Chapter Text
January 29th, 2011
Medhall Central
Brockton Bay, NH
// Vanguard Sound - Girls' Frontline OST Vol.1: "Machines Are Talking"
Knocking out and dressing up as an adult security guard would have been beyond the Taylor Hebert of a month ago, even if it was some string bean with infinity iron cross tattoos I'd subdued. Wraparound Oakleys, gaiter, plate carrier, cop pants, bump helmet, M177E5 rifle (at least, that's what it said next to the pony logo?) and all that. I'd even thought to get some disposable contacts. He'd looked like those PMC dorks on Earth Aleph TV shows, and now so did I.
I walked up to the waiting van with the passenger door open, my borrowed rifle in hand, adjusting the fake earpiece. Walking in slightly too big boots felt strange, but I already knew I was fucked if we had to fight like that to begin with. I nodded at the driver, who was dressed much like me, except without the usual sunglasses or bump helmet. All I could really see of them was that they (she?) had blue eyes. The driver looked surprised, but pointed to the passenger seat, which I sat in, putting the rifle into its slot in the modified center console, and my backpack behind the seat. The driver then put on their own sunglasses.
The presence chuckled. "Of course these walking cliches wear sunglasses at night. Some things don't change, I guess. Not that you're any better off."
We drove for several minutes. The driver tried to start conversations in between firing off quick texts on a phone she totally wasn't hiding, but I ignored her. I was totally focused on where we were going. Soon...
The radio crackled. "Check in. Romeo, 93." The mid-ride master-stranger check. It was meant to stop what I was going to do. Between capes and trade-craft, switching trusted staff for 'un-trusted third parties' was pretty trivial. Knowing the codes was important, but I wasn't strictly relying on them. Especially not with this new variable.
The driver took the mic and said, "Golf, 37." She passed it to me, almost reluctantly.
"Copy. Echo, 72."
I clicked the mic, and said, "Whiskey, 86."
"Copy, almost done. Yankee, 3." Now, the group matrix sign. Assuming the count hadn't changed...
A mental command popped into my head. "G-37 and W-86 should give the matrix countersign of B-19. But something might be wrong. If the driver's going to pull anything, it'll be with her right arm, so. Trigger intent once to stun her right arm, and a second time for whole-body. I've got the tracker isolated."
I clicked the mic again, and said "Bravo, 19", to give the countersign. I hoped the codes I'd stolen were still good, but if someone else had pulled the same stunt I did, it might have shifted them.
"...Stand by."
The driver stiffened, and then turned to me, reaching for a taser in her uniform pouch. "Sorry, but this isn't personal."
The presence cursed in the back of my head. "Locked onto the tracker. Switching IMEI and ICCID. Taylor, now!"
A flex of will triggered the stunner command. Abruptly, her right arm dropped limp, as my scanner went off simultaneously. "All units, be advised, possible carjacking at 109th and Carson, code 503, white Medhall van -"
I used the opportunity to pull out my stolen handgun, pressing it into the driver's leg, right in the path of her femoral artery. "Not personal, huh, miss Nazi Barbie? Better get driving. Take the right, and keep your hands where I can see them."
The driver cursed - no slurs, just general frustration - and made the turn with her left hand, as I reached into my radio pouch and pulled the voice electrode tap free of the scanner. We were both in the shit now; no sense in hiding it. "- responding to code 503, ETA five minutes," a bored voice responded out loud.
We drove in silence for a few minutes, the driver shaking out her stunned arm and putting it back on the steering wheel very deliberately. Meanwhile, the scanner crackled. "Unit arrived at possible code 503, 109th and Carson... no van in sight, over. Are you sure the tracker is working? Because it seems to think it's parked inside the COAST stop, over." I snickered at that.
The driver cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable. "So... what are you trying to do?"
I scowled beneath my gaiter. "Clearly, I'm hijacking a truck."
"And where does that leave me?"
"I haven't decided yet. Think a bunch of lab equipment is worth your life?"
The driver snorted. "No." After a few seconds, she replied, "I'm more looking to steal some of the Empire's stuff, but you seem to have me at a disadvantage."
I nodded. "It'd be pretty stupid to steal from that kind of employer… So, you're not a Neo-Nazi in rent-a-pig clothing?"
