Blue
Contessa was walking along the outer corridor of the facility; the alien view provided from the windows to her right was one that she was unfamiliar with, when her foot turned slightly to the left, causing the mysterious woman to stumble slightly. Her hand met the cool metal of the wall, preventing her from falling to the tile floor. She blinked repeatedly. Her eyes unseeing as her mind raced through the changes to Path, their central directive suddenly in danger.
What changed?
The numbers… the numbers had changed.
A moment ago it had been fifteen hundred thirty-two decisions between now and the next truly important step in the ever-changing road towards victory, and something beyond what she could see had deviated from its natural course. A butterfly’s wing had flapped too soon perhaps? Standing upright and taking a moment to brush the errant hairs away from her face, Contessa reversed her course and headed to where the Doctor was currently going over the latest predications that Kurt had provided. A discussion was very necessary.
The dark-haired woman mentally attempted to retrace the last few deviations that their group had enacted, wondering if somehow they had garnered the attention of one or more of those few individuals that were outside of her power’s purview. Rebecca had been quite efficient in regards to keeping tabs on her blind spots. Her pace quickened as she continued to second-guess the choices that they had made, mostly at her own insistence. It would not be good at this juncture for the direction she had insisted needed to be adhered to was faulty. David would love that.
Finally nearing her goal, Contessa wondered for not the first time whether leaving Thomas with so much leeway in his quest to conquer Brockton Bay, had his abilities somehow circumvented her own power to keep him in check.
She knocked on the open door’s wooden surface. “Doctor?”
The black-skinned woman glanced up from the report she had been reading at her desk. From where she stood, Contessa looked over her earliest ally and sometimes friend. The leader of Cauldron appeared exhausted.
“Yes?” The Doctor asked as she leaned back in her office chair. “What is it? I thought you were off to check on the results from our incursions into India.”
“Something’s happened. Our path needs changing.”
The Doctor stood at her words, clearly shaken. “What? How?”
“I don’t know, yet.” Contessa admitted. “Just a few minutes ago, I stumbled. Almost fell. The ripples of the event haven’t settled yet. I am trying to backtrack to see when and where.”
“This is important. How can I help?”
The two normally unflappable women stared at one another in fear. The goal had been their central focus for years, the path chosen unshakable, but now that their choices might be called into question due to some unforeseen change… it was a terrifying thought. What would they do if they had to start all over?
Contessa sat primly in the chair opposite from where the Doctor remained standing. “We need Kurt down here. I can start going over the decisions we decided upon, see if we can work out some type of equation that might give us a clue as to where to start looking.”
“Of course.”
“There’s got to be a way to narrow where to begin.”
The Doctor brought her cellular phone out of her coat pocket and began texting the problem to the Number Man. As she was typing, the Doctor considered the other woman. “What do we know?”
“Fifteen hundred thirty-two steps just became one hundred forty-nine.”
“One hundred forty-nine?”
She nodded. “We need to make a major alternative to the natural narrative of the Earth Bet within one hundred forty-nine steps; otherwise an additional seven hundred million lives are lost within three years.”
“Can we go back that far? In the time allotted, I mean.” The Doctor finished the text and set the device down. “I don’t have a timeline for the steps, just that they are necessary.”
Her phone offered a single chirp. At a glance, she saw Kurt’s response that he was on his way. Nodding to herself, the Doctor made a decision. “I’ll call Rebecca. See if she has some time to assist.”
“One hundred forty-eight steps.” Contessa replied.
…ooo000OOO*** 53 ***OOO000ooo…
The lighting inside the hospital room was extremely poor, which gave off a very gloom picture. It was probably for the best that the bulbs in this section of the hospital were mostly burnt out and the corners all seemed to be shrouded in shadows considering that the entire building was in desperate need of repair. There was obvious wiring issues if the scorch marks near the outlets were any indication, as well as several obvious taped wires on machines years out of date. The Doctor grimaced at the notion that ultimately she and the others at Cauldron were somewhat responsible for the lack of proper funding at Brockton Bay General Hospital. All in the name of saving the many at the cost of the few… or the not so few.
