Orb Weaver Plague: Chapter 9A

Divided in two, since this is gonna be a little longer than normal. We get to see some of the fallout...

*****

When my eyes opened I blinked. My mask was still on.

“Do I have permission to fully heal you?” The voice was waspish, and it was… Ah. Amy.

“Yes, Panacea, and thank you.”

“Good. I did provide life saving care.” She paused and then continued as if reading from memory. “Immediate life saving care, when the patient is unconscious, does not require explicit consent. However, I will now heal the underlying issues.” She paused, and glared at me. “A punctured lung, and it also angled down and nicked your liver. How the hell did you give a speech?”

“I have a high pain tolerance,” I answered.

“Hmph.” She kept touching my wrist and then nodded. “There. I have a sheet for you. You must eat at least half again your normal caloric intake for the next several days or you could experience negative symptoms. Right. We’re done.”

She swept out.

I didn’t hold it against her. Panacea worked, and even when she wasn’t officially working, the day didn’t go by that some student might “accidentally” let drop in her presence that there was a medical problem she might help with and I expect the same applied out of school.

Still, I got up, noticing my clothing—cleaned now. They’d let me keep my mask, but, well, my identity as The Investigator was blown completely enough that the mask was merely a polite way of pretending that I was totally not Taylor Hebert.

As intended and nobody would look any further. There was a button on the wall, and when I finished dressing, I pushed it.

The PRT HQ was clean, but there were always bugs, even if I wasn’t directly controlling the ones in the complex. The last thing I wanted to do was risk that Armsmaster had set up some “Orb Weaver detection system,” and by his past actions, that kind of precaution would be completely in theme.

I felt the disturbance of someone coming to get me. I waited, just as I would if I didn’t know they were walking up to the door. When it opened I nodded. Miss Militia had been sent to get me.

“Investigator?”

“Yes. I take it that nothing unexpected has happened since I arrived?” I shrugged. “Madison was rather panicked, or we would have arrived in a less dramatic manner.”

“Given Panacea’s comments on your injuries, I think we can accept some drama.” Her eyes crinkled, over her mask. “Be careful of Clockblocker. He might claim damsel saving privileges.”

“Just as long as he understands that with my current luck, any outing might end up being crashed by Lung.”

Miss Militia sighed. “He might consider that to be a positive.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t see why many people would want to date Taylor Hebert, especially given the other girls at Arcadia. But that wasn’t an issue now.

“Madison?”

“Assault is calming her down. He took her to Power Testing along with Armsmaster, and got her mind off other issues.”

“Ah.”

“And power testing… Well, let’s get you to the meeting.”

“Is my father there?”

“Yes. Director Piggot has been calming him down. Clips have hit PHO.”

Oh boy. I took a deep breath. “Then let us go.”

*****

When I got to Director Piggot’s office, I noticed that it was only her and Dad. Miss Militia took up a position in the office, and I nodded.

“Taylor are you—“

“I’m fine, Dad. Director Piggot.”

“Investigator. Thank you for resolving this issue… but maybe you should be more cautious?”

“I didn’t expect the Undersiders, or the interruption of communications.” I shook my head. “I expect they were related. Tattletale was trying to recruit Madison. How was the network knocked out?”

“Someone triggered a test cycle,” Director Piggot said. “Normally it’s done on individual nodes and cell towers, but they triggered it for the entire area.” She sighed. “The reboot only took a short time, but it required someone knowing several dozen system passwords. We have investigators on it right now.”

They’ll find nothing. Someone who had that level of planning and access wouldn’t be so sloppy as to leave a clear trail.

“Now, about the Empire’s assault?”

“Did you capture any of the gang members?”

“A few. They came into the ER with broken bones, mostly from hitting things when Madison pushed them away. They also tested very high for meth and other stimulants.”

“The Empire wanted a bloodbath.” I shook my head. “I expect Crusader was there to see if his powers worked on Madison. If they did, he could kill her. If not, he was part of a noble group trying to protect the city… and then he accidentally stabbed me.  The gang was to provide a convenient body count.”

“Accidentally?” Dad spoke up, hands clenched.

Oops. “Yes. I noted that he doesn’t seem to have complete control over his ghosts, my bet is that he told them to fight and since I was fighting... I don’t know if it is a factor that he wasn’t able to directly observe the location, or innate to them in all cases.”

Director Piggot nodded and quickly wrote a note to herself. “Thank you, Investigator.”

“Taylor?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“I’m going to say something Annette said. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a situation we need to address.”

Neither Miss Militia or Director Piggot intervened. I was on my own.

“Understood.”

****

“But what if I… hurt someone?”

Colin wasn’t certain if it was just him, but there was something strange about the way an eight foot tall Parahuman who looked like they’d been designed by H.R. Giger was just… huddling in on herself.

“Ms. Clements,” he said, remembering her negative reaction to attempts to assign her a code name. “The far wall is fully reinforced, and Miss Militia uses the range to test heavy weapons.” He glanced at the pile of neatly sliced test items, ranging from ceramic to the strongest non-tinkertech alloys known to man.

All of them neatly sliced with mirror finish surfaces along the line. Beyond that was the weight machine.

We will have to send her to LA or the Yuma test center.  She’d maxed out the machine at its full 1200 tons, with some indication of support for the weights beyond what her hands could provide—not that uncommon in high-level brutes, but interesting.

She reached down and picked up a beach ball-sized sphere. “Is this the right one? I’m supposed to start out with the light ones first, right? It feels light.”

“Oh Boy,” Assault muttered. “Yeah!” he called. “Totally the light one.”

Madison nodded, holding the two-foot diameter, steel sphere in one hand.

“Now throw it at the target, as hard as you can,” Colin said.

“Uh… okay.”

Madison pulled her arm back and threw, a clumsy overhead pitch—but it was only later that Colin noted that because her arm blurred and the crack of something exceeding the speed of sound was lost in the tremendous smashing that was loud even through their ear protectors.

Then there was silence. The far end of the range, something that had survived the best (non-nuclear) payloads Miss Militia used was… shattered. The outer layers were shattered, and the rear wall, feet of reinforced materials… was deformed, cracks running through it, the ball  embedded in it, actually glowing from where the kinetic energy had been turned to heat.

Hmm… 900 meters per second. Interesting. I—

“Oh God! What if there were people behind that! What if I toss someone a ball—Oh God! I almost threw something at the people when they went after The Investigator! Oh God! No wonder she told me not to fight!”

“Do not worry, Ms. Clements. There are no section—“

“Oh God,” Ms. Clements was scuttling back to the far corner of the testing room, eyes fixed on the result of her test.

Assault shook his head. “Hang on Boss.” He bent down to the microphone. “Yeah, this is Assault. Power testing temporarily halted due to panic attack.”