"Nope." She popped the 'p'. "You aren't?"
"Of course not. The whole point was to look the part, not be the part."
"So... you are...?"
"Lilith will do. True names are for friends," I stated, as the presence groaned internally.
"Tattletale. Of the Undersiders. If you're not actually going to shoot me for being a supposed Empire plant, mind putting away your gun?"
Sheepishly, I put my handgun back in its chest holster. "Sure."
"Well, Lilith, we have a problem. A few problems, really..."
"What kind of problem? I spoofed the tracker already."
"I gathered that much. How long will the spoof last?"
"As long as I'm within a few blocks, it'll stay suppressed. That's why I told you to turn when you did. Right now, Medhall's asset tracker system thinks the van is parked inside a bus stop."
"Clever." Tattletale gripped the wheel more tightly. "That's usually my shtick."
A few minutes passed in silence. We were pretty deep into the Docks, now, in the less savory, more abandoned parts. Soon enough, we stopped in a derelict parking lot, the kind that might have been a logistics zone at one point. If not for the wrecked trailers and the deep cracks of asphalt abandoned for over a decade, one might mistake it for part of a functioning port.
Not like we got much airship traffic these days, and the Boat Graveyard put paid to maritime shipping in our city. Maybe if the wrecks could be moved, but they'd become an attractive nuisance for every dipshit operator who thought the shipbreaking yard would be online any day now, instead of perpetually five years away. It'd been a frequent topic of Dad's rants over the years - when he still ranted, anyway.
"Why are we stopped?" I asked suspiciously.
"We're here. With my crew… hopefully." To punctuate the answer, Tattletale grabbed the maglight stuck in the console and flashed it on and off a few times, in a pattern. To my surprise, another pattern flashed, and Tattletale slumped a little in relief. She turned off the engine.
I pulled the rifle free, keeping it in the 'low ready' pattern the presence was suggesting. "Ready?"
Tattletale gestured angrily. "Put that away. You don't need it."
I scowled right back, tightening my grip on the rifle. "No. Trust is earned."
"Do you even know how that works?"
I pulled the charging handle, and checked the chamber, all as my borrowed instincts suggested I should. "Yes." I felt a little stupid.
"Ugh, fine." Tattletale pulled out the stubby little rifle and pulled the charging handle on hers, if less decisively. Even I could tell that she wasn't very familiar with her borrowed little rifle. "Let's go. There should be three of them, plus some really big dogs. Stay behind the door if you're worried."
"Got it." I briefly let the presence guide me through jumping out of the van without losing my rifle, holding it behind the door. Two men (boys?) approached. There was a dark fog all around us, with a hole around the van.
Tattletale followed, and raised her voice. "Let's get this shit unloaded!"
The taller guy in a motorcycle helmet stepped forward. "Where's the guard? Did you deal with them?"
"Behind the door. I'll explain in a sec, Grue."
"Were you followed? We heard the cops talking about a stolen van, supposedly stuck in a bus stop."
"That would be her doing. Lilith, you're up. Don't shoot my teammates."
I turned to Tattletale, and she nodded. I stepped slightly out of cover, slicing the pie like my borrowed instincts said to, then stepped all the way forward, gun kept at low ready the whole time.
The skinny boy approached Tattletale, then looked at me. "Hey, Tats, where'd you find this dork? A Vegas 2 player lobby?"
"She came free with the van, Regent." She sighed. "I'm pretty sure she's friendly, if a little skittish."
The skinny boy, Regent, chuckled, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. "Sure, sure. Just as long as she's house-trained."
Grue snorted. "Bitch!"
I nearly cussed him out, but then I heard a couple of dogs barking, and a woman in a dog mask opened the door on the other van - I hadn't noticed it - and leaned out. "What?"
He sighed. "Let's get this shit unloaded. Unless you see something we don't, new girl?"
I shrugged and pointed my rifle all the way down. "Left my night vision on my other helmet. I think that's everyone."
"Alright, let's move it all over." He signaled to her, and 'Bitch' rolled their van forward and stopped it next to our stolen one.
They started pulling crates out of the rear of the van, while I started looking through the rest. PCR machine, tubes, two workstation computers, slides, chems... everything in the manifest looked to be here.
