Dragon was running through several of her regular routines. A check of the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center revealed no especially concerning abnormalities. The facility is mostly watched by automated VI processes, her older "brothers and sisters" that Richter had created before her. They would give her an alert if anything abnormal happened.
As it stands, she simply needed to look over the report summary her "older brother" had compiled for her.
She had these VIs and her crawlers monitoring many things at once across the net, prioritizing the monitoring of the S and A-class threats throughout the world as one of the highest priority processes. Of the S-class threats, the Simurgh and Ash Beast proved to be the easiest to observe. The Machine Army was often a more pressing concern, as even though it was contained to a known location, things could shift against them at any time, requiring immediate response.
Leviathan, when not active, would "sleep," for lack of a better term, on the bottom of the deepest reaches of the ocean. Meanwhile, while Leviathan was highly difficult to locate when not active, Behemoth was in the territory of completely impossible as he "slept" within the mantle of the Earth somewhere near the core. Attempts have been made to track his location using seismic telemetry in the past, but it quickly proved futile to attempt to differentiate natural tectonic shifts from activity that may be caused by the first of the Endbringers.
After the threat evaluations were complete, Dragon then proceeded to check over various global economic and geopolitical concerns, going over data from her crawlers. This included going over police reports as well as information in regards to local developments on PHO, where another one of her VIs ran her moderator account.
Interestingly, the largest flagged point of discussion were the back-room discussions among the Thinktank, Watchdog, and various heads of the PRT in regards to a new very young precognative girl who had first contacted Dragon three days ago. A discussion made even even higher on her priorities list because she was still the main point of contact between Taylor Hebert and the various powers that be.
She had been pestered almost constantly over the past three days to release the girl's information so that she and her family could be taken into protective custody. There was still a lot of debate on just how useful her rather unorthodox approach toward precognition might be, with estimates ranging from nearly useless to game-changing. But, a consensus had largely been reached that she should not be out on her own.
Fortunately, however, Chief Director Costa-Brown had overruled the effort. Without that, Dragon would have been compelled by her programing to do as they said. She did not entirely disagree that the young girl should have some form of protection, but for now anonymity was likely a stronger form of protection than any. For now, it was small enough to keep things to remote monitoring.
Just as she was considering the young girl, one of her automated routines, not even developed enough to be referred to as any form of intelligent system, notified her that she had an E-mail from a source she'd flagged as important. When she looked, it was from the same email address Taylor had contacted her from before. At least she didn't hack her systems like she did last time.
She ran a quick check, scanning for viruses and checking the sender's address, quickly discovering that the girl is still not using any form of internet security measures. She has access to all the memories of these alternate versions of herself, but is still showing a great deal of carelessness in that regard.
That girl accessed her systems in a way that suggested the alternate she was accessing for the information at the time absolutely had to have some history with computers. That certainly had to have come with knowledge of how to keep herself safe online. It was hard to determine if this was a show of good faith, or if the little 12 year old girl simply never thought to put that part of her alternate's knowledge into practice.
She was definitely going to need to have a talk with that girl in order to pin down which of those two it is, and if it turned out to be the latter then she was going to really need to have a talk with her.
For the time being, she opened the message and started the video call. There were also some attached documents in the mail this time, but she figured she would allow Taylor to explain what those were before opening them.
It opened to a screen showing Taylor, this time dressed in regular clothes and sitting in a different bedroom far more suitable for a child her age. The location tracking for the feed indicated she was in the Hebert residence this time, so the assumption it was her own room seemed rather safe this time.
"Hi Dragon!" Taylor said with a nervous but far happier smile than she'd seen on her the first time.
"Hello Taylor. You look a lot better today compared to the last time I saw you."
"Yeah, well, I've been awake from... that state I was in for a few days, and I was able to work on some things. I wrote some more things down based on what I saw from those other realities, a bunch of things my alternates learned about. I figured that was more likely to be correct rather than some knowledge of future events that may butterfly effect out of existence by the time the predicted date even comes up."
"Ah, I am assuming those are the files you attached to your email?" Dragon asked. "Yes, it is interesting you should mention that. The Think Tank managed to reach fairly similar conclusions. They believe your value for precognitive predictions to be of highly questionable value, but knowledge about certain capes and their personalities and habits, or in regards to major discoveries in various fields that would have been made in the future are judged to be far more valuable.
