55 Sidestory: Junior Illuminati Agent

AN: Setting this as a "side story" since some people don't care about hearing what happens in Brockton Bay, but it is considered canon.

May 2011

Brockton Bay

Taylor had barely been in this universe for six months, and she was already a junior member of the Illuminati. Felt good, even if she didn't exactly have much of a choice in the matter. But they hadn't needed to do the hard sell, anyway. As soon as they let her read some of the non-public information about the projected date of the end of civilisation, she was onboard.

She didn't precisely know the enemy they needed to fight, except that it was linked to the reason people became parahumans, but it was clear that they were gearing up to fight something and had been for decades. She had been told that she was recruited because her power was especially strong and also that she would have likely been killed within a couple of years if they never approached her.

Taylor didn't really believe the latter, but she definitely believed the former. Her current job was to medically screen applicants that bought powers in a vial from this group.

However... what they were practising wasn't science; it was more akin to alchemy or magic. So what she ended up actually doing was curing various incurable diseases for them anonymously, when for one reason or another Miss Easy Mode Bitch couldn't be consulted. A warlord in Africa had a child with ALS? The work of an afternoon. Her Boss had the frankly disgustingly broken ability to know if curing said child would, in some way, assist their plan. If so, well, that's what Taylor did.

Some of these missions were obvious. A Senator wanted to live longer and be more youthful, so Taylor showed up. It was obvious where the quid and the quo happened in this exchange. But just as often, she would get a message to heal a random homeless person of cancer or something like that. Her Boss absolutely terrified her with these requests. Taylor couldn't see any point, which meant that the woman's ability was absolutely scary.

She also had the responsibility to "humanise" some of their failed experiments. The world called them Case 53 because her Boss released them into the wild, mostly on Earth-Bet, sans their memory. That wasn't something that Taylor would do if she was running a conspiracy that needed to be kept secret, but she wasn't in charge.

Taylor knew how these people were selected for experimentation. They were either dead men and women or seekers of power, one and all. Or both. So, she didn't really have any moral objection to the program. Not even the random ones that Boss had fished out of some dimension on Death's door for some reason. There was implied consent for medical procedures, after all. And receiving power in a vial could be seen as a lifesaving medical procedure if you squinted and looked at it just right.

"Alright, let's finish up with number nine-six-two," Taylor told the always-present breeze, which assisted her when she needed it. There were a few mundane doctors that also occasionally helped her, but she preferred working alone.

The mutations on this particular individual, Mr 962, were radical but easy to adjust to, something akin to a human form. He would have a mostly normal life after they released him. The Illuminati had a lot more prisoners that consisted of failed experiments down here than they released to the wild, but with Taylor here "adjusting" them, there were plans to release quite a few more.

Taylor couldn't help all of them. Some of them weren't alive. For example, Weld had been a boy with a terminal illness, but the process of curing him caused him to turn into fucking metal. Taylor hadn't had a chance to examine the young metal man, as he had been released several years ago, but from what she could tell, he both wasn't and shouldn't be alive, at least not in the way Taylor defined life, so there wouldn't have been anything she could do to him.

Others, though? She could usually make a lot of progress. 962 had been something akin to a monstrous quadruped before Taylor got her hands on the man. Now, while he wouldn't pass for a human, he was definitely a humanoid. Taylor even thought he looked ruggedly handsome. She would have dated him, even. The bright red skin gave him a sort of sexy devil-man look that she liked. It was almost enough for her to add horns to his head, but that wouldn't be professional.

As she finished up, her phone, which she emulated in software through her deck, began yowling with an alert. She pulled up the notification, wondering again how precisely they had arranged service here before blinking. Armsmaster was predicting Leviathan would attack Brockton Bay within a few hours. Fuck! Dad!

She looked around, "Custodian Miss Breeze. Please put nine six two away, for now. I have to leave." A tug of wind pulled on her sleeve, which Taylor took for agreement. She looked around and started gathering things.

She almost forgot to turn the television on. She liked to put a DVD in for Miss Breeze to watch after she left, and she thought that the Custodian appreciated it too. Obviously, as a sapient wind elemental, she didn't have the same biological need for stimulus and couldn't, precisely, get bored. Still, Miss Breeze had started giving her DVD requests, so she thought the lady wind appreciated it.

"Door, my laboratory, please," she said, and a portal immediately popped up in front of her. It never ceased to amaze her, these magic powers. Taylor stepped through, and the portal winked out of existence. Once she was back in Brockton Bay and back on the real telephone network, she called Dad while gathering more medical tools.

"Of course, I'm going to help, Dad. Leviathan is one of the best Endbringers where my skills can be put to the best use; plus, this is our town," she told him after the obvious objections, "You need to get to either an Endbringer shelter or maybe just out of town. We've got quite a lot of warning this time, and an evacuation might be feasible. You should be safe if you're at least fifty kloms away, but I'd just keep driving even after that."

Dad was a lot better now that he was taking her antidepressants every week, but they didn't actually change the way you thought. He still had the same hangups, just without his depression that caused him to go into spirals of self-doubt and loathing. Before, he wouldn't have been able to see the logic in what she was saying, but now he could, even if he didn't like the idea that she was going to be in danger. It wasn't like she was going to punch the sea monster herself, though.

