Ghost

by Omega_93

Summary:

Taylor is intangible and invisible; she's escaped from all her problems, but in a way that only brings new ones. Just as she loses hope, she finds a group of teenage Parahumans that might be able to communicate with her.

Chapter 1: 1.1 Spectre

Ghost 1.1

I placed my hands around her neck. She looked at me - through me - with complete disinterest. No one in the classroom acknowledged my existence. Even Mr Gladly continued on with his lesson as if I weren’t there.

I squeezed with all my might, to no effect. I threw punches and kicks at her, but they barely even stirred her hair. My ‘scream’ of frustration was utterly mute.

“There a draft in here?” Emma muttered to herself, so low only I caught it.

I was cut off from the world, and I couldn’t even get revenge on the people who caused it.

Emma leaned over and muttered a joke to Sophia. I didn’t catch it, but both of my tormentors seemed to find it amusing. Mr Gladly regarded them for a moment, then shook his head in an ‘oh you’ gesture before continuing on with his lesson like nothing happened. If I’d started laughing in class like that, there would have been hell to pay.

I couldn’t take looking at Emma and Sophia’s smug faces anymore. I bolted from the classroom, straight through the wall to outside.

Wind sighed through the trees and stirred the leaves on the ground.

Whether it stirred my hair or my clothes, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t even see if I had clothes on or not. For all I knew I could’ve been naked. I was invisible. A ghost. A being incapable of interacting with the world.

Not that there was much difference between the way I was now and the way I was before. In fact, in a twisted way, you could say I was better off this way.

I felt myself laugh, my shoulders shaking, but couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t remember what my voice sounded like at this point.

I ran from the school, moving faster than a human had any right to. I could pass straight through people, cars and buildings, so I ran in a straight line with no destination in mind. I passed through a family home. I ran past a butcher skinning a carcass. I even drifted by a mugging without drawing a glance.

I sprinted at full tilt for about twenty minutes without issue. By the time I stopped, my physical state was no different than if I’d gone on a leisurely stroll. No lactic acid, no rapid heartbeat, not even a laboured breath. I wasn’t sure I needed to breath at all. I did the motion of it out of habit.

I looked around and found I was in the middle of a busy street downtown, cars and buses passing straight through me, passengers and all. The street was bustling with people, not one of them aware of my existence. Well, again, that wasn’t much different to before.

Sighing, I made my way to the edge of the road and sat on the sidewalk. I stretched out my legs and let cars pass through them. It tingled a bit every time, like a brief flash of pins and needles.

I got up and started walking, looking at where my feet should be. People strode past behind me, engrossed in their own little worlds. Their own conversations. I idly wondered how long it had been since I’d spoken to anyone for real. That led to thinking about whether I’d get to talk to anyone ever again.

If I’d ever get to talk to Dad again.

Probably the only person who’d miss me anyway.

And it would crush him. Already was crushing him.

I hadn’t bothered to go back and visit the house since a few days after I became like this. It was too painful.

Seeing him there talking to the police. Desperately begging them to find me. Calling all his friends. Eyes lighting up whenever the phone rang, only to come crashing down to Earth as the conversations went on. The look on his face when they told him they were calling off the search had been the last straw.

I’d ‘screamed’ and ‘cried’, throwing myself at him and every object in the house, searching for some way I could get in contact with him. A way I could let him know I hadn’t abandoned him.

But there was nothing I could do. And I could see it in his eyes.

Or, more accurately, I could see that lack of ‘it’ in his eyes. Life. He’d given up, right then and there.

Right in front of me.

I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t reconcile that man with the one who raised me.

Since then, every time I’d tried to go back to the house I’d feared the worst.

What am I going to find if I go in there? I’d always ask myself. Would he be there waiting for me? Would he be drowning in a bottle?

Would he… would he give up for real?

I didn’t know. I hated not knowing. But I wasn’t strong enough to find out.

I was an idiot. A coward. But I just couldn’t be the one to find him. What would I be able to do, anyway?

‘You’re useless, Taylor Hebert’ Emma had said to me once, in one of her little insult sessions.

I agreed with her.

A dog barking brought me back to my senses, alerting me that I was now well away from downtown. I must have been moving much faster than I thought; I was now in the docks, the boat graveyard just a five-minute walk away. I looked down to the source of the noise, a dog barking every few seconds and letting out a low growl just a few feet away from me, its eyes shifting around the area and its snout sniffing rapidly.

I smiled despite myself. I reached down to stroke the dog’s head before I could catch myself. My hand passed straight through the dog’s head. I cursed at my own stupidity, but as I went to draw my hand back the dog lunged.

Straight at me and through me. I turned to see what the dog was chasing but found that it was scrabbling to turn around. It lunged through me again.

Surely not…

What had changed? I’d passed through plenty of dogs in the last few weeks, much to the same effect as everything else. This one though…

I could only stand there in shock as the dog lunged for me over and over. I took two steps to my left to test it, and the dog lunged straight at me again. I kept moving, and the dog kept finding and attacking me, or at least trying to.

“Brutus,” someone shouted from behind me. “Down! Here!”

The dog - Brutus - immediately gave up on the attack and bounded towards a butch girl in a brown leather jacket. I presumed she was his owner. She scratched the dog behind the ears, looking around suspiciously.

“The hell got into you all of a sudden?” She looked down at Brutus as if expecting an answer. “Not like you.”

