have to probably apologize or owe something to the cape just to make things close to as good as you did."
The man shifts to look back at the mirror, the surprise in his expression, matches the look in his brown eyes. "Look Dagshaw, when dealing with parahumans you have to understand a few things. Pretty much every one of them is ready to use their powers at a moment's notice, they enjoy using it and often choose to fight over any sense of diplomacy, it's the reason why the PRT doesn't directly employ capes just sponsors them. The other thing you need to understand is that sometimes a good rapport with a cape is more important than following protocol," I feel my sneer transform into a disappointed frown, "something I forgot just now."
"I see." He seems better, good, now I don't have to deal with a mopey old man.
"So, congratulation, you've successfully made positive relations with a cape that has extreme issues with authority," I snort and stand up from the chair, I have other things to do than wait for this to resolve. I press the button turning off the alarm, "I'd offer you a job here, but I think you'd just end up doing less here than you do in the FBI."
He is silent as I lean into the radio, "stand down and prep medical if it hasn't been done already, I'll be in my office, and call Panacea. Tell her that we got a cape in critical condition" Might as well work in some good will of my own...
The band of white wrapped around the bleeding cape's head, blooms with a bright crimson. I closed my com message to console and begin my assessment. I wasn't fast enough...
How?
My suit is literally designed to give me a low level mover rating, I should have been able to stop her from hitting the wall. I look up at the cracked wall, a dent in concrete just barely there, the spray of blood across the surface isn't a small amount either. I look back over the footage while I wait for medical to bring a stretcher.
I came upon the scene of the cape Izzy spasming on the ground and screaming. Her back was almost arched in a way that could have been back breaking if she continued to do it. I approached closer and called it in, looking over my footage shows me something I missed while calling it in, her face and body were twitching in pain as I spoke.
I, like a lot of my colleagues, am familiar with the term thinker headache, even seen a few take place in my career in both heroes and villains. They usually range from mild-headaches to severe migraines, and they are not commonly relieved by any amount of pharmaceutical aid. They are not typically this violent though...
After I called in for medical, I looked around for cause, briefly walking a short distance away, around ten feet. Then Izzy popped up from the ground, looking around very confused before locking on to the wall at the end of hall. I start walking over to her and almost reach her, my arm stretched out to grab at her shoulder, but then she moved.
It was odd to watch from my angle. Reaching out for her, from her blind spot no less, seemed to almost push or propel her forward. Weirder was that as soon as she cut and ran, she outpaced my machine's reflexes something that so far only certain movers have been able to accomplish. I ran after her, my armor actually pushing itself in speed to keep up at a ten foot difference. My armor's top speed is twenty-three miles per hour, slow to any speedster but way better than any normal human running speed. I watch the play back of the instant that she was near the wall, her war cry as she screamed out her target, then the dull crack of her skull slamming into the wall at a speed close to a slow moving car.
It had all happened in the span of a couple minutes, and I have no idea how long that the cape was seizing, but I feel myself privately cringe at the idea that knocking yourself in this way was seen as a better alternative than continuing to feel pain. I shake off the thought, I'm a professional I need to be in this moment. I look around the scene hoping to see if I can find some evidence, something to do rather than wait, but there is nothing and I can't leave the injured cape to investigate down the hall until she is moved.
So inefficient, I try to keep my frown in place, but my hands twitch as I try to, I could probably make medical more efficient just need to... I stop myself. No, I need to stay focused, Endbringer fight could happen anytime this month and I haven't finished the early warning system with Dragon. I could call her, it would mean that I'm at least helping while I wait... Maybe then I'll stop feeling like a failure...
That decides it for me, thinking about the Hebert case wasn't productive right now, and "mopping" about it is something Miss Militia tells me isn't worth it. I call Dragon through the internal phone system in my helm, fidgeting to myself as I wait for the connection. I don't have to wait long.
"Hey, Colin," the slight Canadian accent of Dragon's voice is accompanied by her avatar appearing on my HUD. I can feel my fingers stop twitching as she speaks, "did you need something, or is it finally time to work on the detection system?"