Taylor hung up and gathered the rest of her things, loading them into a nondescript white-panelled van that she had purchased just a month after arriving in town. She wasn't in the Protectorate, obviously, as she would provide her services to anyone who approached her if they had money or something to trade. Although they had wanted to classify her as a villain at first, even going so far as to get a pre-signed kill order for her, she was now considered a Rogue, especially after she had assisted when the angel-lady attacked Australia. She had been dragooned into the Illuminati shortly after that incident.

"Maeve, thank you for showing up," the PRT director, Thomas Calvert, told her after she walked into the staging area. The rain was still light, but she didn't waste a lot of time standing in it.

Besides, there was more than meets the eye with this man, but she couldn't quite place it, but Taylor knew he was hiding a lot of secrets, just not what they were. She could taste the outline of them, and they weren't the usual secrets a highly-placed governmental employee would be hiding either; they were his secrets and nasty ones too. Taylor didn't particularly like being around him, but he was very effective and always treated her well.

He didn't have time to do more than briefly greet me, but he did detail two strong, muscley men to act as porters for me, to bring all my gadgets and supplies into the medical tent. Given the resources she knew we would have, she glanced around at the unpowered medical professionals and immediately started taking charge. Triage would be most important. If they could stabilise someone briefly, they would survive. If she looked the sixteen years old that she actually was, there was no way they would let her do this, but she had already proven herself in the last Endbringer battle, so they acquiesced.

Taylor felt someone touch her hip, and suddenly the world slowed widely down, as though she had the best quality boostware available. Othala had touched her and given her super-speed power. Yes, that would be useful if she could keep doing that over the course of the battle.

The teenage white supremacist smiled shyly at her. Taylor had a pretty good relationship with her, as Othala had been one of her first for-profit patients after Lung bit off the girl's leg in some pointless battle that the White supremacists had against the Asian supremacists.

Luckily the Dragon hadn't eaten her leg, merely spit it out, so she was able to just repair and reattach it as good as new. After that, Taylor just had to heal a small number of very serious burns, and Othala was ready for a dancing night at the Biergarten again.

It was a bit more complicated than that, obviously, but Othala had full function again and no scars. Panacea hadn't liked that Taylor agreed to heal a Nazi, nor that she charged for her services, so they had gotten off on the wrong foot from the beginning.

Taylor understood that in this culture, you were supposed to hate Nazis, but she, personally didn't see that they were any more detestable than the Asian Bad Boyz. Both were somewhat detestable, and both were stupid, but Taylor had grown up so far away, temporally, from World War Two that someone cosplaying as a Nazi wasn't any more shocking than someone cosplaying as a Mongol horse archer or il-Khan.

To her, it was very similar to seeing a group of people walk around in Confederate uniforms, pretending they were tough. It was laughable. She thought if you wanted to be tough, a first step would be to model yourself after victors, not losers.

Besides, she couldn't deny people her services and still claim to be neutral, anyway, so there was no profit in pointlessly antagonising any side. "Thank you, Othala. If you could do that periodically, especially when the casualties start rolling in, that would be great. Will Victor be joining us here?"

The skill-vampire had stolen enough medical knowledge and practical abilities over the years that he could be a qualified trauma surgeon in his own right. He had been one of the people she had been rather afraid of, not so much that he would still her medical skills—she was pretty sure they'd just immediately return. However, she had been concerned since she learned about his power that he would gain her abilities to program in computer languages that didn't exist or use computing technology decades more advanced than existed in the present world.

She'd actually considered assassinating him similarly to Shadow Stalker, but it turned out that if he took "computing knowledge" from her, his power gave him the equivalent of knowledge in this world. It was weird, as why would his Agent temporarily remove such skills from the "target" in the first place if he didn't get an exact transfer? But powers were weird. As such, she ended up not caring—the victims of his thefts recovered their skills over time, anyway, except with exposure measured in days.

Othala scowled, "He thinks this is woman's work." That caused Taylor to raise an eyebrow in amusement. So, just having a bunch of high-level skills didn't make you any smarter, it turned out. That was the whole fluid intelligence versus crystallised intelligence debate. Victor clearly had a lot of the latter but was running on fumes as far as the former was concerned, she thought. There wasn't any fancy sniping you could do to Leviathan. He'd be a lot more helpful here, helping keep people alive.

Still, Taylor shrugged, "Has he been tutoring you in first aid, as I recommended?"

That got her to smile and nod, "Yes, that was a good idea. I'm embarrassed that neither of us had thought about it before, but he does know more than an ER doctor and paramedic combined and is a better teacher than most college professors." Taylor could tell Othala liked praising her husband. Although they were, in many ways, murderous psychopaths, it was rather touching. It was like seeing a Corpo executive that actually had a loving relationship with their spouse, and it vaguely reminded her of her dead parents.

Othala's powers were both very useful in triage and not at all useful. Depending on the type of wounds a person had, she could use her invulnerability power to keep them alive for a couple of minutes. If you were bleeding out and she touched you, you'd just stop bleeding. You were "invulnerable."

The way Othala's power worked didn't make any sense; like most powers, it wasn't scientific at all, but it worked. But it wouldn't resuscitate drowned people, and that would be a majority of the casualties in a Leviathan attack.