After staring for a bit more, she shrugged her shoulders with a grunt and set off, Brutus following behind her along with two other dogs I hadn’t noticed before. I was still too stunned from what I’d just experienced to move.

Someone had noticed me. They saw me, at least to a degree. I felt like crying. It had been weeks since anyone’s gaze had done anything but go straight through me. I couldn’t give a shit if it was just a dog.

I would have taken an ant noticing me. I would have taken fallen leaf moving slightly on contact with my skin. I would have taken any sign at all that I was still here. That I was in the real world, not just some invisible observer staring through a window from another dimension.

I would have hope.

I did have hope now. All thanks to one slobbering dog.I could have kissed him.

Speaking of…

I had to run to catch up with the girl, but it didn’t take long. She walked with the dogs at her side, giving them commands and then bestowing treats on them when they got it right. She led them, and me, on a winding path between the various warehouses, alleys and back roads of the docks. We didn’t see a single other person on a trip before we arrived at our apparent destination.

I had the briefest moment of trepidation as the girl opened the door to the warehouse and stepped through. This would surely be trespassing or spying to some degree. But what else could I do? Where else could I go?

It wasn’t like she would know I was there anyway… which I supposed was the whole moral crux of the issue. Well, the dogs might. But that was the whole point. I wanted them to know I was there. I wanted to figure out how they knew. How I could interact.

I was spurred into motion by the door slamming shut. It didn’t mean much to me, I could go straight through the wall. In side was a wide space, though covered in dust and dirt. It was pretty much empty, save for a set of stairs leading to an upstairs area. The girl lead her dogs up to the second floor and stepped through. I ran up the stairs to follow.

“Rachel,” a man’s voice greeted the girl’s arrival. “Did anyone see you?”

Rachel shrugged her shoulders and strode through the room to sit on the sofa. Her dogs were right at her heels and hopped up beside her, Brutus resting his head on her lap. The TV was playing some kind of cartoon. One of those Chinese ones.

“That’s not good enough, Rachel.” The man - or, well, more of a boy, gave an exasperated sigh. I looked at him properly for the first time. He was a young black man, somewhere between 16 and 19 at a guess, with a cornrow hairstyle. I might have found him attractive, if I’d had any time to discover what my ‘type’ might be.

“Ow!”

I spun to face the sofa again, just in time to see a boy with curly-black hair fall off the sofa. He had a strangely distant look in his eyes; it made me shiver. “What the hell, bitch?”

“Don’t fuck with my dogs.” Rachel replied as if it was obvious. She barely seemed bothered by the blatant insult.

Muttering to himself, the boy got back on the sofa. “Didn’t need to kick me off the sofa.”

“Didn’t need to fuck with my dog!”

“Your dog didn’t need to shove its balls in my face,” the boy said, turning back to the other guy. “Tell her, Brian.”

Brian held a stern expression. “That’s enough from both of you. I’m not gonna tell anyone to be friends, but if we’re gonna make this team work - and we are going to make this work, I’ve got too much riding on this - then we can’t be dealing with this arguing crap all day.”

I found that I was rapidly looking back and forth between the three forces, trying to catch any reactions.

Make this team work?

Suspicions started to form in my mind.

“Well said, Brian.” A Blonde haired girl emerged from a room in the corner, a half smile on her face. “We’ve all got reasons to be here, let’s not fuck it up, Alec?”

‘Alec’ snorted and turned back to the TV, apparently having lost interest. Rachel glared at the blond girl for a moment, before going back to messing with her dogs.

Brian rolled his eyes and motioned to the documents on the table. “Sure this will work, Lisa?”

Lisa grinned. “Should do. Boss had me get all the relevant files straight off the child services data centre. With a bit of sleight of hand and cajolery, you’ll get what you were promised.”

At first impression, I’d thought this girl was leading things. From the way she was talking, that didn’t appear to be the case. Some kind of boss? Things were looking shadier and shadier, but what could I do about it? And would I even do anything if I could?

Hell, if I could do anything I wouldn’t be here in the first place. My problems wouldn’t have existed, and I wouldn’t have got so desperate for contact and interaction that I followed a dog to god-knows-where. It was tragic when I thought about it, but I couldn’t help but laugh. No one heard me, of course, just making me laugh harder, getting hysteric.

Brian clenched his fists, narrowed his eyes at Lisa. “I thought it was all going to be legal.”

“It will be, as far as anyone can tell. There’s just a few things that need to be put in place beforehand.”

Brian didn’t look best pleased, but he reluctantly nodded and went back to reading the documents. Still grinning, Lisa trotted off to the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards. The loft went quiet after that, save for the sounds of playing dogs, Chinese cartoons, shuffling papers and a boiling kettle.

Still reeling from earlier, I decided to try and see if the other dogs could see me like Brutus did.

I phased through the sofa where Alec was, making sure to keep a decent distance away from Brutus. I didn’t want him to start barking and set the others off; I’d never be able to tell if the others had noticed me for themselves that way. Rachel had one of the dogs on its back, scratching its belly, so I decided to go for the other, sleeping at her feet.

I moved slowly towards the female dog, and her eyes snapped open as I neared. Just like with Brutus, she looked around all over the place, but she didn’t growl or bark. She sat up as I got closer, then was on her feet and clearly agitated by the time I was near enough to touch her. At this point, Rachel had noticed and was staring at the dog with a curious expression.