"Yes." I blink as the word leaves my lips before I could have thought about it, "I- uh, I wanted to know how the program was going on your side."
I want to slap myself at my accidental slip of control but stop as Dragon smiles, a virtual hand covering her avatar's mouth as she tries to keep in a giggle. "Yes, it is going well," She says amused, "or about as well as running predictive models for eighty petabytes worth of data, it has been very slow on my end unfortunately." She frowns, "I don't think that it will be ready by this attack, maybe the next if we come up with something clever." I frown too, that is disappointing, but we knew it would have been unlikely that we would finish the system in a prompt fasion. "So, what are you up to?"
"I'm currently waiting around for medical, downed cape," I respond.
"Oh, is someone on the team hurt," Dragon's eyes widen for a second, before her frown returns and her eyes narrow, "you're in the PRT building, it isn't you is it. I swear to god Colin if you ignored a piece of shrapnel again in favor of tinkering, I'm gonna send a suit."
I feel my face relax and I struggle to keep the mask of professionalism on my face, "No, it's not me or any of the team, we are currently working on the Hebert case and one of the members is hurt, Izzy."
She sighs, "Ah, okay...well no not okay, but at least it isn't you. So, you just decided to call me because your bored, am I right?"
I suppress my flinch, "No, I'm just using my time efficiently."
"Colin," her smile is pretty even when it is strained, "remember what we talked about, how people are more comfortable when you give them more attention than is necessary?"
"Yes." The concept of paying attention to someone when we are waiting for the next step in important events, is still kind of strange. If you can't speed up when people or things will arrive you might as well just tinker...
"Well, this also applies here," her sigh is strained, and the shake of her head makes me feel disappointed that I couldn't see that.
"Then what should I do," I look down at the cape at my feet. Her head was already checked and the wrap around it was already down. I'm checking her heart rate and breathing, they are slow and shallow, but they haven't changed since impact. I checked her neck for fracture, but it is fine, and she doesn't have any other injuries that I could find. So what?
"Your monitoring her vitals, right?"
"Yes."
"Then maybe you should do it without the aid of computers too."
"I- why," I lean down and place a few physical sensors on her body, a finger on her neck is all I need.
"Well, you're concerned right?"
"Yes, of course, we have an injury that was self-caused and before that the injured was showing signs of a seizure," who wouldn't be concerned it's not like pretending to monitor her vitals while I actually watch her vitals with my HUD is any more helpful.
Dragon pauses as she digests my words, "you're going to have to tell me more details later, but if your concerned about another person's wellbeing it helps to show what you are doing rather than just monitor the computers. It works better at showing you care then just standing there."
"Oh," I can imagine how people might think I'm doing nothing, the monitoring system is pretty unobservable..."I didn't think-" I pause mid-sentence as the intruder alarms go off. The hall is plunged into red lights and sounds, I can hear troopers heading for a section, but it is a bit of a ways away. "Hold-on Dragon something is going on. Console, Armsmaster calling in for a sit-rep, over."
I wait just a few seconds before I get a response, "Armsmaster this is Console, the intruder alarm in interrogation has been pressed, please be advised that medical has been delayed, your orders remain the same stick with the injured, over."
I look down at Izzy, her head bandage is now completely soaked through with blood. I adjust her status from slight bleeding to major bleeding and grab my wound kit. "Copy, Console, I suggest medical hurries, injuries are no longer a minor bleed, over."
"Copy that."
I carefully lift Izzy's head and remove the old bandage and replace it with a fresh one. I can feel my own heart rate spike as this one too blooms red far too fast. "How is she looking Colin?"
"Not good, her bleeding appears to be speeding up rather than slowing, subtle twitches show me that she is still experiencing a seizure," I pause at a thought, "Dragon, do you have any knowledge on thinker related illnesses?"
"What like a thinker seizure?" I can hear typing in the background as she starts checking her data banks. "Except for a few cases, no and in the three that match that description well the prognosis wasn't good." "How so?"
"Well even though they were seizures, medicine that you use in situations like that had zero effect, two of the cases had brain death occur after four hours of start."
"And the third," I frown as I stare at the very likely dying girl, fuck why couldn't I be some kind of medical tinker...