The downside was also that the invulnerability power would also make it impossible for Taylor to work on the people. But Panacea could. So, besides using her regeneration ability on people after they were stabilised, Othala was a god-send to temporarily stabilise someone dying of severe physical trauma so Panacea could heal them.

Speaking of, Little Miss Easy Mode Bitch was finally here too. She was grouchy-looking, as normal, but she also had an aura of anxiousness about her. Taylor didn't need her encyclopedic knowledge of psychological disorders to know why, either. Her family would be fighting in this battle, and some might not make it through alive. Panacea usually responded to all Endbringer battles and was carefully protected, so she knew the survival rates better than even Taylor did.

Panacea scowled when she saw Taylor and Othala together. Oh, not this shit again. Taylor sighed and said, "Miss Panacea, I would like to take charge of the triage area. You're clearly the heavy-hitter here, and I will funnel all of the time-critical acute cases to you." Taylor considered herself the best doctor in the world, and the work of a doctor, especially in a trauma setting, was akin to a conductor in an orchestra. She would have a lot of unpowered clinicians to assist her, and she was confident in her ability to manage this.

Panacea looked for any reason to decline, but the truth was that this was how she normally operated anyway. She didn't handle triage when she worked in the hospital, and she just healed the people who were placed in front of her. Finally, she hissed, "Fine."

Taylor nodded and sat down, fishing a small set of tools out of her pocket and casually popped her left eye out of its socket. The Tinkertech modifications that made it an excellent medical imager also made it quirky, requiring frequent maintenance. She generally would have preferred privacy to do this, but already the alert from her customised software was indicating that the divergence of the two sensors in each of her eyes was exceeding nominal values. She would have to do it now, as things wouldn't hold for the entire battle.

Panacea yelled, "What the fuck are you doing?!" She was across the room and couldn't quite see what Taylor was up to. To her, it just looked like Taylor popped her eyeball out. The broody girl stomped over, looking grossed out. Hell, even Othala looked a little squicked.

Taylor held the modified Kiroshi optical system out for inspection, "These are cybernetic replacements, optical prosthesis... not the eyes I was born with. In addition to night vision, these allow me to perform thorough, yet non-invasive, medical imaging of anyone near me."

Panacea looked interested and asked, "So they interface directly with the optical nerves?"

Taylor paused, considering her reply. The truth was that Panacea would instantly know her secret identity if she ever touched Taylor Hebert anyway, so there were no real reason to hide or deliberately obscure things, "That is the failover mode. Here, touch me." She held out her hand and allowed Panacea to touch her, which was kind of akin to placing one's head inside the mouth of an emo-acting lion.

Taylor had avoided ever having to shake the healer's hand in the past because she had seen how Panacea healed people and had suspicions that her power was more flexible than the healer let on. It was widely known that Panacea could knock a person out by touching them, but Taylor thought she could do much more, too.

"Woah, what is this in your brain? Inorganic bits everywhere that I can't read, touching almost every part of your brain. This brain structure, too, this isn't normal... wait, do you sleep?!" the girl asked, looking lively for the first time Taylor remembered.

Taylor replied simply, "The inorganic bits are a computer, and yes, I do sleep, but not very much. The computer functions as a kind of sci-fi direct neural interface. The eyes can transmit data through the optical nerve, but by default, they transmit through a direct digital connection to the computer, which takes multiple inputs and composites them together and then transmits them directly to my sensory cortex."

"How the hell did you do brain surgery on yourself? There are signs of serious neurosurgery here that have been healed impeccably, but there are still a few scars on or around your skull. Want me to remove them?" Panacea asked, sounding curious.

Taylor frowned, "Sure. The fewer scars near my brain, the better. And to perform brain surgery on yourself, the key is to do it very carefully." It felt wrong for her to claim the work of her old cybernetics surgeon, but she couldn't very well tell the truth here. She just wished she had a better deck than a Paraline. While it was a super-computer in this world, it was one of the absolute cheapest options back in Night City, and some of the customisations were difficult to do. It had taken her two months to write software that, finally, allowed her to take over the radio chips and emulate cellular telephones of this world.

Taylor didn't bother to really listen to Legend's speech, as she had a lot of work to do setting up some of her equipment and stocks of consumables. Although she was donating her time and expertise, she would bill the PRT for the latter.

Armsmaster found her when she finished setting up and inclined his head towards her, holding out several armbands. "Maeve, here is an armband." Ah, yes. She had forgotten about those. She took one and nodded at the autistic man. She felt that he treated her a little better because she was a Tinker. In fact, after she was declared officially a Rogue, after having a pre-signed kill order hung over her head, he had e-mailed her a few times, and they had discussed collaborating, perhaps, in the future. Her not being in the Protectorate might make that problematic, as everything Armsmaster made was basically considered top secret, and she couldn't reveal her Junior Illuminati membership badge, either.

She nodded at him but didn't thank him for the courtesy. She felt that he didn't really appreciate politeness for politeness' sake. He was doing his duty, so he wouldn't consider his actions worthy of being thanked, so she didn't. Instead, she said, "Try to avoid dying."

His mouth twitched imperceptibly, and he inclined his head once, "I will take your advice."