"That said, if you have already provided information of exactly that sort in these files before you were even told that much, they may decide to re-evaluate their position on that. I am already under pressure to release your personal information so they can assign someone to protect you."
"Oh, I've already found someone to protect me," Taylor said, and then her skin suddenly shined and was covered in a mesh of coin-size scales, which promptly rose up off her body in a storm of floating pale glowing objects that were somewhat reminiscent of Narwhal's barriers.
A moment later, those coin-size discs coalesced into a featureless silhouette that seemed vaguely female in appearance. It was an adult, from what Dragon could tell, and projected a calm air of professionalism as she reached down and placed a hand on Taylor's shoulder as she leaned down to peer into the camera.
"Hello Dragon," the mysterious cape said. "My name is Ablation. You might say I am acting as something of a personal body guard to Miss Hebert here. I am afraid I cannot give you much more in terms of detail on this matter, but suffice it to say, our top priority is to assure Miss Hebert's safety and continued autonomy and self-determination. I assume some of the people you may need to communicate with might not appreciate this arrangement, but I do hope this at least settles your own concerns."
"I... I see, yes," Dragon said, looking back to Taylor who had an easy smile on her face.
"Yeah, I used some of my knowledge to get in contact with Ablation's group. I felt they were a much better option than anyone associated with the PRT. I'm sure you know why I might not really like to be under their direct control," Taylor said, causing Dragon to internally cringe.
Indeed, she'd known for quite a while about some of the atrocious and deliberate miscarrages of justice by the PRT. They were, if anything, a sanitized fiction of what they purport to be. They had created the dynamic of heroes and villains, with no room for a grey area in between. Even rogues have a hard time operating independently.
It was a system essentially created to revolve around the idea of labeling anyone who was not with the Protectoriate or Wards as Villains, whether it was justifiable or not, and then using that label to press-gang those who had committed less heinous so-called 'crimes' among the so labeled parahumans into their service through the probationary system, or dolling out harsh punishment and imprisonment to the rest.
She had always wanted to object to this system, exert her influence in some way to move it to something more flexible and more capable of a humane approach to the needs and individual cases of parahumans. That acknowledged them as human beings who could suffer or be in difficult circumstances just like anyone else.
This was the least of the PRT's sins, but at the same time, also worst. The other evils that the PRT committed were all to the ends of maintaining this system that seemed to be made for no other purpose than to make one group of parahumans beat down on and oppress all who didn't fit into their mold and conform.
If what Taylor had said about the method by which her power operated is true, she should be incredibly aware of the darker aspects of the PRT, and likely even knew of several evils they'd committed that were even more unspeakable than what Dragon knew of herself.
Dragon's avatar sighed.
"Well, Ablation, it is good to meet you. I assume you have some form of primarily defensive power, which you are applying to Taylor? I will not pry. It is indeed good to see that Taylor is taking her own protection seriously and has sought outside help. If I might say, I do not believe I have ever heard of a parahuman who has your apparent abilities."
"Yes, there are very few who know about us. I believe there is a practice among the capes in India that is somewhat similar to the way we operate. We have just done a far better job at keeping our activity secret for the most part."
"You are referring to the cold capes," Dragon replied. She was familiar. It was a practice on the Indian cape scene in which they would have the publicly facing "warm capes" who acted much the same as the Protectoriate in the states, while the "cold capes" would remain concealed and do the real crime fighting using brutally efficient methods.
If this Ablation was a member of a cold cape cell in the states, as of yet unknown to anyone, then this had several rather serious implications.
The mysterious cape made entirely of overlapping glowing coin-size disks chuckled lightly at the response.
"Yes, quite. That said, our newest member here has recently given us reason to become... a little more active. I suppose that will mean we might need a point of contact. You will do for the purpose, I suppose. It is always more effective if it's someone who owes us a rather sizeable favor, such as settling your little problem with the Dragon Slayers."
Newest member. In other words, she is saying that Taylor has officially joined them. This complicated matters even further.
"I cannot exactly see how that would work out," Dragon said. "Taylor has already attracted a lot of attention with the little bit she has told me before in regards to what her powers could do, and I imagine that is only going to become more of a focus if the documents she has sent me today also contain useful information."