"You're not going to like it," I can see her grimace out of the corner of my eye, "they called in a master who, if I'm reading this right, convinced the thinker that they weren't having the seizure."
I try not to think about that. "Did they give any causes for the severe reaction?"
"No, although the living thinker stated that it involved another thinker power, so the best guess is power interaction gone very bad."
No accounting for that, power interactions are almost completely random, and their effects are similarly unpredictable. I watch the girl shiver in pain, the simple black fabric covering her eyes makes it look like she is blind. I try not to panic as I see drips of red leak from under the mask, right where eyes would be. I can't do anything...
*SHREEEEEEEEK*
The sound of nails on a chalkboard, or in this case teeth on concrete, grabs my attention away from the dying thinker. "Colin what was that," Dragon's voice is distance as I stare down the other end of the hall, "I think our connection has interference..."
It's not interference...
I crawl forward on all fours, my pale hands reaching out from the shadows I bring to the lighted halls. A thick red spiral denotes, hides my face, the twisted writhing shadows trailing from behind me stretch around the corner as I turned down to reach this hall. My curled mass is full of teeth that shine white like starlight next to wandering, shifting eyes that burn silver like moons, constantly flicking across my surroundings.
My eyes search through the corridor as I smell my lovely. My eyes locking on to the her as she lies bleeding behind him. Those starlight teeth start moving through the waves of black, a silent thing made loud when the darkness expands to the walls. My teeth cut gouges into the walls as a violent buzz forms, shredding concrete as I stalk forward. The hall is blocked as I approach like a storm on the horizon. A terrible calamity approaching a knight of steel and copper searching for my prize, a prize that lies just beyond him.
I have taken the form of a hungry god as I stalks to my beloved, the one I choose above all other food to trust, to be whole with and complete, our lovely Lisa...
I stand and make my way forward, I had to go through thirty troopers to get here if I have to go through Armsmaster it will be little issue. I keep myself calm or I try to okay, Lisa's condition is getting worse and with it my instincts are doing that weird thing again. I'm serious, just look how I described the scene...that is not normal. Besides now is not the time to wax poetically about being a romantic undead monster trying to save its loved one's life. This is serious, and I need to be that way.
My hair lowers from the ceiling and walls as I walk slowly and calmly walk forward. "Armsmaster, step away from L-Izzy," I have been slowly working on some of the damage with my cells that are already present in her body, but they keep getting lost and I don't have enough to work with. In my own body I have made a new organ to help. While dodging and running I formed a simple sack and started cloning Lisa's blood. She has lost a lot from her hemorrhages and the skull fracture, but I currently have three pints of genetically similar blood to replace it. The other problems are mostly inner cranial, although the skull fracture is a concern it actually has improved her survival chances.
Right now, Lisa's head is less resembling a human brain case and more a pressure cooker, she has onset encephalitis, and her brain activity is so high it is starting to swell as well. The pressure alone is worrying because it could burst a blood vessel in her brain, an aneurism, and decrease her survival time from hours to minutes. Her cracking open her skull, as much as it hurts me to say, has so far kept her from dying faster. It still doesn't solve all the other problems, but it was a good enough stall for time. She had an hour and a half from the impact...
Now I just need to move a single cape..."Frankie, I am required to ask what your intentions are," His stance is stiff as he stands over her, it doesn't look like he will move, but at least he doesn't have his weapon out. Maybe he can be talked to...
"I can save her life if I can get to her," I stop at his frown, what is with the PRT and being assholes today? "I don't want to have to move you myself, it would waste precious time."
"Do you know what is wrong with her?" He is wasting time, every second is closer and closer to reaching irreparable brain damage. I maybe really good with chemistry and biology, but I don't want to try and test to see if I can repair my girlfriend brain. It is too important, I can figure it out later... with mice...maybe.
"Yes," I list out her symptoms before adding her time frame for major brain damage to occur, roughly an hour now, it took me twenty minutes to get here because of the guards. That's twenty minutes the bitch Piggot stole from me to work. "She also has an extreme level of activity in her brain, I think her Pollentia and Gemma are leaking neurotransmitters into the rest of it."