Tattletale came up behind me and tapped my shoulder. "Find everything you need?"
"Yeah. Everything's here."
"Well, we need to get rid of their van."
"Oh." That complicated things... and it struck me that moving all of this was going to be a gigantic pain.
"...you don't have anywhere to put this, do you?"
"Not anywhere I'd show a random group of capes, no."
"'Your parents' basement' isn't a great idea, Lilith."
"How did you...?"
Tattletale grinned. "I'm psychic."
Somehow, I wasn't convinced. Neither was the presence. "Lucky guess," I snorted.
"Did you put any thought into this part?"
"I assumed that I'd have knocked you out and dumped you outside of Empire territory, but plans changed. No, I don't know what to do."
"Well, we're going to take it all with us for now. Tomorrow, we can meet up, unless you have a better plan?" Tattletale started pulling off her disguise, starting with her really small rifle, which she set down in their van.
I moaned in frustration. "I don't. Fine. I'll meet you tomorrow."
"Now that that's settled, what is it you actually want?"
I frowned as I tossed my rifle into their van, next to Tattletale's weapon. "First, I'm planning to keep the fighting gear I stole. Are you keeping yours?"
Tattletale snorted. "No. We don't really have much use for them, Lilith. If you want them, I suppose they're yours. Not like I handled these without gloves." I pointed to her plate carrier and she silently set it aside.
"I can work with that." I unlatched and set down my own plate carrier, the borrowed muscle memory guiding my hands. The dress shirt and under vest came off after that, and I shivered under the cold. The Bay in January wasn't t-shirt weather, especially this late.
"What else?" Tattletale was almost finished stripping off the disguise, revealing a purple catsuit. She put her mask on, swiped off her own contacts, and pulled off the gaiter. "Ahh, much better." She promptly dumped it into the pile of discarded gear, pocketing the contacts.
"Well, the whole point of the exercise was to get the lab gear. The computers, the chems, the lab gear, the PCR. I want all of that. I'll even give back the tactical gear if that's what it takes." I switched my stolen boots for the sneakers in my backpack, throwing them on the pile of stuff dumped in the stolen van. Regent grinned and splashed some gasoline on the boots, for good measure.
Grue cut in. "Tattletale, is this really necessary?"
Tattletale seemed amused by all this as she finished tossing the last of the rentacop disguise into the burn pile. "Lilith's a tinker. Possibly a bio-tinker… no, something else?"
I shrugged as I zipped up my hoodie. "So what if I am?"
"Well, you sure as shit aren't going to use this fancy lab gear for paternity tests."
"Nope," I said, popping the 'p' in imitation. I wasn't in the mood to elaborate, as I zipped up my backpack.
Tattletale grinned. "I'm dying to know. I'd rather not be dead because of what I don't know, y'know?"
"Origami."
"Huh?"
"That's what I'm making." I finally shrugged on her backpack.
"How delightfully nonspecific!"
"Ask me tomorrow. I'm not your library."
"Now can I burn it?" Regent looked a little bored, fidgeting with a lighter.
Tattletale thought for a second, then gave a thumbs up, tapping me on the shoulder. I also turned around, and after a few seconds checking to make sure I hadn't left anything important, nodded.
Regent lit a rag and tossed it into the Medhall van. "Awesome. All's well that burns well."
Meanwhile, the woman Grue had called 'Bitch' - the one with the cheap dog mask - had finished with growing her dogs into huge monsters. The presence was muttering something about matter and energy conservation, but I tuned it out. Everyone knew parahumans could do weird stuff - why would turning dogs into huge beasts be any different?
We huddled up near the "Undersiders" van, the fog obscuring the light of the burning Medhall van.
Tattletale cleared her throat. "Grue, what are we doing with her?"
Grue shrugged. "You brought her in. You take her home."
Tattletale groaned, and held out her hand to Bitch. Wordlessly, Bitch passed her the keys, then the boys and Bitch mounted up. "Come on," Tattletale gestured. I tossed my backpack behind the center console and climbed in after her.
We drove a few blocks before she asked me for more concrete directions. I suggested a gas station near my house, and Tattletale began driving towards it.