In this case, maybe the one.
She silently drew closer to the double room, though only one of the beds occupied. The assortment of wires and other devices that attacked the lone female to the machines all ‘beeped’ and ‘booped’ and offered various sounds that one would expect within a room such as this. A small, broken figure of a teenaged girl was sleeping, unaware of the momentous moment that was about to be thrust upon her. To think that all of the trouble to their machinations was somehow connected to one broken girl in a city doomed to die on a world that was possibly beyond salvation.
The Doctor watched. No one would bother to check on the girl for another hour forty-seven minutes. The fact that the girl needed checked on more regularly was insignificant considering how badly this wing was understaffed. The hospital’s director had only recently learned that his barely legal teenage mistress was pregnant. The funds he was embezzling would go a long way in either convincing her to get an abortion or as a safety net in case his wife discovered his philandering ways. The money might have offered a real difference towards the lives of the patients under his care, but the nineteen year old had an ‘ass that wouldn’t quit’ and that made it all right in the end, no pun intended.
“Who are you?” The teenager, barely fifteen, blinked her eyes repeatedly as her voice, rough from disuse, broke the silence of the night. “What ar-are you doin’ here?”
The unbidden visitor offered a smile. “Hello, Taylor.”
“Are you a doctor?”
The dark-skinned woman nodded. “I am, though not the one assigned to your case. I guess you could say that I’m more of a… a specialist, I suppose.”
“Oh.” Taylor Hebert nodded as she closed her eyes, the very act of speaking so little already tiring her broken body. “Came to see me before the end, eh?”
“Something like that.” The Doctor admitted. “Did they explain it all to you already then?”
“That I’m dying. Poisoned. Yeah.” There was no hatred in her voice. No recriminations towards the guilty. Those responsible for her condition. Only a sad acceptance.
“I am sorry.”
“I ‘preciate that.” She coughed. The Doctor moved over to the table and used the pitcher provided to pour a plastic cup full of the lukewarm water. She watched the younger girl take a swallow. “Thanks.”
“More?”
She shook her head. “Maybe in a bit.” Taylor took a deep breath. “Rather have a strawberry milkshake.” She sighed. “So, what brings you here in the middle of the night? I get the feeling that this won’t be something completely on the up and up.”
“That’s a very astute observation.”
“Eh. My Daddy didn’t raise no fool. So, what do you want? I don’t really have a lot to offer right now.”
The Doctor smiled. “I thought I might offer you a choice.”
“A choice? A choice about what?”
At Taylor’s skeptical tone, the older woman moved over to the end of the bed so they could better look at one another. “A choice on your fate, Taylor Anne Hebert.”
“My fate’s to die. Unless you have Panacea on speed dial.”
“I might be able to offer that, but the cost would be more than you realize. Too high for anyone to pay. No, I thought I might see if you were interested in offering your body for science.”
Taylor offered a weak chuckle. “For science? You want my corpse after I die? That’s pretty grim, even for a doc that makes visits to a teenager’s room at two fourteen in the morning.”
“We’d pay handsomely for you.” The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. “Your Father would be well taken care of for the rest of his days.” She tapped the side of her head. “Maybe even enough recompense to challenge those that are hiding the truth. Even properly catch those that are guilty. Daniel Hebert would get proper closure for you.”
“That’s cheating.” Taylor cleared her throat. Unasked, the Doctor offered another cup of water. “And I think Dad would prefer me buried next to Mom, not divided up for some study or whatever you want me for.”
“Oh, not for study. Not in the way you believe, anyway.” The Doctor waited, as the girl seemed to digest what was said. “In fact, you would still be alive. Somewhat.”
“What?” Her eyes scrunched up in confusion. “You can’t cure me and you say Panacea is too expensive, though I’ve never heard of her charging before and you’ll pay for my dead body, but I won’t be dead… exactly. That about right, Doc?”
