(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: HELLO

Bakuda was a genius.

She didn’t say that in the way most people did, casually as a brag whenever they accomplished something difficult. No, she meant it in the most literal, quantifiable sense. IQ tested off the charts. Graduate-level physics knowledge before she could legally drive. Cornell dropout. Or, rather, a ‘voluntary withdrawal under duress,’ as she liked to phrase it. 

Her former university hadn’t appreciated her. Hadn’t given her the recognition she deserved.

But that was fine. The ABB had. Lung had. He had given her a lab and zero moral oversight, as long as it served the ABB. Her minions listened when she ranted, nodded when she monologued, and even clapped when she unveiled a new piece of ‘art’, regardless of who had died as a result. And soon, the rest of Brockton Bay would learn what CU had been too short-sighted to understand:

She was a goddamn artist. And her medium? Chaos.

But geniuses had to be patient. First impressions mattered. If you blew up a mall on day one, people got scared and hid, or band together quickly to destroy you. But if you warmed them up with a little spectacle—a flash here, a bang there—enough destruction to make headlines but not enough to draw the full force of the Protectorate, people started to pay attention. 

They started to talk.

And Bakuda needed one particular person to start talking.

Taylor Hebert.

The PRT’s new golden child. The glowing-eyed wunderkind who had flattened Lung and walked away without so much as a scratch. The girl who, somehow, wasn’t afraid of anything.

Bakuda had waited for Taylor to come to her, had spent weeks laying a trail of bread crumbs. Every coordinated strike was a reminder that Lung might be gone, but the ABB was still active, still active, and very much hers now. 

But she hadn’t come.

No matter how many ‘incidents’ she orchestrated, no matter how clean the carnage or how flashy the blast, it wasn’t Taylor who responded. It was always the others. Some hero she didn’t care about. Some patrol squad. Never the girl herself.

She hadn’t cared.

Taylor Hebert was too busy patrolling with the other Wards, chasing neo-Nazi trash up and down the E88 territory, and playing rising star in a system that didn’t even deserve her. She wasn’t biting. She wasn’t curious. She was ignoring Bakuda.

And that was unacceptable.

No one ignored Bakuda.

She clenched her gloved fingers on the edge of the desk, hearing it creak under pressure.

“All right,” she muttered. “You don’t want to come to me?”

She spun in her chair, grabbing a remote and clicking a button. The lab lights dimmed automatically—casting harsh shadows over the walls plastered with schematics and test footage—and a nearby panel hissed open, revealing her latest masterpiece: a compact explosive with a cortical shell and a programmable delay. Built with Taylor Hebert in mind. 

Bakuda called it the Hello Bomb.

She smiled behind her mask, running her fingers across its surface before plucking it from its cradle. “Fine. I’ll come to you.”

. . . . .

Fugly Bob’s was loud in a comforting way, with its sizzling grills, overlapping conversations, and the steady churn of the milkshake machine in the back. Taylor sat across from her dad in a booth that hadn’t been reupholstered since the early nineties, peeling faux-leather squeaking every time she shifted her weight. Even the table’s laminated surface was scratched with graffiti and initials that no one had ever bothered to clean off.

But just like everyone else, Taylor didn't mind. Especially today. 

Danny looked… better. Not great, but better than he had been during their first tense meeting at the PRT. His beard was trimmed, the bags under his eyes lighter, and his posture more relaxed than she’d seen in weeks. He wore his Dockworker’s Association jacket slung over the back of the booth and nursed a cup of black coffee like it was a lifeline.

Taylor poked at her fries, glancing out the window as dusk crept across the city. It was nice, having a moment like this with him. 

“I still can’t believe that woman’s a cape,” Danny said, shaking his head. “You’re telling me she turns into some kind of monster?”

“Yeah.” Taylor took a bite of her burger and nodded. “Night’s a Breaker. If no one’s looking at her, she changes into a horrifying monster. Really fast, really strong, and apparently, almost impossible to take down.”

“Jesus.”

Danny looked unsettled, obvious worry etched across his features. She knew he didn’t like what he was hearing. But what could he say? That she should stop? That she should let someone else do the fighting? He knew better than to waste breath on it.

“She tried to go monster mode on me during our fight,” Taylor added. “But my eyes… they don’t stop seeing. Doesn’t matter if they are closed, or there's smoke, darkness, whatever. I always see.”

He gave a grunt in silent acknowledgement. “And the guy? Fog?”

She shrugged, wiping her hands on a napkin. “Breaker too, or maybe a changer. Either way, he turns into a fog—surprise—but it’s corrosive for living matter. Couldn't touch me.”

He went silent for a long moment. Then, he exhaled, long and low, and asked, “You’re sure this is the life you want?”

She didn’t answer immediately because no, it wasn’t. But it was the life she had now. The one she’d carved out for herself after everything. After Winslow. After the locker. After Keith. So she met his gaze and said, “I’m good at it.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line, but he nodded, and didn’t press further. Not because he agreed, but because he understood.

Taylor was about to change the subject—maybe ask about his job, or if he’d fixed the broken radiator in the house—when the door chimed and someone new walked in.

She didn’t see his face at first, but she felt something was off immediately. Her instincts were practically screaming.

The man who had entered was young—early twenties maybe—with thinning hair and a pale, waxy face. He moved like someone on the verge of bolting: shoulders hunched, and hands fidgeting with the sleeves of his sweat-soaked sweatshirt, almost as if he was hugging himself. His eyes darted around the booths, and when they fell on hers, they both froze. Fear was too simple a word to describe the emotion in his.

But that wasn’t what made her spine go rigid.

It was what she saw in him.

Something glowed faintly at the edge of her perception. Not in a visible-light way, but through the same part of her sight that let her see the parasites superimposed over parahumans.  

Like Dean’s emotion-sensing tendrils, but wrong. 

Her gaze snapped upward, trying to trace the tendril back to its owner. But it led outward, far beyond her range. Whoever was controlling it was miles away, or somewhere else entirely.

Then the tendril brightened considerably.

Her stomach dropped.

“Dad,” she said sharply, standing so fast the booth broke apart.

Danny startled, along with everyone else in the building. “What—?”

She didn’t have time to explain. She flung out her hand and willed her forcefield to expand. It rushed out instantly in a dome, surrounding everyone and everything (but the strange man) in her immediate vicinity. 

And then said man exploded.

Taylor screamed.