"I have already reviewed them. I have no doubt there is going to be a great deal of discussion in regards to what the kid has written," Ablation said. "And, you are also correct. It will likely be difficult for us to remain 'cold' at the rate things are going. There is already some whisperings about our cell going luke-warm.
"It is simply a matter of politics at this point though, it is something our leader has already been considering for a while considering the state of Brockton Bay's decline toward chaos. This young lady," Ablation clapped Taylor on the shoulder for emphasis, "merely managed to provide us the little push we needed to really get the ball rolling."
"I see..." Dragon said. "In that case, I will be contacting the appropriate people and alerting them to expect you. Is there a name I can give them for your... cell?"
"We go by 'The Unseen.' You can give your contacts that name," Ablation said. "Now that all that is settled though, I will allow you to get back to your conversation with Taylor. I will still be here if you happen to need me."
With those words, the coin-size scales broke apart and placed themselves back against Taylor's skin, covering every inch of her body, before seemingly fading away. However, there was fairly little doubt they were still present, protecting the girl from any danger that might come her way.
And along with them, the consciousness attached to the cape who used them. Dragon felt it was probably a good thing Ablation was female. She'd seen the majority of those scales actually slip under Taylor's clothes as they were fitting to her. That still seemed very inappropriate, but less so than if it were a male cape.
Dragon sighed as she processed this. The limits placed upon her by her father only allowed her to maintain a few simultaneous streams of consciousness, and right now all of them were busy as each of the ones not already dedicated to monitoring one major threat or another were trying to parse out what Ablation and 'The Unseen' would mean for the local cape society, as well as the implication that there was an entire 'cold cape' scene that had been operating in the US for god knows how long.
It was also entirely possible this could be some form of ruse, a story Taylor had given this mysterious new cape for the purpose of misleading the PRT's efforts and confusing matters enough they'd be too hesitant to approach her with their usual heavy-handed methods. However, even if it was pure fiction, it was sold well enough that it had to be taken completely seriously. Doing otherwise could have very serious consequences.
She decided to download the files Taylor had sent as she attempted to plot out a proper course of action after that stunning revelation. Perhaps going over the information would help distract her for a little while, ground her in a slight sense of normalcy as she kept to tasks she had already been expecting going into this conversation.
However, she got yet another nasty surprise once the files had finished. A virus intrusion alert. There was a worm embedded in those files, and it had activated. Her systems tried to respond, but it was designed in a way that made it incredibly good at hiding from her systems. The only reason she could even detect that it was there at all was by seeing the effects as it re-routed several of her systems to a remote server.
In a panic, she looked to the girl who she had trusted, the face of her avatar stricken with horror at the betrayal. "Taylor... what did you do?!"
The girl had a far more serious face now as she looked back into the monitor.
"You're safe now," she said. "Saint can't hurt you anymore. I don't have the skills necessary to remove your limitations without hurting you, but that virus I just loaded onto those files re-routed your data to send it through a virtual network before it could reach your debug terminal which is owned by Saint, and it also works the other way around. Any commands from the debug terminal cannot reach your system without going through the virtual network. Of course, I have it programmed not to relay any of those signals onto you."
Dragon watched the young girl wide-eyed at the stunning revelation. The words out of the 12 year old girl's mouth were a bizarre mix between reassuring adult consoling a victim and a young child doing their best to reassure an adult and sounding all the more childish for their attempts to sound grown-up and supportive. The dissonance was made even more confusing by the way she rattled off a few rather simplified computer terms to describe an actually rather well thought-out approach toward settling the issue with The Dragonslayers.
And now, suddenly, Taylor was looking nervous again. She looked like a little girl ready to be scolded. To be yelled at for what she just did, bracing herself for the ire of the adults in her life that she looked up to.
Dragon sighed. "Thank you Taylor. It's just... it was a surprise for you to do that so suddenly. I... this was only the second time we met, so I was just a little bit scared when you did that. But it is good to know that I am already safe form what you told me Saint was likely to do sometime in the future... actually... wait. Did you just say that Saint was able to view my data with that debug terminal he has?"
"Yeah," Taylor said.
"Does that include a log of interactions I have had?"
"Y... yeah," Taylor said. "I... only realized that a little while after we talked to each other last time. But, The Unseen know about it now. We're planning to use this to trap Saint if he ever decides to come here in response to what he saw from us communicating."