The woman standing smiled. “Close.” She held her hand up to forestall Taylor interrupting. “I represent an organization that works with the Parahuman community. Our long-term goal is the ultimate survival of humanity. As many as we possibly can. One of the avenues that we offer is by granting powers to individuals that have no hope of going forward.”
“Forward? You mean living.”
“In a word, yes.” She admitted. “Like you said earlier, your fate is to die. But what if I could give you the chance to become something more? To be one of the heroes that the Earth so desperately needs?”
“I’d say you are crazy.” Taylor breathed out. “Wha’ kind of person are you? Do you get your kicks from doing things like this? Find the poor dying girl that has maybe a few days left and dangle some dream of being a superhero in their face? You’re some piece of work, Doc. Are you even a doctor?” That last question was filled with enough anger and spite that the Doctor could almost feel it like a physical blow.
“Door.” She spoke after a moment of withstanding the glare from the young teenager.
The space next to the Doctor within the room twisted. A rancid aroma of burning ozone wafted through the enclosed area as a knife cut of light ripped the fabric of reality and created a rectangle of… something else, a portal to elsewhere maybe, allowing for another figure to step through from wherever to here. Taylor watched, amazed, and possibly even slightly humbled.
The woman that stepped into Taylor’s room was possibly the most recognizable person in the whole world. For Taylor, she’d known this person’s name for just about the entirety of her life. Alexandria, the current head of the Los Angeles Branch of the Protectorate and former leader of the Triumvirate, stood at the foot of her hospital bed. The statuesque woman, her eyes hidden behind the visored helmet she was famous for wearing, shook hands with the Doctor.
“Miss Hebert.” Taylor was flabbergasted. The ironic hero knew her name. She could only nod in greeting, her ability to speak was gone. Maybe forever. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Me?” She squeaked, the ability to talk having returned… somewhat.
“Yes, you, Miss Hebert. The Doctor has made the offer?”
“Somewhat.” The other woman offered, her voice sounded almost guilty.
The famous hero turned to fully look at the other woman in Taylor’s room. “Somewhat?” Her voice seemed both bemused and slightly angered. “How can you mess up telling a fifteen year old girl that instead of dying you’re going to give her superpowers?”
“It’s not that easy.” The Doctor protested. “It’s not always as simple as you were.”
“Doctor…”
“She gave you powers, too?” Taylor interrupted. In any other situation, she might have been mortified at the gall of cutting the hero’s words off, but somewhere in the back of her mind, Taylor somewhat assumed that this was a drug-induced hallucination brought on by the amount of painkillers that ere currently pumping through her bloodstream. Surely, there was no way that a strange doctor and Alexandria were in her room offering her her childhood dream. “Really?”
At her inquiry, the two visitors promptly quieted down and had the decency to seem embarrassed at being called out. They looked at one another before Alexandria moved closer to the bed-stricken girl. “I was like you once.” Her voice was softer than Taylor imagined it could sound. “I had no hope for a future. None. And then one day the Doctor came and offered me a chance to do good. To be a hero. To help and try humanity.”
“Will I be like you?”
“Maybe.” The Protectorate member answered. “The formula doesn’t work the same for everybody.”
“But it’s a possibility?”
Looking over to where the Doctor still stood, Taylor watched as the black woman shrugged. “Anything is possible, although the exact mix we will be offering is different that what we gave Alexandria. With a different percentages from the source.”
“Why?”
“Why?” The Doctor chuckled. “Duplication doesn’t offer the world anything. We don’t need a second Alexandria. We would want a Taylor. The new Taylor that you’d maybe become.”
“What would I get?”
At Taylor’s question, both woman laughed softly. “Well, ‘after’ you agree, we’d take you away from here and begin testing.”
“My Dad…”
“Your father will believe you died.” The Doctor answered. “It is an unfortunate necessity that there are no ties to your former life. I am sorry.”