The user interface of the armband was simple, and the sensors in it weren't anything to write home about, but at least had the virtue of being mass-producible. She appreciated that this version didn't have an anti-personnel charge built-in, too, unlike the ones they handed out, to even the healers, in the Smirugh fights.

She logged in and then immediately configured the system not to show her any alerts unless it involved Leviathan getting near her present position. She wasn't in the rescue team, and she didn't need to know when someone was down or died. She was going to stay right here.

The rain was getting worse, so it was only a matter of time now.

When the casualties came, they started coming fast. A little over half were drownings of various levels of success, which were easy to resuscitate. She had Tinkertech drugs that could even heal minor brain injuries caused by hypoxia, too, if someone was only "dead" for a couple of minutes.

Traumas were a little more complicated, "Othala!" The girl's hand darted in, applying her invulnerability "buff" to the battered, pun not intended, body of Battery. Taylor had just resuscitated her drowned boyfriend a few seconds ago, although that was just her suspicion since they publicly denied any relationship. "To Panacea!" she ordered a nurse, who grabbed the broken body of the heroine and ran off the few metres which separated their working areas. They had run out of gurneys already, so they were making do with some cots in the recovery area.

"Fenja!" Othala gasped as another broken lady was dumped in front of me. Her, Taylor could stabilise herself. "Speed," she said, and she got a renewed super-speed buff and started repairing a number of arteries at super-speed, calling clinicians to start both blood and plasma.

As Taylor was almost done, she heard a noise that was something akin to the cross between a scream and keening from the next room, "No, no, no, no!"

That was Panacea. Taylor glanced at a surgeon to the left of her and Othala to the right. She probably shouldn't leave, but if Panacea has a meltdown, a ton of people will die. Taylor said quickly, "Take over. Finish the sutures on this artery, please, doctor. Othala, keep hitting her with regeneration until I get back."

Taylor backed out and moved with prudent haste to the next "room", although it was just the other side of the tent. Strider was sitting there, panting for breath. He had brought Panacea a patient directly. However, seeing who it was, she didn't blame him for his breach of the procedure. Glory Girl's broken body lay lifeless in front of her sister who kept keening, "No, no, no" while repeatedly lifting her hand, touching her over and over as if that would make her power work.

Taylor, having tons of knowledge of deviant pedagogical psychology, already had a unique idea as to why Panacea seemed so close to her sister, but seeing this cinched it—in fact, it gave her an epiphany about why such a paraphilia might have developed. There were signs of addiction, which she hadn't considered until just now. Her insights weren't useful, though, just like Panacea's power for once.

Panacea's power wouldn't work on anyone that wasn't "alive." This was stupid, in Taylor's opinion, because death was nothing more than a spectrum anyway, a spectrum that could be reversed and traversed. Even hours after a person "died", portions of their body would still be alive on a cellular level. Panacea turned to see me and suddenly started yelling, "You have to help her! You have to!"

Frowning, Taylor scanned her body with her eyes. Victoria Dallon seemingly didn't have a bone that wasn't broken or an organ that wasn't ruptured. Her brain fared best, but there were still signs of significant TBIs. On the plus side, it wasn't leaking out of her numerous cranial fractures, though.

Taylor paused, trying to think about what Panacea's power used as signs of life. Heartbeat, brain electrical activity, probably. Maybe both. "Keep holding her hand and continuously try to heal her. I think I can briefly get her alive enough that your power will work on her."

Panacea nodded, her desperation and grief allowing her to hold onto any possibility of hope. Someone brought Taylor most of her tools, not knowing what she needed. It was enough; she got to work.

It took several attempts, where for a few seconds, Glory Girl was alive enough to be healed. Taylor was doing nothing more and nothing less than tricking Panacea's power, but Panacea didn't heal people instantly. "Focus on autonomic functions, cardiovascular system and all the hemmhorages," Taylor growled at her, who nodded.

Altogether, it took the both of them over four minutes to get Glory Girl "alive" again. Much too long to waste on one patient. At first, Panacea looked so excited, but then she looked even more depressed, if that was possible, "Her brain... there's so much damage..."

Ah, right. Panacea couldn't heal brains. Allegedly. Taylor didn't see any reason why her power wouldn't work on them, but then again, she didn't see any reason why the girl's power required the patient to be "totally alive", either. Expecting powers to work along logic was sometimes folly. Hadn't she just stepped through a literal multi-dimensional portal earlier? Powers weren't scientific.

Taylor needed Panacea to work again, not lose herself to grief, "You've seen my brain. I can do neurosurgery. I can either replace damaged parts of her brain with cybernetics or use nanomachines to heal damaged areas." The last was more of a "want" that she had. She didn't have any way to build nanomachines at present or any good designs for them, but that was how they healed most TBIs in her old world, and it was usually very effective, if expensive.

There it was, that look of desperate hope again. Taylor sighed, "She'll need to be intubated. Get a doctor or an RT in here to RSI her. She's liable to stop breathing if we don't. She's stable for now. You need to help others."

Panacea looked like she didn't give a fuck about others but finally closed her eyes and nodded, "Right."

---xxxxxx---

Most of Brockton Bay was washed away, and yet the heroes were celebrating. It left a bad taste in Taylor's mouth.