One hour until brain damage...
He nods and steps back, as soon as he moved, I moved. Lisa's body is covered by mine, I'm sitting on her hips, as I place my hand into her mouth. "Dragon and I have been trying to determine the cause, and she thinks that it could be a power related illness, a thinker seizure." I open my hand's flesh in the privacy of Lisa's mouth and feed her my blood, the cells of the dark fluid passing through her stomach and into the rest of her body. I nod at Armsmaster's voice, power related, so I guess that means that if I can't figure out what is exactly wrong and fix it, I could always eat her Pollentia. It would mean that Lisa no longer has any powers, but I'm more than fine with that, it is will Lisa forgive me that makes it a final solution not the first.
"If it is a thinker related illness, I'm afraid that we lack the means to treat her here," I can see his frown with my hair's eyes as he continues, " and if what you say is true, there is no time to solve it like what we found."
I unzip my hoody and unbutton her dress shirt, the wet tearing rip of my chest opening along it's seam makes the hero jump, but he can't see us underneath all my hair. Good, I want privacy for this. A thin tendril emerges from my chest and I direct it to a good spot on Lisa's stomach. Yes, this one should work, close enough to the heart to get fast circulation, I press the needle like head of the tentacle into her pale flesh and dig. "What was the solution that you found?" I reach her left renal artery, I'm passing the cloned blood through her kidneys first so that her body can get used to this blood faster and to get the body to start making its own cells faster as all of this is pretty low in oxygen.
"It requires intervention by master powers," his frown is still there, but I can now smell annoyance off his breath, "the statement given said, and I'm quoting, "the master convinced the thinker that the seizure wasn't happening"."
I frown at that too. So, I just need to tell Lisa's power to stop how the f-…. Wait, would it work if I get it to stop entirely or does it mean turn off? I pump in the red blood cells through my blood sack as I think about what Lisa has told me about her thinker powers.
"I was wondering, do your anti-thinker powers work on Izzy?"
Armsmaster is apparently on the same page as me. I feel a jolt of pain roll through Lisa's body, and watch as her brain activity spikes to full coverage, before going back down again. The fever in her skull has gotten hotter, and my cells scream at me as I watch her brain cells die by the hundreds. I bend down and lick up Lisa's red tears, mostly it is to keep me calm, she isn't in too much trouble until we reach the thousands...
Forty-five minutes to permanent brain damage...
Okay, fuck she has less time now... Let's check her eyes to see what they look like.
I remove Lisa's dark bio-silk mask, her eyes are shut tight and blood leaks from them. The red on her neck tells me she has been experiencing a very rapid bleed from most of her facial orifices. What I remember is that Lisa's powers clash with my nature as undead when she views me. Sure, she can look at me and her powers have started to ignore me now, but right now I don't think she can ignore anything. I pull open her eye lids to see her green circles swimming in a pool of red. I send cells to her eyes to check and see if she can even see.
The nerves in the eyes look fine, her pupils are dilating when my eyes go pass over, their glow causing the eyes to instinctively expand despite it not being real light. I can feel hands try to move me, but I simply wrap my hair under and around Lisa sealing us together and removing the prying hands. My eyes all focus inwards, even my ghost rests between us, and my teeth form a barrier around us. No one is separating us...
**Forty minutes to brain damage...**
Okay so Lisa's eyes work, I lick up the blood out of her eye and seal its burst capillaries soaking the blood under her conjunctiva. I just need her to look at me, I grimace at that, she needs to be conscious to look at me, is she conscious? The level of activity in her nerves causing her to twitch under me tell me that being awake is pain. I'm reminded of the first time I woke up Nimi last month, her entire sensory suite had registered as pain and flooded all of us with it. The pain will be comparable. I look down at the blank face of Lisa's maybe unconscious but twitching form, her brain's activity level looks like she is already awake, but it isn't aware...
Another extreme spike in activity makes me hold her tighter...
Twenty minutes to brain death...