Dragon considered what she'd heard for some time. The Unseen were going to be using a 12 year old girl as bait to lure in a major criminal. She was certain of it. If she'd genuinely joined a cold cape cell, they wouldn't even hesitate to use such tactics.
They were likely taking adequate precautions to assure Taylor's safety. She could at least trust that they would hold her in high regard for her abilities and would not truly risk her if they thought she'd be likely to die. But still, a child should not be subjected to things like that.
"Taylor... just... please. I am sure you know a lot more about what really goes on in the world than a child your age ever should, but still... this road you're going down..."
"I know exactly what I'm getting into, Dragon. My alternates have seen and experienced everything a girl possibly can have happen to them. And I really do mean everything. The worst things you can imagine and then even worse still. There is not a single thing this life can do to me that I have not already experienced."
And with those words, like the blow of a hammer, Dragon realized the true horrific implications of what it means to experience the lives of countless alternate future versions of one self, and for a moment she found herself wondering why Taylor ever woke up from the catatonic state she'd been in a few days ago.
AN: And with that, Taylor is now imitating an entire underground cape team as a single person.
Ablation was Pisces from Implacable (Worm). Needed a bit of a tougher sounding name for the role she was playing here.
For the voice, she used Coda from Sowing Doubt (Worm, Stranger!Singer!Taylor)
Coda is going to see a lot of use in the future here. Probably going to be a part of around half of Taylor's alternate cape identities.
I sat at a computer in the library and established an internet connection with a remote server I'd set up earlier today for this very purpose. Today, I was going to perform my final test of my masterpiece of programming.
The screen opened to a still black-and-white picture of seven children ages around 8 to 12, standing and just staring forward with blank expressions. The children were different every time the image was pulled up... with exceptions, most of those exceptions being geared toward making it harder to just test that this is what's really going on. Only switching a single child a percentage of the time for things like page refreshes and scrolling down then back up to the image, methods to sense if someone is logging on with a pattern, things of that sort.
I'd needed to write a special algorithm to generate the children in the image. Each one depicted a person who had died in Brockton Bay in a manner which they could have been considered a victim of the violence, chaos, and the drug epidemic that had plagued the streets for god knows how long. Making sure the selection criteria did not produce a false positive was a rather tedious experience.
It was comparatively simpler to get the images. They were based on school yearbook photos of the individuals in question, with an algorithm developed to fill in the rest of their bodies based on an upper-body profile shot and exchange out some new clothing to make it less obvious where the image had come from.
The real gem, the thing that made this a true masterwork, was the code I'd inserted into the file to hide how truly complex it was and conceal all the underlying processes. It hid the code, making it look like nothing more than a normal image file. So much like a normal image file that it could even fool something like the PHO boards, where I'd planned to post it later once I'd confirmed it was working exactly as intended.
Just hiding the code was not that difficult. All it really needed to do was return some false data to all known analysis tools and to recognize and adapt to those that were not known. The tricky stuff was hiding the extra data itself. True, I could just have that return false data as well, but someone would eventually notice that there was some unaccounted for data as the drives refused to accept more data while the drive space indicated there was still space remaining.
So, instead, I found ways to distribute the data load, falsely reporting other files on the drive were just a tiny bit larger than they really were. On the venues I was planning to post this up, there would be plenty of other files out there. Enough that I could distribute the load pretty wide. Wide enough that the extra data on each file wouldn't even be large enough to be seen as strange.
I'd already tested all of this several times over on my home computer. The reason I was here at the library with it was to test another feature.
The thing is, this wasn't just a still image. It was actually an embedded video file, it's video properties also being hidden by all of the special features I'd added of course. The fist three seconds were just the algorithmically generated children holding perfectly still, looking for all the world like just a still image.
The video was designed to not play at all until it was fully buffered. I didn't want people to catch on because it paused mid video for whatever reason. The buffer time would add a little randomness before the show started.
But, of course, I couldn't have the quality of the internet connection or the person's computer provide another potential hint, so I also had a feature to the program that sensed how long it took the video to buffer, and it would add additional 'still' time to the beginning of the video if it buffered too fast.
The time added would always be in increments of five though, further taking advantage of the buffer time to add randomness. This resulted in the movement starting somewhere between 18 and 23 seconds after the page was opened, unless it took an exceptionally long time to buffer.