The casualties among the responding capes had been less than thirteen per cent, which was one of the lowest on record. People kept trying to thank her and the other healers, but Taylor wasn't feeling it, especially after she found out that her stupid fucking father almost got himself drowned trying to save one of the dockworkers. They were people Taylor didn't care one whit about, but she would fake it because she could tell that her dad did care. But that faking didn't extend to tolerating near-suicidal behaviours on their behalf. Still, he was alive. She just verified that just now, so she sighed, feeling tired.

They had shifted all of the casualties from the MASH-style tent to the actual hospital, which still had electrical power, and Othala followed her there. The woman seemed at a loss, as the Empire was likely defunct. Kaiser, Hookwolf and Kreig were all dead. Kaiser soloed Leviathan in a one-vee-one that was captured on video and already was becoming famous. Taylor rather disliked the man, and even she had to admit that the fight was rather impressive. So much so that it drew Armsmaster in, attempting to save the white supremacist by shoving what she immediately recognised as a cloud of nanomachines hovering at the end of his halberd up Leviathan's poop chute.

The monster didn't like that one bit and whipped around, breaking Armsmaster's suit and ripping both the man's arms off and beating him about the head and neck with them. It made Taylor pause because disarming Armsmaster was something very ironic. Certainly, the Endbringer did that by coincidence, though, right? After that, it had moseyed away, as they were wont to do, not even finishing off Armsmaster.

Her break over, she walked back into the hospital. Well, if anything, she had more work to do now. The fight was over, but the healing was still underway.

---xxxxxx---

May 2011

Brockton Bay

Panacea had been calling her four, sometimes five times a day since the battle and was getting increasingly frantic. Taylor had been designing several neural cybernetics, even prototyping them, that should repair most of the damage, but they would run into the problem of being mostly Tinkertech, which would be periodic maintenance. Then last night, she had a dream visitation from another world.

Hearing from Brockton-Taylor was nice, and her accomplishments were impressive, but her counterpart had a lot more time to work than Taylor did. The transfer of knowledge and data was amazing, and she felt that she got a much better end of the deal, although she had given the other Taylor a lot of confidential Illuminati research, like all of Haywire's files.

Waking up to see the Boss standing above her bed had been harrowing. Absolutely terrifying. The fedoraed woman demanded an immediate debriefing, as the Path was altered significantly, and the changes all centred around Taylor.

That was interesting. Apparently, the Night City universe and all of its technology was an Out-Of-Context problem for the woman, at least until Brockton-Taylor transferred all the files to her deck. Wait, it was the Boss that had approved Taylor's review of Professor Haywire's files. Did she know something in advance?

"No, I didn't... but we'll have to think how we can use all of this. Your importance has increased, and I'll let you know what we decide. You'll need the standard operating system-based neural interface and Mantis blades to get what you want from Armsmaster and the industrial nanomachine designs for Dragon," the scary lady said, pulling a small memory card out of her pocket and tossing it so it landed perfectly in Taylor's open palm, "This is what you'll need for Miss Dallon." She then did a one-eighty and left without another word.

Beyond a few staff members and a couple of other doctors that were below even her authority, the only other member of the Illuminati that Taylor had contact with was a woman who called herself Doctor Mother, and she was someone that the Boss seemed subservient to. When Taylor was first recruited, this Mother or Doctor had discussed ideas about creating certain powers with Taylor, but what the fuck was Taylor supposed to say to that? The bitch was practising alchemy, not medicine. "Use a bit more of the pink one?"

All she could come up with was a suggestion to do whatever Doctor Mother could to minimise the weird non-biological aberrations. With enough time, Taylor could cure or at least mitigate the damage from most of the others unless their power was one that continuously altered them.

Wait. Taylor frowned. What did she want from Armsmaster? Oh. Yes. His production method for nanomachines. She wanted to create a biosculpt vat, but she would just settle for fabricating some nanomeds right now to get Amy Dallon off her back. There had been a lot of nanites in that cloud at the end of his Halberd, and now that she had a design for medically useful ones, she needed a production method.

She inspected the data on the datashard, or rather data card, and found that it was Victoria Dallon's power testing results. Years old. Why would she need... oh, okay. She nodded and transferred them to her personal system.

---xxxxxx---

The trade with Armsmaster, who was still in hospital, included Taylor installing his newly designed cybernetic arms in a few days. He had turned down healing from Panacea, wanting to proceed with a more cybernetic solution. He was surprised to get approval to trade technology with a non-Protectorate cape such as Taylor, but it had come from the highest levels.

Listening to Dragon chide him, calling his stunt against Leviathan "stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen", caused the man to chuckle in a way that told Taylor it wasn't the first time he heard that from her. Wait... were they dating? They seemed like they were dating. You go, Armless Master.

Although the Boss had said he would want the Mantis blades, Taylor showed him a few other types that Brockton-Taylor had diagrams of, including a set of Gorilla Arms that she thought he would go for instead. Nope. He definitely wanted the Mantis blades, but he intended to put tools and self-designed weapons in them instead of the hardened steel blades that she expected. He also insisted on a modular attachment to his CNS, so that he could design his own set of arms and hot-swap them for various functions. That was fine.