I looked around. Alec and Brian hadn’t even noticed, but Lisa was staring at the dog wide-eyed. “Rachel?” she called out, but said no more.

“I know,” the butch girl replied, looking around the room suspiciously, just as she had in the docks earlier.

Brian reacted now, looking between the two girls. “What? What’s up?”

“Angelica’s acting strange.” Rachel replied bluntly. I took two steps back immediately upon hearing her words and looked around the room. For some reason, I was less enthusiastic to be noticed than I had been earlier.

“Strange?” Brian looked at the dog, but obviously didn’t have the same insight Lisa and Rachel did. “Strange how?”

Lisa shook her head and held up one finger as she emerged from the kitchen. “Rachel, did anything strange happen on your walk?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, fuck off. Nothing happened.”

Lisa turned her head so Rachel couldn’t see and rolled her eyes, then strode across the room to get a better look at the dog. Angelica was a lot less agitated now, but clearly still looking around.

Brian stood up. “Is there a problem?”

Alec turned at that, looking at the other three one by one. “What? What’s got you guys’ panties bunched up?”

All three ignored him. Rachel was intent on Angelica. After a moment, her eyes flicked over to Brutus.

“Brutus was acting strange too?” Lisa asked. Her grin from earlier was gone.

Rachel shot the blond an irritated look, then reluctantly nodded.

“How? What was he doing?”

“I dunno. Just started barking and lunging at nothing. Trying to bite at air.”

Lisa paled, her eyes widening. “Where did this happen?” She managed to ask, her voice low.

“I don’t know! Fucking hell.” Rachel clicked her fingers and patted the sofa next to her. All the tension seemed to drain from Angelica, and the dog hopped up to Rachel’s side with her tale wagging happily, giving her master a few licks on the cheek as she settled. Rachel smiled; I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’d seen her with anything but a scowl.

The room fell into silence. I took the time to back away from the dogs and phase through the couch, then on into the kitchen. I was startled by toast popping out of the toaster. If I had my normal body, I would have fallen onto the counter. As I was, I fell straight through it and into a strange, stuffy darkness. I heard a metallic rattling sound, then an eerie silence descended on the room. It took me a few seconds to realise I’d fallen through the floor, down to the level below.

For a few seconds, I lay still, thinking about what to do. On the one hand, the dogs had noticed me. That was the big one. The greatest and most important factor in this situation, as far as I was concerned; there was hope for me.

On the other hand, I had a bad feeling about this group. I’d barely heard any of them speak more than a few sentences, but just from context, I could pick up that these might not be law abiding citizens. Just the curly-haired boy alone - Alec - gave me the creeps for some reason.

But then, what was I going to do otherwise? Walk around desperately trying to get someone - anyone - to notice me like I had been doing for the past few weeks? I’d probably end up insane if I kept that up.

And so what if they caught me? What was the big deal? I couldn’t realistically see a group of kids, none of them that much older than me, doing anything that bad.

There was always the worst case scenario, however.

And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

A manic laugh overcame me again, silent as death. I couldn’t say how long I lay on the dusty floor of that warehouse, laughing at the thought that dying would be better than the pathetic excuse for a life I had right now. No, better even than the shitty life I had before.

I thought of Dad. Of Emma, of Sophia and all the other bullies. I thought of all the things I had to live for and found there were pathetically few.

The laughter died in my chest, but I didn’t have the capability for tears anymore. I hopped to my feet and made my way back up the stairs, passing through the door into the loft.Lisa seemed to be assuring Brian of something as she cleaned a metal tray off in the sink. Rachel was still playing with her dogs. Alec had moved on to playing computer games on the television.

Abruptly, Lisa looked at the doorway I’d just come from. She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then dried the tray and strode off towards a doorway at the back of the room. “Got stuff to do, don’t disturb me for a bit,” she said before taking one last look around the room and slamming the door behind her.

What was that about?

It occurred to me, then, that I could just go find out exactly what that was about. I walked across the room and passed straight through the door. I flinched back a little when I found Lisa sat on her bed, staring intently at the door. There was a little beep on her computer and she raised an eyebrow. For a moment I thought she could see me, but waving my hand garnered no response from her. I even tried to speak, despite knowing that I couldn’t.

When that failed, I heaved a sigh and took a step away from the door. I realised that she might have been staring at the door itself and turned. There was nothing there except for some electrical wires. I turned again to find that she now had the computer on her lap, staring curiously at the screen.

“So,” she said. Her sudden words almost caused me to fall over again. She looked up with a predatory grin on her face. “You’re in the room now.”

Chapter 2: 1.2

Ghost 1.2

“So,” she said. Her sudden words almost caused me to fall over again. “You’re in the room now. I’m guessing the cables didn’t zap you? I thought you were some kind of stranger, but I was hoping there’d be a shadow-stalker-esque effect where the electricity negated your power. Guess that’s not the case.” She placed her laptop back down and looked across the room. “You haven’t killed or attacked us yet, so I’m guessing you’re a spy. We’ve barely been a team for a few days, only got a name yesterday… do you work for coil?”

Her body language was visibly tenser now. Where I’d been stunned into silence, I was snapped out of it at the name of a super-villain. He wasn’t that well known, but I’d been somewhat of a cape geek before… I became like this.Coil. Not much was known about him, but super-villain he was. Why did she think I worked for him?

I took a step forward, then froze. All that time, she’d been talking to me. For a long moment, my mind went blank. There were butterflies in my stomach and my eyes stung.