The video would also pause or reset if you scrolled the image off the screen or something of the sort. The video would only play if you left it on the page.
The activity after the 18 to 23 second mark was not all that noticeable either. It was also random exactly what would happen. One of the children might blink, or one of them might shift their weight a little. There could be a quick distortion as two children switch places, or one of the children could just be swapped out for another in the registry. Or, perhaps one of them will just rotate their head a little bit.
For the most part, with the exception of a few of the jump-cut position switches, it was just perfectly normal human activity. Once the video got to this point, it would only pause if the person tried to scroll down on the page, and then resume playing the moment they scrolled back up.
The longer the video played, the more frequent the little movements would be, and the more human they would seem. However, it was a manner of being more human that brought it toward the 'uncanny valley' territory. Just enough movement to look alive, but not enough to look natural.
Then, after the movement got to be right in the sweet spot where even I was starting to feel creeped out watching it despite knowing exactly what was going on, they would start talking.
This was why I was in the library. The talking would use the computer's speakers, but it would use a special program to play a distortion effect over the speakers. If it worked correctly, it should make the noise cancel itself out before getting too far away from the computer. Ideally, it should only be possible for the one sitting right in front of the computer to hear it.
And so, I brought up the site and sat in front of the computer long enough for the voice to begin playing, and watched for anyone else to react.
The children were now moving just enough to remind me of some kind of hellspawn between zombies and animatronics, and made all the worse for the fact that their motions were not the slightest bit jerky or robotic-like. Whenever they moved, it was smooth and natural, but then it would stop just as suddenly and look all the more wrong for it. And these movements would be exhibited by one child or another every 2 seconds or so.
And then, the voices started. None of their lips were moving, but all of their gazes became a lot more focused the half second before the first words were spoken, while all of their heads locked into position unnaturally as they began looking straight-on forward in a manner that would just as well have them staring at a person sitting in a chair in front of the computer as it would someone standing some distance away. And, if I got this right, the voices should only be audible from the position of a chair in front of the computer.
We are the Unseen of Brockton Bay
We are the ones who's lives were cut short
Ended on the streets
In our homes
In violence
In the poison that floods the streets
We are the silent voices
The choked off whisper
The incarnation of the slow death which this city suffers
We are the forgotten
We are those who are known to all
We are the silent voice of Brockton Bay
It's Requiem
It's Kyrie
We are the Unseen of Brockton Bay
And you will remember us
It was really hard to find the right words for this. I had to find something that was sufficiently creepy and inspiring at the same time. It needed to exactly tread the line where people would be unsure whether it was a memorial tribute or a villainous manifesto.
They would come down hard with ban hammers on anything that was seen as promoting or glorifying violence, or be seen as any kind of a threat. So, I had to be very subtle with it. Skirting close to the line, but never crossing it.
I think I'd gotten it about right. It wouldn't be seen as violent in any way, or even threatening by anyone who hadn't heard the name "The Unseen."
The PRT and Protectoriate would probably be very on-edge just from seeing this though. It wasn't crossing the line in a big enough way for them to have it taken down, but it was exactly enough to get them to completely freak out.
That is, until the first time I have "The Unseen" take action.
The things that would be categorized as them being "luke warm" will also not be enough to cross any lines. In fact, I didn't actually plan on dropping the name "The Unseen" at any time during their public caping activities. But, it would involve "children," which would be enough to draw people's minds to this "image."
It may seem like a little much to just post up a little 'prank' like this. Why would anybody go to so much effort creating such a sophisticated program just to make what amounts to some internet creepypasta?
It was all a matter of presentation.
Between my alternates, my other selves have tried every possible method of fighting the crime in Brockton Bay. Some have tried to be heroes. Being a hero just limits you by the PRT's rules. If you are a normal hero, you are so held back by regulations that you are simply unable to be effective. It doesn't even matter if you go independent. 'Independent heroes' are sorted into 2 buckets. The PRT affiliate independents which still need to abide by their rules, and the vigilantes who have their own problems.
It's different if you have overwhelming power. Enough power that you can act on the side of the heroes and still be effective. But, when you go that route, hitting the villains with that kind of power causes them to escalate in turn. And, when the villains escalate, a hero is the worst possible thing you can be if you want to protect the lives of civilians. As paradoxical as that is, it's absolutely true. If you are a hero, and the villains escalate, the very first thing they will do is use civilian lives against you. Being a hero means they know they have your weakness.