Before Taylor could say anything more, Alexandria took over. “After testing, we can determine the best fit of potential powers for you. The process usually takes longer, but we already have much of what we needed from the hospital. Blood type, hormone levels, and other stuff. What we need, however, is you to choose this.”
“I have to choose?”
“You do.” The taller woman offered a smile. “When we attempted this particular mix with those that were, let’s say ‘undecided’, the end results were less than promising.”
The teenager listened. “And I have to decide right now, don’t I?”
“You do.” Alexandria spoke. “I’m sorry, but for reasons that I cannot offer you right now, our plan didn’t involve this. Involve this offer in this way. It took a while to find you… and when we did, the timeframe of getting here was very, very limited.”
“This isn’t something you’re just going down the hallway offering to anybody, is it?”
“No, Taylor.” The Doctor smiled. “For tonight… for probably a long while, it’s just for you.”
“You’ll take care of my dad?”
“I promise.” Alexandria responded firmly, while the Doctor only nodded.
“Okay then.” Taylor said. “Let’s do this.”
…ooo000OOO*** 53 ***OOO000ooo…
The figure sat up, her hand moving immediately towards her head. The headache she was experiencing was worse than she could ever recall. It didn’t help that the room was extremely cold and whatever she was sleeping on was not cushioned and very hard.
“Anyone get the license of the bus that hit me?” She asked. When there wasn’t any response, the female opened her eyes. She immediately lifted her hand to cover her eyes from the glaring light… which caused quite a few questions to come to mind that she wanted answered as quickly as possible.
First, there was so many questions about her hand. To start, her hand was blue. Like, a dark (nearly black) skin tone of deep blue. Her gaze travelled up her are arm until it reached the sleeve of the tee she was apparently wearing. A quick lift of the lose collar and she realized that she was blue all over. Okay… weird skin color.
Next regarding her hand was that she had two large fingers and a thumb. A moment to check the other and, yes, both hands looked that way. She shook her head, the long black and curly hair whipping around, as she took a deep breath and sat further up on the cot that had acted as her bed apparently. Stretching, she realized that she was barefoot and her feet were similar to her hands, in that she had two large toes with a back foot thumb (?) where her heel should’ve been.
The room she was currently occupying seemed to be a jail cell of some sort. The off white concrete walls on three sides with the fourth being open other than the bars that prevented her from walking out. There was a sink and a toilet, the latter of which was behind a smaller patrician to allow for some semblance of privacy… thankfully the need to use it was not pressing. She idly wondered what she had done last night to result in her being held overnight. She couldn’t ever recall ever having been in any trouble with the Law before, so the idea that she had done something that horrible seemed fairly farfetched. She debated on whether it was true that she would be given a chance to call someone to come get her…
Who would she call?
There was somebody, of course. Right? Who would she call? Why couldn’t she think of anyone to call for help?
Then there was the most concerning thought that filled her mind.
What was her own name?
Who would she say was calling? What was her name? Who was she? Never mind that she had no idea of who to place a request for aid from, she had no memory of anything personal. No fiends. No address. No recollections of time spent with family and friends. Who was her mother? Father? What was her last name? Or her birthday? She closed her eyes and started taking several deep breaths. She had absolutely no idea why she should do so. Maybe a relative or teacher or someone somewhere at sometime had instructed her on how to take such in order to calm down, but there was no memory of it.
Achieving what little calmness that she could, the young woman stood and made her way over to the sink. There was a small mirror above it. Seeing the face that stared back at her, she still had no idea of who she was supposed to be… and from what little there seemed to be up inside of the Swiss cheese brain she had, what she looked like did not seem right.