Why did she bother even hawking the other wares? Still, he was incredibly impressed with "my" level of technology, as was Dragon. She got the tech he used to manufacture what he called "nano-thorns" although he wouldn't release the designs of the actual nanomachines themselves, but she didn't need them. "Nano-thorns" were nanites that were much smaller than even the general-purpose neurological medical nanomachines, and their only purpose was to sever molecular bonds. Nasty stuff.

Taylor suffered through two more days of putting up with Panacea's incessant calls before she had a similar system built. Her setup was larger because she would need to manufacture a lot more nanomachines, and it still wouldn't be enough, but she could always just duplicate them. Taylor set the neuro-specialised medical nanites to fabricate and called Panacea.

---xxxxxx---

Amy Dallon had hardly left Victoria Dallon's side, only leaving the ICU to heal people before then returning. Eric Pelham was right next to her, having suffered severe hypoxia-related brain injuries as a result of being drowned for nearly fifteen minutes before being resuscitated by yours truly. There were about ten capes with similar brain injuries, either intubated here in the ICU or downstairs in medsurge for minor deficiencies. She had enough nanomeds for all of them now.

"Alright, I'm going to administer the nanomachines. These are designed to mechanically repair damaged neurons and axons through targeted regrowth of neural cells," Taylor said to Amy.

She nodded, holding the unconscious girl's hand and asked, "How long do you think it will take to repair the damage?"

"Days. But you should see it start to work right away," Taylor said before adding the nanites to the already running bag of NS and adjusting the drip rate on the IV pump. She also grabbed Victoria's chart and scribbled a new order for a medication, propofol.

Right now, Victoria wasn't sedated because she was in a genuine coma, but as the nanomeds worked, she would start to wake up and would need continuing sedation until the course of treatment was complete. She found a nurse and verbally ordered the new medication. Apparently, it was a big hullabaloo to start a new IV on the almost-invulnerable girl, so the nurse was thankful that the propofol could be run simultaneously with the other infusions.

As Brandish did not survive the battle, Taylor already got her father's approval to use an experimental Tinkertech remedy on his daughter after the PRT did some abbreviated tests on rats. Poor rats, but your sacrifices were for Science. She had the approval to treat all of the TBI patients, in fact.

It didn't take long before Amy gasped, "I think I can see them working."

Taylor nodded and said, "Alright. As promised, come with me." Amy didn't look like she wanted to leave Glory Girl's side, but Taylor just glowered at her until she followed her into an unused conference room.

Taylor started the slide show and asked, "What is this?"

Amy rolled her eyes, "A 3D fMRI or something. If you're asking what area is being activated, it is one of the brain's reward centres."

Taylor nodded. Although Amy didn't have the same medical education she did, Amy did have an intuitive understanding of an organism's biology just as soon as she touched them, and that was, in effect, equivalent or even superior.

"Now, pretend this is happening in a pubescent child, over and over during puberty, when they approach in proximity to a particular person. What do you expect might be the result?" Taylor asked gently.

Amy frowned, "Nothing good. Why are you showing me this, and why are you asking me these questions?" She started to get suspicious, which Taylor took to mean that she might have subconsciously guessed what had happened to her.

Taylor sighed, "This isn't just a random brain scan. This scan was taken from your sister's initial power testing when she got her powers. This is the effect of her 'aura' on a willing volunteer... I'm not only the best doctor in the world but also the best psychiatrist... I couldn't help but notice, but Amy, you have to understand... that this is nobody's fault, and I am not judging you..."

Taylor quietly readied the super-fast-acting sedative-laced dart gun she recently installed in her index finger just in case Amy snapped. She would not let the girl touch her.

---xxxxxx---

Taylor had been lying; although she had the skills of the best psychiatrist in the world, the truth was she didn't have the empathy to actually do the job. Still, she wasn't heartless. Thankfully, Amy Dallon didn't try to murder her for "discovering her secret", but she did break down, and it was difficult to deal with. The less she remembered the incident, the better.

Taylor had been feeling pretty good about herself and had even agreed to a request from the supervillain Coil to help a monstrous cape. That was pretty much one of her full-time jobs, so she accepted, given the payment that he was offering. How stupid.

Coil was doing the smart thing and leaving town, and he left her his secret underground base as part of the payment. Taylor had thought it generous, as it was still completely intact until she saw her "patient." Still, she wasn't one to run away from a challenge, but all of them—these Travelers—had the stink of dangerous secrets about them. She knew it.

She had decided to confront the leader in her office. "What secret are you keeping from me? I need to know. I'm likely going to have to bring in assistance to help Noelle, and I need to know whether or not this is going to bite me in the ass, depending on whom I ask."

There was something off about Trickster's brain too. Taylor had gotten a good scan of it earlier, and it was like he had received targetted brain damage, laser-precise, to cause him to be less inhibited, more paranoid, more spontaneous, less rational and more obsessed. It wouldn't express itself too often in his everyday life, but in a high-stress situation, he was likely to be a fuck-up waiting to happen.

Sitting in Coil's office, in his chair, was a bit odd, even after Taylor removed all of the traps, cameras and microphones and disconnected the three caches of high-explosives attached to load-bearing members inside the base. Who had a literal self-destruct system for their secret base? It was ridiculous.

At first, Trickster denied keeping any secrets from her, but after repeated pressing, he finally admitted the origins of his troupe. From Madison, Wisconsin. And not Earth Bet's, either.