A human being had acknowledged my existence. Without thinking, I dived towards her in an attempt to wrap her in a hug. It had been so long, even before the change, that I’d hugged someone. But never in my life had I wanted to as much as now.

I passed straight through her and had to stop myself before I fell through the bed.

Lisa let out a gasp. “Okay, that was weird. What did you do?” She looked around behind her, but not directly at me. I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out what had caused her reaction.

Had she noticed me passing through her? No one had ever done that before.

“Wait, are you even still here?” she said, looking around the room with a troubled expression. After a moment, she groaned and lowered her head. “This is so frustrating. There are no visible tells, I can’t get any read on you. I could just be sat talking to myself right now.”

From the look on her face, I got the impression she didn’t often have to deal with frustration.

I snorted; she didn’t know the first thing about being frustrated. I glided across the bed and passed my hand through her head. She flinched away instantly, almost launching herself to the ground, but just about managed to catch herself.

“Okay, you are still here. Not crazy-” she stopped mid sentence and frowned. “Well, I guess that doesn’t completely disprove that I’m going mad.”

I wasn’t sure if she was trying to joke around or really having self-doubts. I passed my hand through her head again, it was my only way to communicate. She didn’t flinch this time, though her eyes widened a bit.

“Thanks,” she muttered. “Still not convinced, but I’ll just go with ‘there’s an invisible parahuman in my room’ for now and run with it.”

She reached across the bed and dragged her laptop onto her lap once more. I moved to her side to see her browsing through Parahumans Online at dizzying speed. I barely had time to read two words before she clicked a link and loaded up a new page. Rinse and repeat.

After a few minutes and countless PHO pages, she sighed and shut the laptop. “It sucks doing this manually,” she said. A strange expression appeared on her face and she opened the laptop again. “Wait, go stand in the doorway again.”

I complied. She furrowed her brows, glaring at the screen like it was her worst enemy. Her eyes flicked up in my directions a few times, then she shot to her feet and strode to the door, spinning the laptop so she could see the screen from her new vantage point.

The laptop showed a simple programme with four black horizontal lines, with parts of the lower three glowing blue like neon lights. The top line was completely black.

Lisa muttered to herself and reached up towards the door, her hand passing straight through my shoulder. She fiddled with something, watching the screen as the top line lowered fractionally.

“Are your feet touching the floor?” She asked.

I looked down, frowning. I really didn’t have any way of knowing, but nor did I have any way of communicating that to her. I swiped my hand through her chest twice, hoping that would get the message across.

Lisa stared for a moment. “Is that code? Two swipes are no?”

I swiped once, hoping she’d interpret that as yes.

“Okay, so one swipe for yes, two swipes for no, three swipes for don’t know.”

She held out her hand and I swiped it once.

The blond grinned in what appeared to be satisfaction. “Right. It’s not completely impossible to communicate with you, then.”

I swiped once. My body gave no reaction, but I’m sure if I had retained any kind of regular functions my heart would be racing.

“So, again. Are your feet touching the floor?”

I swiped three times. Lisa’s grin disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“So you can’t see yourself either?”

Yes.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She paused for a moment, scowling. “It’s impossible to get any kind of meaningful read on you, so I don’t have the slightest clue what your powers really are, but it shouldn’t work like that. Everything we know about powers says it shouldn’t work like that. You should at least have some awareness of your own body, even if you can’t see it.”

I swiped her hand three times, then froze. Thinking about it, there was the slightest of sensations when I moved my hand through hers. It wasn’t just that, either; half my body was overlapped with the door and the wires. I could feel that too.

But I couldn’t feel anything below my feet. Was I floating in the air, then? My perspective didn’t feel any different to where it was before I gained my powers, so I’d pretty much assumed my height hadn’t changed.

I concentrated on moving, and realised, to some extent, I could feel my body. It was kind of stupid of me in retrospect, but I hadn’t really tried messing with my powers yet. Before I could experiment any further, Lisa called out.

“Brian, can you come help me out with something?”

There was no reply, just the sound of footsteps approaching. Lisa opened the door and beckoned him in as he got close. He stood in the centre of the room, hands in pockets, with one eyebrow raised.

“Fill the room with darkness,” Lisa said without looking back at him.

Brian’s other eyebrow went up. “What?”

“Just do it. I’m testing something.”

Lisa’s gaze was intent on the doorway where I was stood. Brian shrugged, then held out his hands. Both of them got a glazed look in their eyes. I looked around the room; behind me, in front of me, on the floor and on the roof.

I hadn’t known what to expect, but I’d thought I was going to be shown some kind of power.

I almost jumped out of my skin as Brian let out a cry of alarm and took a step back. I looked at him, tilting my head with curiosity. And he was staring right back at me, his eyes wide. A moment later, Brian waved his hand and the glazed look left Lisa’s eyes.

“What the hell was that?” Brian blurted out before Lisa could speak.

“What the hell was what?”

“You did something to mess with my power.”

Lisa spun to face Brian. “I didn’t do anything. What did you see?”

Brian regarded her with a cold look. “Lisa. What’s going on here?”

“Tell me what you saw, and I’ll be able to tell you what’s going on!”

Brian seemed to hesitate, staring back towards the doorway. Back at me. Lisa followed his gaze, and her grin seemed to grow impossibly wide. After a moment, Brian slumped his shoulders and sighed.

“I couldn’t see anything. There was no one there, but…” He trailed off and shook his head.