Her face was blue just like the rest of her. The face seemed nice, maybe pretty even… if you ignored the blueness that was just, well, everywhere. Her eyes were a solid yellow. No irises. Just a solid yellow, though it almost seemed as if they burned from some inner flame inside. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. Pink, as normal, she supposed, but her teeth were pointed and sharp. Running her tongue along the canines, she determined that they were very sharp. Her ears were pointed. There even seemed to be a…
“Aaaaahhh!” She screamed. Something brushed up against her calf. She twirled around, seeking whatever had grabbed her, but there was nothing. Who had touched her? What was going on? Who else was in here? Twisting around, her eyes glanced all around, until she finally discovered the culprit.
A tail.
She had a fucking devil’s tail, blue as the rest of her.
What in the literal Hell was going on?
“What’s all the racket back here?” A deep voice pulled her out from her stupor over having a tail. The amnesiac girl looked towards the bars to see an older male, maybe in his thirties or forties, dressed in a police officer’s uniform. He was slightly overweight, though he still looked like he could put the fear of God into anyone that made trouble. His mustache covered his mouth completely, but he had very kind eyes. “Whatcha doing back here, Lil’ Blue?”
“Is that my name? Blue?” She asked desperately, but already felt that brief flicker of hope die as the officer shook his head.
“Sorry. We’ve been calling you ‘Blue’ since we found you last night.” He offered with a sympathetic smile. “We hoped you might have answers, though we feared you wouldn’t.”
“Why? Where am I?”
He leaned against the wall opposite of the bars across from where she stood. “Well, as for where you are. Welcome to Houston. Specifically, the Harris County Sherriff’s Department.”
“Houston?”
“Does that mean anything to you?”
She sighed. “Other than as a city in Texas, not really.”
“Well, that you know that much is sometimes a heap better than some of the others.”
“Others?”
He grimaced. He absently patted at his pockets as if he was searching for something. “Not a lot I can say about that. We got someone on the way to maybe answer a few things. Just know that there’ve been others in your predicament. We’ll get you squared away.”
“But there have been others that look like me? That can’t remember anything?”
The officer nodded. “Not exactly like you, but in similar circumstances. People that got no recollection of who they are or where they’re from. Most usually got some powers or such. The PRT will be here, most likely a Cape with ‘em. They’ll answer what they can.”
“PRT?”
“Yeah. The Parahuman Response Team. The ones that specialize in Parahuman stuff that tends to go on nowadays.”
Blue… it was as good of a name for now as anything else, nodded silently as she considered what else she could ask. The Sheriff or Sherriff’s Deputy, whatever his position, seemed willing to help. That was something.
“Ya hungry?” He asked after the silence drew out. “We got a fridge with a few snacks that we offer. It ain’t eleven yet, so breakfast is done for the day and lunch hadn’t started yet. I could order something. What sounds good?”
What did sound good? Would she remember what her favorite foods were? And what about allergies? Or things that she hated?
“A burger, maybe?”
He smiled a wide, good teeth type of smile. “Patty’s down the street makes the best burgers in the county. Even made it on one of those reality shows on Food Network. You seen those?”
She considered the question. She knew what a television was. She even knew what the Food Network was, but what shows she enjoyed watching or the names of the hosts… their faces and names all eluded her grasp. Blue shook her head.
He tried to not show his disappointment. “That’s all right. I reckon we’ll get two of her specials. Nothing makes a piss poor day better than a half pounder with everything, am I right?”
“No pickles.” Her mouth spoke before her brain could catch the thought. She felt tears begin to form in the corners of her eyes at the words spoken. She hated pickles. Blue had no idea why or when the dislike had happened, but she knew that one piece of information. She paused. Maybe two. “And bacon. Make sure there’s bacon.”
The officer smiled. A real smile, this time. “The Patty Special. With bacon, no pickles. All right.” He stood. “I’m Deputy Graham. William Graham, but nobody but my Mama calls me William, so you can call me Billy if you like. I’m gonna go order some food. You want anything special to drink?”
Blue considered the question. “A strawberry milkshake. Feels like I haven’t had one in a long time.” The demon looking girl offered by way of an explanation.
“And a strawberry milkshake.” Billy laughed. “Coming right up.”