Just how prescient was the Smirugh, anyway? Would Taylor be considered an Out-Of-Context problem to the mind job she inflicted on him and his friends? Possibly. Probably, even. Ziz did all of this way before Taylor arrived in this universe.

She readied her go-to-sleep finger and nodded, "You'll probably want me to repair all of the brain damage you have, then." She then went to explain exactly what she saw, showing him images of his brain that she had taken. She used a number of psychological tricks, using his increased paranoia to get her way, by implying that he was the least "Smirugh-bombed" of his friends and that she would need his help to fix the rest of them. And that she would need to do this to help Noelle, who he was obsessed with.

That he was the least affected wasn't true. His brain was the most altered by far, but it worked, and he allowed himself to be administered the nanomeds.

"Who will you need help from? Panacea? That was one of our hopes coming to Brockton Bay," Trickster said as an IV slowly ran on him.

Taylor shook her head wildly, "Fuck no. I am not letting Panacea get within a kilometre of Noelle." Noelle had finally agreed to a demonstration of her "ability" and let Taylor duplicate herself. This was something that Noelle both didn't like and felt very self-conscious about, but it had happened accidentally enough that the Travellers and Noelle agreed to do it one time. Being in the same room with Noelle had been very scary, but Taylor's duplicate wasn't scary at all.

A duplicate of herself without a lot of tools and preparation wasn't a threat in the least, and Taylor had shot the doppelgänger directly in the heart before it could spill too many of her secrets, which it tried to do immediately after being "born."

Taylor couldn't help herself, though, and she just had to study precisely how her brain diverged from her "evil clone", which was on the ice in the medbay of the base. She'd already got a thorough scan of the brain and later would see if any of the other biologies were divergent during a thorough pathological examination as well.

If Taylor was correct about Panacea, then an evil Panacea clone could be an S-class threat on all her own. Taylor shook her head, "No. There are a number of power nullifiers, though, that might be useful and willing to help. Absent that..." Well, she might have to beg for the nano-thorn recipe after all, or alternately help from the Boss.

Taylor would try her best to help the woman and would try her best to kill her if that wasn't possible. She was a huge threat, as she was. The best shot would be if Taylor could bisect her, cleanly taking off the humanoid torso and discarding the "body." It might start regenerating, but most powers didn't create matter ex nihilo, so there would be a short window of time where Taylor would be able to perform brain surgery to disable her power by carefully lobotomising the Corona Gemma brain structure. Taylor was confident that she could do so as she had been able to see both Corona in Noelle's brain, but her scanner couldn't penetrate that far into her "bottom half", which was one reason she didn't want to risk dealing with that "part" of her. She might even be able to do it in a way that it might be possible to restore her power later in the future if Taylor could figure out why it went berserk in the first place.

From their story, Taylor was pretty sure that Noelle was significantly lacking in the "Balance" part of the vial, and that was why Oliver had almost no power to speak of. He got all of this portion.

It would take speaking to Doctor Mother about this, she was the alchemy expert, but it might be possible to give Noelle more "Balance", which might tend to repair her Corona Gemma after Taylor lobotomised it and induce a less crazy but still useful power. But that might kill her, too. Taylor wasn't an expert here, but Doctor Mother would no doubt be interested. It wasn't life or death, though, because the Boss wasn't popping out of the nearest portal, so she would just proceed as she had tentatively planned.

It might take a while to figure something out. Would her antidepressants work on Noelle? She had a fairly standard brain, so probably. The "girl" was clearly bipolar, although Taylor didn't know if that was natural or a result of her situation; either way, something to even out the troughs of her depression and the irrationality of her mania would be a good thing. At least they weren't dealing with a natural Agent on top of everything else, as there wasn't an appreciable conflict drive in the vial capes, at least from what the Illuminati had recorded and what she had read in the files they allowed her to access.

Now, to see if she could clone an adult bison. Babies, she could do no problem, every day and twice on Sunday. But rapid-cloning whole adult animals? That was more in Blasto's wheelhouse, but it might still be possible, especially with some of the data she now had from Night City.

There were a number of animals from the Brockton Bay Zoo that were wandering around the flooded remains of the city, and she could get genetic samples of all of them. Noelle seemed like she got hungry pretty often, after all. Perhaps she would like a variety sampler until she could heal her.

That, or she could ask the Boss to expand her Door access to some random Earth that still had a lot of herds of those animals traipsing around. As it stood right now, she could only go to and from a few discrete places.

---xxxxxx---

The fedoraed woman looked tired. That had been normal, but Taylor hadn't seen her tired in the past couple of weeks. One of the first things the Boss demanded Taylor Tinker for her after looming over her dream meeting was one of Brockton-Taylor's sleep inducers. She, personally, solved this issue through brain surgery on herself, but surprisingly most other people didn't really appreciate elective neurosurgery.

But Contessa was down to use a device that accomplished the same thing. Taylor didn't really understand the distinction, as both interfaced with your brain in a similar manner. Still, she obeyed and provided the device to the woman, and that had gotten one of the most genuine thanks that Taylor had ever heard the Boss make.

Well, actually, she had never heard the woman thank anyone, but Taylor imagined how it would sound—monotone—and in this instance, she had actually sounded genuine, holding the wreath up as if it was a lifeline. Maybe it was. Taylor thought it must be hard to run a dimension-spanning conspiracy mostly on your own hook. Having an extra five or so hours a day would probably be very nice if you were as overworked as she had been.