“But what?”

“But there was definitely something there. Like, there was a small space where my darkness felt different. I can’t really explain it.”

“How big? What shape? Did it move?”

“I can’t say how big it was precisely; it was too…” Brian paused, searching for the right word. “Intangible. ”

He squinted his eyes at the doorway, then lifted his hands again. This time he only flinched rather than crying out, then glared as if trying to burn a hole in the door. After a moment, he waved his hand again and turned to Lisa.

“At a guess, I’d say it’s just a bit taller than you. The shape is like the vague figure of a woman from toilet signs. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it moved or not.”

I didn’t know how to feel about that comparison. I didn’t know how to feel about any of this. Someone could see me.

“But it’s so… weak,” Brian continued. “I wouldn’t even have noticed it if you hadn’t been standing right next to it. It’s like my power is trying to interact like it does for people, but there’s not enough there to have an effect.”

They could get a message to my dad. They could get my bullies punished. They could talk to me.

Emotion overwhelmed me. If I had a body, I would’ve been crying my eyes out.

“So our Stranger isn’t just made of wind or something.” Lisa trailed off, her eyes darting around the room, taking everything in. “Okay, you still here, Stranger?”

Brian stiffened. “Stranger?!”

I rushed forwards and swiped once.

Lisa grinned. “Okay, when Brian uses his power again, I want you to move around, okay?”

Yes.

“And Brian, I want you to pay full attention. Give me every last detail you can about our visitor, okay?”

Brian rounded on her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on here? What’s this about a Stranger?”

“Look, I’m not perfectly sure myself. All I know is we’ve got an invisible, barely tangible Parahuman here, they don’t appear to be hostile, and my power doesn’t get enough from them, so we’re gonna have to play twenty-one questions.”

Brian crossed his arms and glared for a moment. I drifted away, unable to wrap my head around the situation.

Eventually, Brian let out a frustrated groan and lifted his arms again. When Lisa got that glazed over look, I started drifting around the room in a lazy figure of eight. Brian’s eyes widened comically before he schooled his expression.

He waved his hands again, and Lisa snapped her head round to face him.

“Well?” She asked, her grin almost feverish.

“Definitely female. Somewhere between five-seven and five-ten, it’s hard to tell. It was like she was drifting off the floor without realising.”

I flinched. I hadn’t realised I was doing that.

“You have to understand, I can’t see her. It’s like there’s a small part of my darkness that feels wrong, somehow. It was difficult to tell she was even moving, the abnormality would just shift every now and then as if she was really slowly teleporting.”

Lisa’s face fell. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“That’s it.”

Lisa sighed and flopped back onto her bed. “This is going to be harder than I thought,” she mumbled. “Thanks for your help, anyway. I’ll figure it out from here.” Brian opened his mouth to speak, but Lisa cut him off. “I promise I’ll tell you everything as soon as I have a handle on what we’re dealing with.”

Brian nodded and left the room, his posture tense.

“Okay then,” Lisa said, turning towards the centre of the room. I was actually by the window, but she had no way of knowing that. I drifted to her side and ran my hand through her right shoulder. She turned in my general direction, though she was still a bit off.

“Right. Question time. One for yes, two for no, three for you don’t know. Got it?”

Yes.

“Can you hear?”

Yes.

“Can you see?”

Yes.

“Can you feel?”

I had to think about that for a moment. I hadn’t actually considered it, but… yes.

Lisa raised an eyebrow and took on a thoughtful expression, but continued with a shrug. “Can you taste?”

No. I doubt my answer adequately communicated my sadness at the thought.

“Can you see yourself?”

No.

“Can you feel yourself? Like, proprioception?”

Again I had to think about it.

Yes.

“Can you touch yourself? Don’t take that weirdly. Try and clap.”

I paused. I hadn’t thought about that, either. There was so much I hadn’t even considered. I’d spent so much time moping that I hadn’t even begun figuring out the particulars of my powers.

I lifted my hands and brought them together. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them pass straight through. Was that a yes or a no?

Yes. I answered, figuring that there was at least some feeling, even if I wasn’t exactly clapping.

“Okay, I’m getting a better idea of your powers, even if they’re weird.” Lisa paused. “You can phase through solid objects?”

Yes.

“I already know you can phase through people, so that’s good to know. The wires detected you but didn’t stop you… can you feel pain?”

No. I knew that for sure. I’d tried. Hard.

“You remember who you are?”

Yes, I answered, though I didn’t understand the relevance of that question.

“You’re from Brockton bay?”

Oh. It made more sense now.

Yes.

Lisa grinned and pulled her laptop onto her lap. After a few more questions, we established I’d “triggered” around three weeks ago. Then, after a lot more questions, we had a small article from a Brockton Bay news site on the screen.

“Is this you?”

She pointed at the screen, indicating a missing persons report. By the ‘missing’ title, was a picture of me. It was the first time I’d seen my face in weeks. I didn’t care about the too wide mouth or owlish eyes, seeing myself brought me such a feeling of euphoria that I ended up floating a few meters off the ground before I caught myself.

I tried to clear my throat, embarrassed, before I realised I didn’t have a throat to clear. And that Lisa wouldn’t have seen me acting like such a dork anyway.

Still. It was the principle of the thing.

Belatedly, I realised I hadn’t answered her. I floated back to the ground and swiped my hand through her shoulder.

She smiled. “Having a moment there, were you?”

Yes.