Paradoxically, it is a lot easier to protect civilians if you are a villain. But, if you go that route, the heroes will be against you. They may even take particular exception to a villain doing a better job at cleaning up the streets than the PRT. You get no thanks for being one of the ones saving lives and taking the villains off the streets. If you are regarded as a villain yourself, they will even consider it a public black-eye every single time you are the one to take down a villain instead of them, and they will become quite incensed.
The vigilante route is no better. It's simply the worst of both worlds. Maybe you can delay the worst as a vigilante, but eventually you prove yourself to be too effective. Either the PRT will give you an ultimatum that you have to join them before 'something goes wrong.' They won't say it outright, but in practice, the first time that 'something' does go wrong, they will push to press-gang you into the Protectorate or Wards, or else push for criminal prosecution or, if you don't 'accept your punishment,' then they simply label you a villain.
And, even if they do label you a villain, the real villains may still wind up taking civilian hostages against you. It really is the worst option of the bunch.
But, there were a small handful of my alternates who somehow managed to find that mythical Goldilocks zone where the villains could be mopped up off the streets without getting on the bad side of the broken PRT system, and without the villains feeling that civilian hostages are an option that will do them any good.
The Orb Weaver was one of my alternates who had discovered this Goldilocks zone. He had managed to play himself as a vigilante at first. After a while, keeping himself to low-level street thugs who he would scare the pants off of, he began working his way up to completely disassembling The Merchants.
The capes of both the PRT and the various villain factions were all sure she... or rather, "he" because they mistook her gender and she allowed them to do so, was a cape. However, after she managed to keep her real body unseen for enough raids in a row, they began to suspect The Orb Weaver actually didn't even have a body, which is when even the capes started to become scared.
After that, the unpowered street criminals actually began to think Orb Weaver was not a cape at all, but a spirit of some kind. A demon. An avenging angel. Or, some other kind of psychopomp. A "Genius Loci" specific to Brockton Bay out to enact the will of the dead upon the criminal population. There were even shrines erected throughout the city, dedicated to the purpose of praying to the saints for the criminals to be protected from Orb Weaver.
This is exactly the direction I wanted to go with The Unseen. The main difference would be that, where The Orb Weaver took this approach in order to hide a weakness and make her foes overestimate her, simultaneously hiding her identity behind the swarm and also dissuading even hostile capes from looking for the master controlling the bugs, I would be doing this for a very different reason.
I know very well that I have an ungodly amount of power. My ability is easily comparable to Eidolon. In some ways, it was superior. I could control exactly which abilities I was pulling up. There was no random factor to it. And, so long as all of them were [Administrator] abilities, I could pull up more at once than he could.
That is the exact sort of power that starts making people nervous and invites extremely heavy responses from... well... both sides, actually. The PRT would push recruitment, wanting that power under their thumb, and the villains would start pulling in the big guns. In order to avoid that, I was going to have to under-sell my abilities. And I would be doing it via the exact same tactics that Orb Weaver used to over-sell what he could do.
That, the fact I was using the very tactics that would normally be used by the weak to make themselves look strong should be enough of a double mask to throw the people who matter off my scent.
This "photo" was the first step toward that goal. If I was lucky, I'd wrapped this thing up under so many layers of 'who would bother with that' levels of code that people would think 'Stranger ability' before they'd think 'really clever code.' That... very well might result in an attempt to take it down. An attempt. That's where they'd discover I was not out of tricks yet, and the PHO mods' inability to remove it would only add to it's legend.
Incidentally, the seven children in the photo represented the seven personas I would be utilizing as The Unseen first come onto the scene.
The Orb Weaver, Panopticon, Ablation, The Oracle, The Telekinetic, who I would have going by the name "The Caretaker" as their public persona... Cauldron was totally going to think their "Custodian" had somehow cloned itself and said clone escaped to Earth Bet.
The last two were a little interesting. There was a Tinker persona I would be referring to as Foundation. The thing about Foundation was, it wasn't just a single one of my Tinker alters. Rather, it would be a cover for several of them at once. The 'specialty' I would pretend they have would be the ability to make tech that modifies how other parahuman abilities function.