"You're fortunate that you're included in the small list of people I spend a little time every day trying to keep alive," the Boss told Taylor amusedly. "Keeping you alive barely adds any steps to the Path, but doing so while helping you do whatever you're trying to do adds quite a few. I have five minutes budgeted for you to tell me what the hell is happening."

Taylor told her what had happened since Coil ran out of town on her, being as succinct as possible. Contessa rubbed the back of her neck and said, "He's trying, successfully, to kill you. What did you do to him?"

"Uh, nothing," Taylor replied. She had never even met the man, although she had done some work for some of his men. He had been one of her first clients, too. She had found him rather rational and easy to get along with.

Contessa sighed and said, "Let me unravel this, and then we can see about your monster girl."

Taylor nodded but stopped her before she left. She had arrived inside Coil's old office, "Although it was safe for you to come here this time, I honestly don't think you should be anywhere near her, either. Her evil clones are no joke. Could you imagine what would happen if something happened and you accidentally touched her? A clone of you, with your powers, that wanted nothing more than to destroy everything you worked for or cared about?"

That caused Contessa to pause, but it was more like an involuntary tick, like she was a robot that switched to a different running program. She didn't waste any more time, saying, "Door to headquarters. Follow me. Now."

After we were in the well-lit white-walled rooms in another dimension, she said, "Wait here."

After that, she departed. Taylor sighed and asked, "Hello, Miss Breeze. Did Doctor Mother look at nine-six-two? Has he been approved for release?" She hadn't reviewed her files here recently, but she had sent his data to her so that she could make final determinations. The breeze grabbed her lab coat in a pre-defined way that they had agreed upon to indicate an affirmative.

"That's good," she said, walking over to a chair and sitting down. She likely didn't have enough time to do any real work, given the unholy speed the Boss solved problems. Instead, she just pulled up a few things on her deck to work on.

About ten minutes later, Contessa returned, trailing a pubescent girl that she was holding firmly by the hand. The girl looked dirty and dingy, as if she hadn't had a bath recently, and had the glassy-eyed stare of someone under the effects of psychoactive drugs. Contessa said firmly, "Sedate her."

Well, she was the Boss. Taylor adjusted the dosage mentally and then pointed her index finger at the girl. The darts she fired were pneumatic, so they were mostly silent aside from a soft hiss and *thwap* of the small dart hitting the girl in the neck. She barely had any time to be startled before she slumped over, with Contessa grabbing her and laying her on a table. Contessa nodded and said, "You'll take her back with you and care for her."

"I don't wanna," Taylor said immediately. What did the Boss think she was? A daycare?

"Don't make me repeat myself. She's a strong Thinker, and Coil kidnapped her and had her addicted to a number of things. The quickest way to solve that problem is to give her to you. After you've treated her, you can return her to her parents in Brockton Bay," the Boss said, narrowing her eyes slightly.

'Oh, you should have just said treat her, then. The nuance was entirely different from care for her,' Taylor thought but decided not to push the matter. Instead, she just nodded.

"Door to Fragile storage, index A-111," Contessa said and then reached through the portal without looking, grabbed a small vial and pulled it out. She pulled a small sheet of paper that looked like it had been ripped out of a three-ring binder and handed both the vial and the sheet to me. She nodded, "Follow those directions precisely, and you should be able to save that girl. Diverge, and you will definitely die, and possibly a lot of other people, too."

That sounded a lot more dangerous than Taylor thought when she agreed to help. She skimmed the directions and pointed at one of the lines that mentioned Sundancer helping with incinerating the remainder or bottom half of Noelle after successfully separating her, "So I should just skip trying to help her and incinerate her."

"No. That would be a waste, and her friend wouldn't agree. If you do this, there is a very good chance that she will come out of this with a usable power that is on the same tier as Legend or Alexandria. We need capes like that. This is worth the risk," the Boss said, "But you're correct. It would be a disaster if I... or... another of us was duplicated. You'll have to do it. Just follow the directions, and you'll be fine."

Taylor had the idea that Contessa would tell her that even if Taylor wouldn't, in fact, be fine if the payoff was sufficient. There wasn't anything more important than saving the world, and the Boss was all about the ends justifying the means. Still, Taylor couldn't smell a secret hinting at personal betrayal from the woman, so she would trust her.

"Fine," Taylor said, standing up. The plan was somewhat similar to her own but included a lot of extra steps and refinements that she should have thought about, like using Trickster to swap out Noelle's bisected torso directly onto an operating table. That was a good idea and would save many seconds. But there were a lot of preparatory steps, like curing Genesis' paralysis and providing her with a customised sleep-inducer that she didn't understand the necessity for, but she would just execute the plan as provided.

After the Boss left, Taylor scanned the unconscious girl's body and frowned. Just what the fuck was going on with this girl's brain? Taylor had never seen someone with so many factors of addiction. It would take weeks to cure her of it, and it would be a lot kinder for the girl to remain unconscious for the duration.

Sighing, she picked the girl up and said, "Door back to my new lair, please." As always, she was polite with whatever entity was responsible for creating magic portals.