She huffed a laugh and turned her attention back to her laptop, tapping away at the keys.

“Taylor Hebert. Age 15. Reported missing 10th March, 2010. Father head of recruiting at the Dockworkers association. Mother…” Lisa winced and trailed off awkwardly. Her eyes kept scanning various pages, but she didn’t read aloud again. Eventually, she shut her laptop and stood up.

“That’s good enough for now. Follow me, Taylor, we’re going to go talk to Brian.”

I barely paid attention to the conversation that followed. It was surreal. If I could’ve pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I would have. I’d thought I’d never get to talk to anyone again. I’d thought the rest of my life would be spent as a phantom, endlessly drifting along, alone.

I’d even entertained the thought that I was actually dead.

I wished I was able to cry.

I caught little tidbits of the conversation as I was lost in my own world. “Ultimate recon,” appeared to be a phrase Lisa was fond of. “Can’t trust someone we can’t even see,” was Brian’s choice.

Eventually, Lisa spun on her heel so she was facing a meter or so to the left of me, then held out her hand.

“Welcome to the team, Taylor.”

I awkwardly floated around until I was in front of her, then took her hand.



~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 3: 1.3

By the time they revealed the nature of the little band of misfits I’d stumbled upon, I’d already resigned myself to the truth; there was no way I could be so unobservant as to miss the clues.

They were a group of supervillains, and they called themselves the Undersiders. While they claimed to be dedicated to robberies that avoided direct combat and prided themselves on being burgeoning masters of the daring escape, I rather doubted their modus operandi was Robin Hood-esque.

“We’re not out robbing random people on the street,” Lisa said with a smirk, still making a valiant effort to talk directly to me but missing by a few feet. “We’re above that sort of thing. If the score is lower than ten kay each, it ain’t worth our time.”

It was a nice sentiment. David’s victory over Goliath was a compelling story for a reason, after all. Everyone loved an Underdog. Sticking it to the man was far more palatable than mugging innocent civilians.

“I know what you’re thinking. The little guy always takes the hit when something goes wrong for the big guy.”

Not quite, but my thoughts had definitely been heading in that direction. It was a fact of life that the only thing that trickled down was shit; if a corporation made a loss, they’d make their customers pay for it. If inventory went missing, it got cut from the workers’ pay. 

It was something I’d heard Dad rage about to Mom, back in the day. Someone had walked out from a warehouse by the docks and they’d taken a lot of expensive cargo with them. Dozens of people had been fired, even though the company had insurance that could pay for the stolen items. No more food on the table for them and their families.

“That’s a simplistic view of things,” Lisa continued, as if in response to my musing. “We’re not going out and hitting corps at random. We pick our targets carefully, strategically. Our boss has an agenda of his own; there’s more to our jobs than mere robbery.”

I grimaced. That was another point of contention. The Undersiders hadn’t come together by chance, they’d been gathered by someone else for their own nefarious purposes. Lisa had explained that their boss had tracked them down one by one, luring them in by dangling something they wanted in front of their noses, and funded anything they needed, within reason—even the loft they’d made into their base and home had been provided by their mysterious benefactor. She’d then gone on to ask me not to tell the others about Coil.

Considering I could hardly tell them anyway, it was an easy promise to make.

The day had passed with Lisa chatting away at me in her room. Idle talk. Gossip. A bit of local news. She paused a few times to check I was still there early on, but at some point it became clear I wasn’t going to walk away from someone who could talk to me for anything in the world. She’d calmed a bit after that, and then she’d told me exactly what I dreaded to hear.

Night had passed, plunging the room into a darkness whose supremacy was defied only by the blue light of Lisa’s laptop, and still Lisa had more to say.

“The boss sure as hell isn’t interested in the money we get from our little heists,” Lisa said. “No, he’s all about documents, files, information. He has more money than anyone could reasonably spend, and I think he wants to knock the big players in the local area down a peg or two. The guy has big plans. He’s ambitious.”

I was liking the sound of this less and less by the moment.

“So he wants corporations to hurt, but in a way that doesn’t fuck too many people over. It’s a balancing act. Too much turmoil and things could fall apart fast. Too little and people don’t question the powers that be.” Lisa shrugged. “It’s in his best interests to make sure the regular folk aren’t too riled up. You don’t need to worry about us, Taylor. We’re villains, sure. But we’re the good kind. The kind the Protectorate grudgingly tolerate while they focus on the real crazies out there, the rapists and murderers.”

It sounded like convenient bullshit, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? It dawned on me, to my own horror, that Lisa probably could’ve told me she and her group were sacrificing babies to the elder gods and I still would have stuck around. 

And all she had to do to win me over to such a degree was to say my name.

I swiped my hand through her head angrily. The motion barely stirred a single blond hair.

Still, she reacted. Mirth sparkled in her bottle-green eyes. “Well, you don’t have to like it. I’m sure you’ll see for yourself that we’re not so bad.”

The subject shifted after that, but Lisa didn’t get to keep talking for long. After a few minutes, her laptop pinged, wiping the comfortable smile from her face. Silence lingered in its wake.

“Welp,” Lisa said after a while. “Work to do. Sorry, Taylor. I’d love to talk more, but the boss can be a bit of a taskmaster. You know how it is.”

Yes, I swiped, for lack of any other way to communicate “it’s ok.”

Lisa’s sighed. “How about I make it up to you. Is there anyone you’d like me to contact? Pass on a message that you’re okay?”