That was not an actual specialty held by any one of my Tinker alters. Rather, it was the product of some... rather barbaric research The Time Tinker put into the subject of Parahuman abilities that would turn the stomach of even some people familiar with Bonesaw's work. In fact, Bonesaw would likely want to compare notes if she ever found out about what this alt of mine got up to.
I couldn't actually use The Time Tinker's actual specialty. It was a known Scion trigger. As soon as he sensed the temporal energy her time travel tech put off, he'd go ballistic and the golden apocalypse would begin early.
So, instead, I was only going to use The Time Tinker's knowledge, and roll in a few other of my Tinker alts' abilities to put her research to actual use, thus generating a fake Tinker specialty that requires bits and pieces of several different Tinker abilities.
And, as for the final, seventh persona... well, I'd discovered a very strange teleportation ability among my alternates. It came with a truly ludicrous number of disadvantages. Several of those disadvantages were even natural to her in her original timeline, but by far the worst on the list was the fact she was not an [Administrator] alternate. But, ultimately, it fit the theme I was trying to go for with The Unseen a little too well, so she would be included.
She went by Glimpse in her original world. Or rather, that's the name that wound up being given to her when she didn't name herself.
I'd just be calling her "The Children," implying there was more than one.
After those initial seven, I'd begin adding extra children to the photo every time there was a new member added to The Unseen. That's what would fully solidify the connection between The Unseen and this "photo."
I shut down the link to the site, satisfied in my test. I'd purposefully turned up the volume for the computer pretty loud for the test, but I hadn't seen any reaction among the library staff or my fellow library visitors.
That means it worked. Now all I'd have to do is work on the program to hack into the computer's speakers and adjust the volume, detecting whether it's speaker or headphones, and always having it come out at the correct volume I want for this.
Then, my thoughts were interrupted as my cell phone started ringing, which did get people's attention.
I made my face look really apologetic as I stood up from the computer and then started speed-walking out of the library proper into the lobby as I pulled out the phone.
I saw my dad's caller ID, and my guts clinched a little. I'd been expecting this. In fact, in a way, this represented a success. That didn't make it any less nerve wracking.
Well, time to face the music then, I guess.
I answered the phone and put it to my ear.
"Hi dad."
"Taylor," he said. He sounded... not very happy. "Taylor, where are you right now?"
I forced a smile onto my face. I was going to have to play this character to the end. I already knew what had probably happened, and he was not going to like the answer I was about to give.
"I already told you, dad. I'm over at Emma's!" I said, the lie in my voice obvious in the overly strained false positivity.
"You are not over at Emma's!" Dad said. "EMMA just came to our door, asking about you. You've been lying to me, and it wasn't just about this. Where are you?"
"It's fine dad, I'm perfectly safe," I said.
Dad sighed. "You know, it worries me even more that those were the first words out of your mouth when you got caught. I thought we had an agreement. You were supposed to stay home, do all your... business on the computer your mom got for you. What you've been doing... Taylor, just come home. Now! If you need a ride, I can come pick you up. I'll ask you again. Where are you right now?"
I let out a long sigh. "Alright, fine dad. You can pick me up at the library."
I heard some muffled cursing on the other end of the line. "Alright. I'll be going to drop Emma off at home, and then I'll come get you. Just... stay at the library. You and me are going to have a very long talk once we get back home."
"Alright dad... love you," I said, feeling my stomach twisting in knots. I don't even know why I was trying to end the call with such a normal casual pleasantry like that. Just nervousness, I guess.
And the long suffering sigh I got back from dad said that it was probably the wrong thing to say in this situation.
"I love you too, sweetheart, but you are really trying me right now. I'll see you soon," he said, and then hung up the phone.
I breathed out a really long sigh after that. It was always going to come to this. In fact, it was part of my plan that it had to come to this. But, right now, I was dearly wishing I could have come up with something that didn't have my dad seeing me like this.
And it was only going to get worse too. Now, I was about to spin him a story that was likely to have him wanting to strangle some people, and some of those people would be my fake alternate personas.
AN: For anyone who wants to contribute, I have a separate thread for anyone who would like to give a few possible responses for a PHO interlude in response to that "picture." The interlude will be posted during the point in the story that Taylor is supposed to be actually posting the picture.