"So. I was serious. What do you plan to do with all that gear, if I let you have it? Truthfully, fencing the computers wouldn't be too hard, but fencing lab equipment, especially the kind you can't really make drugs with, is tricky. Normally, I'd dump it on the side of the road, but you did help. So..."
I shrugged. "Like I said. I'm making origami with it."
"What does that mean? I know you don't mean paper..."
"Can't you figure it out?"
"That's not how my power works, Lilith. I kinda need something to go off of, and biology is about as far removed from my expertise as you can get."
"There's papers by Frietas and Drexler, I've checked. Even books about it?"
Tattletale gripped the wheel tightly and swore. "So, nanotechnology. Of some kind. And you don't want anyone to know."
I nodded. "People tend to freak out about it. Ecophages are pretty hard to make to begin with, and I kinda live here. Really not interested in making those, even if I knew how."
"Are yours self-replicating?"
"Some intermediate stages are, yes. But there's some pretty strict limits on what's physically possible."
Tattletale nodded. "What do you mean?"
"A lot of the legitimate research on nanotechnology shows some pretty obvious limits to self-replication. The upper bounding on self-replication is actually lower in many cases for 'dry' nanorobots than for bacteria."
"Doesn't seem to stop Tinkers. The Machine Army and all that."
"I'm not that type of Tinker." I groaned. "My blueprints are all replicable, assuming you have a bootstrap path. Can't make rocks into fabbers without a fabber."
"That... damn. Is nanotechnology all you can do?"
"Not by a long shot. It's just the prerequisite for everything."
"So what's so urgent that you need to... risk it all for something you could have bought online?"
"Not really. They track this stuff, especially if you don't have real money. Like, oh, when an MIT student buys a PCR machine as surplus at their flea market for their dorm floor, they're 'ingenious' and 'entrepreneurial'. When I... when I do it online, they cancel my fraudulent credit card accounts and ban my Google Auctions burner. I lost three Netcard accounts trying to do this shit."
Tattletale whistled. "Damn. How haven't you been caught?"
I laughed. "Well, I'm sure that some upstanding white citizens who support their local cross-burners will be getting visits from the Thinker pigs." More soberly, I continued. "Honestly, I'm not sure. But believe me, I've tried everything else."
"You could have... no, no, I suppose you actually couldn't join the Wards."
"I looked into it, but somehow I doubt they'd accept nanosafety conformance documents or type pattern approvals from whatever gave me the blueprints. It's just not how their rules work."
"And your designs probably aren't the kinds of things that fit the image of the Wards."
A blueprint for a reflex booster flashed through my mind. "Most wouldn't, no. Certainly not the kinds of things I need to make to be actually combat ready."
Tattletale smiled. "I get it. You still didn't answer my question."
"Why the risk?"
"Yeah."
"My combat power isn't all that great. It'll likely do better over time, but right now most of my power's capabilities are in technopathy, not a stun field or puppeting. It took a while to calibrate my power to stunning your arm, and only your arm."
"Ah. What would you have done if, say, Hookwolf were driving?"
"Oh, that's easy. I'd have cooked his nerves from the inside out. Leave just enough to puppet him safely to ABB territory, then dump his body."
Tattletale stared at me in not a little horror, then weakly chuckled. "Please tell me you're not serious."
"Oh, I am. Cape fights in a phone booth rarely end well, especially with that kind of power. You and I both know that."
"That's probably a little excessive for a mundane driver, so you know."
"Yeah, so all I did was mess with a nerve cluster in your arm."
"...Fair enough." She pulled up near the gas station I'd mentioned, and grabbed a pen out of the console and a scrap piece of paper. I felt several cameras, willing them silent. "This is your stop." I grabbed my backpack as she scribbled some stuff down.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. Seriously. Here." She handed me a piece of paper with a phone number, a cross street and time. "We'll get this worked out tomorrow, okay?"
"Are you going to...?"
"Yeah, yeah, you'll get your lab stuff tomorrow." Tattletale grinned at me, and I jumped out.
It'd be a bit of a walk, but I had time.
"And with that, our plan advances! You had fun, didn't you?" I pointedly ignored the presence's teasing.
"Yeah..."
"I think she might want you."
"Maybe." I doubted it.
"In more than one way~"
I blushed furiously. "I just met her!"