My mind ground to a halt. I floated, wide-eyed, staring with complete incredulity.

Pass on a message.

Fantasies overwhelmed me, tantalising and oh-so bright. Life returning to dad’s eyes, joy lighting up his face as he found out he hadn’t lost everyone, that I was still here, still loved him, that I hadn’t left him alone.

Nightmare reared its ugly head in contradiction, countering optimism with knife-in-the-gut possibility. What if it didn’t go the way I wanted? What if we knocked on the front door to no answer? Entered an empty, silent home?

What if it wasn’t empty after all?

Of course, that was when I ran away, roiling thoughts chasing me out of the loft and into the night.

~~~

The Boardwalk had always been one of the more ‘upper class’ areas of the city, but in the last few months it had risen to another level entirely. Once upon a time, Mom had loved browsing through the less expensive clothing stores, Emma and I following after her like little ducklings. For every designer boutique there had been a local artist trying to make it, for every fancy restaurant there had been a family-run takeout, and it seemed like affordable retail chains had outnumbered the upper class places two to one.

Now, it was the opposite. Businesses had moved in far more aggressively than I’d seen anywhere else in the city, and the clientele seemed to match it. The enforcers were just as out of sight, out of mind as they’d always been, but they were surely far more numerous, even late at night. The kind of people who shopped at Louis Vuitton and dined in a five-star restaurant expected safety as a matter of course; until recently, that couldn’t have been guaranteed anywhere in the city.

Things were changing, and they were changing rapidly. 

I drifted through the crowds, a spectre unseen, and found myself wondering when this had all happened. There was no sudden change, not that I could think of. It had been a slow, creeping transition. A domino effect. One business moving in and thriving had given confidence to another, and two thriving businesses caught the eyes of three more. I’d almost call it planned. If the city council or whoever handled this kind of stuff had wanted to ‘upgrade’ the area, they’d certainly succeeded.

That being said, I fucking despised it. The old boardwalk had a king of charm to it, the pride of Brockton Bay radiating from every brick and plank and pane. We had built this place, and it had been ours. Mom and pop stores, generational family restaurants, and indie art studios set up by college kids from Brockton U. It had been a love letter, from Brockton Bay, to Brockton bay, overlooked by the sparkling shields of the PHQ out in the bay.

I traced a path of memories through the Boardwalk, phantom limbs following forgotten footsteps. 

On a hot summer’s day, Mom had taken Emma and I to a little cafe that sold the best crab rolls I’d ever had in my life. Drenched in butter, cooked to perfection, the meat so soft it melted in your mouth. The hardened old lady with the scar over one eye who ran the place had given me a free soda, ostensibly to reward me for knowing so much about crabs but probably just to get the annoying little blabbermouth to go away.

Today, it was some up-market restaurant with a fancy French-sounding name and a menu that didn’t show prices.

Similar stories suffused the place. 

The used bookstore where Mom’s eyes had lit up when I asked her to buy me Hamlet. Replaced by a designer boutique that had far too much gold plating throughout.

The fancy dress shop where we’d picked out the witch costume for the first halloween I could remember. Gone in favour of a store that sold thousand dollar sunglasses set out in the open on velvet cushions.

The old convenience store Mom had taken me to on the very last occasion we’d come down here together. There had been nothing special about the place, in fact it was a bit run down, and I’d been upset because it didn’t stock the candy bar I liked. Trivial now, the end of the world back then. I’d thrown a mild tantrum, and a day that would usually be cherished was a black mark on my memory, filled with frustrating Mom when she just wanted to spend time with me, scowling when she tried to make me smile. 

Even still, there was a lump in my throat when I saw that it was gone entirely. A water feature stood in its place, ornate statues holding up a smooth clam-shaped plinth from which water cascaded down every side, creating a see-through curtain that made barely a noise as it met the pool below. It was gaudy, indicative of everything that was wrong with this place.

When Mom had died, I’d liked to come here, walking down the boardwalk and letting all the little details wash over me, jogging a thousand memories that had long been lost to the endless march of time. Nostalgia was addictive and insidious; trap yourself in the past for too long, and the present passed you by. I hadn’t cared. I’d clung to the place like I was drowning. It had let me daydream of happier times, losing myself in reminiscence. 

Now I didn’t even have that.

Fairy lights twinkled, mirrored in the gently lapping waves on the nearby shore. It gave the place an almost magical feeling, designed to feed on and amplify the wonder of the visitors.

I couldn’t stand to look at it for a moment longer, and I drifted from the wooden walkway, moving out towards the bay. Out on the water, the PHQ was a beacon in the night. A repurposed oil rig, gleaming like a jewel within its giant spherical forcefield. 

Losing Mom had torn something out of me and left me diminished. For Dad, it had been even worse, sending him into a pit of despair that he’d only crawled out from by the skin of his teeth. Losing me had been the final straw.

What would happen to me if I lost Dad? If I went back to the house I’d grown up in, only to find it empty?

Cowardly, pathetic me: I was too scared to find out.

Staring out over the water, it felt like a moment where I should have been crying.

I had no tears to shed.

My thoughts went back to the Undersiders and their villainous lair. It had been messy and disorganised, no thought given to aesthetic or design, but also not practical. The couches didn’t match, the TV had been at a slight off angle on the wall, and the shelves in the living room had been stacked with such a mishmash of clothes and books and boxes that I could only assume they just dumped things there when it had nowhere else to go. 

And at least two of them could detect my presence. Maybe even three, with Rachel’s supposed connection with her dogs.

I’d had nothing left. Life had stretched out before me, a long path of misery with no possibility of deviation I could see. Cruel immortality had been on the cards, and I’d been resigned to it. Eternity alone.

Now, hope was greeting me like an old friend, grabbing onto my heart and giving it a soft squeeze that made it stutter back to life, as if saying “hey, we’re not done yet.”

Avoiding the Boardwalk, hugging the coastline, I floated away.