Okay, I need to wake up someone who should be awake, but who's brain is currently asleep due to pain. I could flood her heart with adrenaline to get her body to wake and thus her brain, but her heart is already very damaged, and I can't replace it fast enough. Making blood cells is one thing to make in minutes, an organ more complex than the sack I'm using will take a bit. It also needs to be alive, I can make dead stuff perfectly, unnaturally, fast, but as much as I want to save Lisa, I'm not willing to cut her life short. Turning my girlfriend into a half-undead even to save her life is wrong and requires her consent. Plus, it defeats the purpose of saving her life if I just half kill her...
I test the spinal column for a waking response, but I'm greeted with it being damaged just before reaching the brain. Okay so her extrathalamic control is damaged and that explains why she can't stop feeling her body. It also tells me that she is not in a coma, or even asleep, she is trapped in her head and she is in so much pain that her senses are being ignored entirely. She can hear me...
"Lisa, I need you to focus on me, please I know it hurts," I try to keep the rock in my throat down as another quake passes through her weakening body, "but I need you to see me, can you try it for me please lovely."
Ten minutes to brain death...
I watch hopeful as her eyes begin to move, the green's looking blindly around is promising, but she still doesn't "see". I can see the signals get lost in the lighting storm inside her skull. The signals aren't strong enough, my ghost wraps itself around Lisa's head and heart, she can see me, but it can't pass through to her. I watch as the tumor that gives her powers continues to pump out more and more signals, almost mockingly, the heat of fever and pressure of her brain swelling will damage it last. I snarl, such a disrespectful guest to my lovely, how dare it view itself as higher than the flesh around it! I watch as its spider cancer is connected to every part of Lisa's brain, its signals reaching everything through thin strands of nerves.
I need to go into it directly, I can pass my brain signals through the offending section if I physically connect to it. My face splits in half as I expose my rotting brain, my eye stalks severing as they grow towards Lisa's eyes. If this doesn't work, I'll just eat her powers, they aren't worth it if they plan on killing her...
Five minutes to brain death...
The thin undead nerves reach her eyes and flow across the surface, reaching the back of her eyes. I breach the barrier and connect to her eye stalks. My brain doesn't produce chemicals or electricity, it is my ghost that does that using the brain more as a vehicle for my senses than anything else. So, with Lisa's nervous system connected to mine, my ghost can technically signal her brain. In theory...
I touch Lisa's nerves...nothing. I was able to reach her brain but like before the signal just gets lost in the noise. My split face frowns, I need to reach deeper. My nerves snake down her stalks and pass the barrier until I reach her brain. The occipital lobe, vision in the brain, is found at the back of her head so I need to navigate quickly.
I connect to every lobe on my path, if visual is not enough I can just attack the Pollentia from every angle in Lisa's brain if needs be!
Two minutes to brain death...
My nerves are spread everywhere in her by the time I reach her visual centers. The neural tissues connect to hers almost as if I have formed a new lobe, but instead of her Pollentia's set-up mine connects to only one, the Pollentia itself. I send my signals, slow at first but faster as it tries to push me back.
I feel the spike coming, a wave of brain destroying chemicals, already to take from me Lisa's life... How dare it!
I push back at the signal with full force behind my anger. You think I can't save her, watch me! I push into it physically as I connect more and more nerves to the internal enemy.
I will flood you until you surrender or are destroyed thief, she is mine and I will keep her as long as she wants! I feel the signal from it flinch as I now send signals all across it...
She will have a long life with or without you PARASITE! The words flow across its surface as I feel its walls break under the strain of my constant attack.
I send everything into the cracks and feel myself push deeper into the Pollentia, its torrent of signals nothing compared to my tsunami of wrath. I fill the irrelevant lobe with my own signals causing it to slow as it tries to process...and fails.
I receive a single signal back before the entire collection of nerves stops fighting...
[…error...]
Lisa relaxes as my internal sensors show the hyper brain activity cease.
Thirty seconds until brain death would have occurred...
Laughing like a loon, screaming at the sky!
The writing in the halls and walls of my brain tell tales
tales of madness and despair,
tales of triumph and glories,
tales of the darkness that loves you,
and ballads of the end of all things...
I'm pretty tired... ignore the mad poetry it has nothing to do with the story...