~~~

The lights were off in the loft when I got back. I drifted into the open living room, and it had a different feel in the night time, blanketed in darkness. With the speakers off, it was quiet. There were no creaks or groans or any of the little noises you’d expect from an derelict factory in an all-but-abandoned neighbourhood. There was an acrid, burnt smell, like someone had tried to cook for themselves then messed it up. The empty pizza boxes perched on one of the couches marked the failed chef’s admittance of defeat.

The place was cosy. Lived in. There were times when I’d watch one of those shows on TV that gave a look into the most expensive apartments and houses, and the places would often look too clean. Sterile. More like a hotel than a home. 

In comparison, the loft had a lot more charm.

As I moved through the living room, I noticed the place wasn’t completely absent of light. The unmistakeable glow of a screen of some kind peeked through the gap beneath one of the doors in the corridor beyond. Even if I hadn’t been in that same room speaking to her earlier, I probably would have guessed it would be Lisa’s. She had the vibe of a night owl.

Curious, I went to pay her a visit. The moment I passed through her door, she looked up.

“You’re back,” she said. Her voice was rough, tired, and her eyelids were drooping.

I swiped through her shoulder once, earning a smile.

“I thought I’d scared you away for a while there. That’s one burden off my mind. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep now.”

I paused. She’d stayed up for me? Guilt spurned me forward.

Lisa blinked, then rubbed at her eyes. “Four swipes? What does that mean?”

Three swipes.

She huffed a laugh. “Should I think of it as an apology?”

Yes.

“No need for that. I’m the one who fucking bumbled my way right into an uncomfortable subject and scared you off. I’m supposed to be able to spot that sort of thing. Literally my job to know shit.”

Well, U was probably a bit harder to read than your average person, even power-assisted. I could give her some slack.

No, I said, in the interests of moving the conversation along before uncomfortable subjects returned to the fore.

“First thing’s first, we need to figure out a system that lets you say more than yes or no, it’s really—” a yawn cut her off, long and deep. She linked her fingers and stretched her arms over her head. “Tomorrow. I’m gonna fall asleep mid sentence at this rate.”

I glanced at the clock. It was barely midnight.

One swipe.

“Hey, I’ve been getting barely any sleep lately. When you’re the brains of the operations, you have to do lame things like research and planning and ugh it’s the worst. Things were pretty chill at first, while we were just getting a start as a team, getting a feel for each other. But with all these new companies moving into town, the boss has us doing multiple jobs a week, on top of being his personal fuckin’ intel gatherer on call 24/7. But, welp, life’s a bitch. Gotta do what ya gotta do.”

Two swipes.

Lisa snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re the nagging type?”

I hadn’t been, but yes, I figured I could endeavour to make myself useful.

“Fantastic. Guess I’m going to be haunted by the ghost of good sleep for the foreseeable future. Lucky me.”

I swiped once, stifling a laugh for a moment before realising she wouldn’t be able to hear me even if I let it out.

“Well, before I head off to sleep, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.” She said, then hastened to add. “Nothing serious. No touchy topics; never let it be said that Lisa Wilbourn doesn’t learn from her dumbass mistakes.” She paused, eyeing a spot to her left with utmost sincerity even though I was actually on the other side of her.

Feeling a little guilty for some reason, I moved within her line of sight, then swiped once through her shoulder.

“I figure you’re not too big on the whole villain thing,” she said. “My whole shtick is figuring stuff out, and my power’s screaming at me that you’re going to run at the first sign that your doubts prove founded, the first glimpse beneath the docile facade, revealing that we’re a bunch of nasty lowlifes who won’t hesitate to—I dunno—beat up old ladies and sell drugs to school kids.

“I get it. All your life, you’ve only ever heard the Protectorate’s propaganda, that all villains are the same big meanies that drag society down. Anyone who doesn’t join the Protectorate most surely by doing something sinister, they say! Well, it’s all a bunch of bull. Not everyone has it so easy that they can just waltz on down to the PHQ and ask for a shiny new badge. We have circumstances. Some of us are on the run, some of us can’t make the money we need as part of the system, some of us can’t fit in for reasons beyond our control.” Her expression darkened. “And some of us were placed in situations where we didn’t have a choice.”

I was frozen to the spot. My body had no unconscious movements as far as I could tell; I didn’t need to breath, blink, or swallow. A ghost in every sense of the word, unnaturally still. 

“So, don’t go thinking we’re bad people just because we’re villains,” Lisa continued, expression brightening with painfully artificial cheer. “Life ain’t so black and white, babycakes.”

I stared at her.

Her expression crumpled into a grimace. “Why the hell did I just say babycakes? Fuck me, I really do need to sleep. Well, whatever. Do me a favour, Taylor?”

She paused, staring expectantly. After a moment’s hesitation, I willed my body into motion.

Three swipes.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, yeah? Give us a chance?”

It was hardly like I had a choice.

Yes.