60

Exodus 1

Exodus 1

As I lay there on the ground, it was time to take stock of what I had, and what I'd lost. Starting with myself: one working arm. One leg. I was operating on two good limbs and a bit low on blood. Both were fixable temporarily with more bots. Clamp off and clot the bleeding vessels. Brace and reattach the broken bones. Form a prosthetic limb entirely out of bots. That was fine.

How was my network and coverage of bots doing? Somehow, I had gotten distracted by the Nine. Did they have a long-range Master somewhere? A Stranger? Or maybe it was just a whole lot of personal stress and trying to manage too many disasters at once. I needed to regain what little control over my life that I had built.

Brockton Bay? I was blind to that city at the moment. Nearly everything that wasn't underground had been burned away. I hadn't even fully replenished the bots that Leviathan depleted before the Nine arrived. Lung and Crawler had gotten into a huge fight, with neither giving ground. Lung hadn't been too interested in the fight, so it didn't drag on to the destructive levels of the Leviathan battle. Even so, he still ramped up hard enough to incinerate the bots I had, plus Crawler's acid secretions also dissolved everything in their path, including my bots. The fight had lasted until Lung grew to the point of having wings, and then he just abandoned the fight entirely. On top of that, the PRT director and his conscripts had carved a path in their escape. Sundancer had been willing to help him back then, burning their way past all their obstacles. Total casualties of mine? Somewhere just below a thousand brains and nearly everything on the surface.

Concord was less terrible, but certainly not good. While the dangers to my bots from Bonesaw's bacteria and Burnscar were massive, they didn't affect the infrastructure nearly as much as Crawler and Lung. And clean-up was happening more swiftly, because the Triumvirate had met there instead of Brockton Bay for some reason. By the time they had arrived, Bonesaw had already left and Burnscar was already dead. I had lost a bunch there, but that area was easily recoverable. Too little, too late though.

Manchester was practically as bad as Brockton Bay. Where the Nine converged. Where everything was happening. Where my bots had been absolutely decimated. My vision was patchy, and almost every single part that I needed vision or control, I didn't have it. I still kept most of my concentration on keeping myself and my allies alive. When my clone had taken over one of my brains, I panicked and devoted almost all my concentration of saving myself. What I had thought was going to be an advantage, having bots distributed around and throughout my body, turned out to be a liability.

Even worse was how much harder it was to take control. I maintained precise control of all the bots throughout my own body with the help of maybe twenty or thirty brains. When she had started taking over, I must have raised that control almost tenfold. Nearly two hundred brains out of my network were suddenly forced to counteract what she was doing and stop her from killing me instantly with my own bots.

When she started doing it to everyone else in the area, I simply didn't have enough to stop her. At all. I focused on those that took priority – mainly, my allies, and the capes. Saving Laserdream, Shielder, and the Wards had been almost all I could manage. Though, now that she had run away and I had a bit of time to focus, I realized there had been some upside in our competition.

Her range was much smaller than mine. Less than a quarter, by my estimates. She was only able to affect me when I was right in front of her, and hadn't been able to touch the patients until after taking over one of my clone brains – the one she was standing closest to. Some kind of tradeoff of her range for stronger Mastering power? I wasn't sure if it was really a tradeoff. I didn't expect life to be fair; it never was. I have a clue how strong her Tinkering was compared to mine. Better? Worse? It would probably be prudent to assume the worst case scenario and be prepared.

That meant I couldn't send bots against her. If her control was stronger than mine, throwing bots at her would only make things worse. But Bonesaw had managed to create anti-bot bacteria. And I knew Panacea could affect other life forms, not just healing people. Maybe… maybe I could convince her to copy, maybe even improve Bonesaw's designs. Have Panacea take down my clone.

Speaking of which, how was Panacea doing? I searched desperately for where she was. I knew the clone was heading towards her. All my focus after that had been preventing the clone from doing to her what she had tried to do to me. There was a whole lot of action involving Brutes way too strong for me to do anything about.

I had watched Glory Girl die. I had watched her get swallowed by the Case 53 whole. Her invulnerability had been flickering on and off, partially preventing her from being digested instantly, but she still suffocated. My bots were doing their best to slice through the monster's guts, but the insides were just as tough as the outsides, and I had just as little progress saving Glory Girl as I did trying to save my own limbs.

The clone of Glory Girl had gone after Panacea, and they flew away so quickly that I had trouble keeping track of her. She disappeared into one of my blind spots, but I eventually managed to move bots into that space.

Panacea was alive. Crying, traumatized, huddled in a corner, but alive. And the clone wasn't doing anything. Which was good. I had no idea what she was thinking, but she wasn't hurting Amy. I needed to get to her, quickly.

Though my walking was awkward, I managed to make it to Panacea. My bot-leg and real leg were of different weights and strength, which threw off my gait. I managed to get used to it by the time I reached her. In the meantime, I had bots flooding the building so I could get a clearer picture of what was going on, while checking on her health.

Amy had a lot of bruising, especially around her neck and wrists. But nothing broken, and nothing she wouldn't recover from. Thank goodness. On the other hand, I was expecting the clone of Vicky to be analogous to my own clone. Evil, spiteful, subservient to the monster girl, and with a body and power both slightly mutated from the original.

What I found was... a perfectly healthy Victoria Dallon. So much so that I needed to do a double take. No, I didn't have bots inside her brain. No, this wasn't the original.

The Victoria beside Amy didn't look like the clone that Noelle had spat out at all. That one was, well, deformed. I only had a quick glance at her when she moved, but I remembered her face wasn't exactly the same, and her body didn't have quite the same muscle tone, her hair wasn't maintained or cut. This Victoria was... well, she was perfect. Too perfect. Everything from her hair to her skin was flawless, she looked almost photoshopped. Even her breasts and butt were a little fuller, her hips and waist a little more shapely. She was still naked, but I ignored the awkwardness. Because this Vicky didn't seem to even notice.

"Amy… I love you," she said blankly, staring at Amy.

Amy ignored her.

I cautiously approached her. "Amy? Are you okay?"

She jumped at my voice. "Wuh!? It's not what it looks like! I… ah, fuck. What's the point? You probably saw everything anyway."

"I was a little distracted. You know, getting my leg gnawed off," I said, dissolving away my prosthetic to make my point. I sat down across the room from her, with the clone-Vicky still standing there. "Mind explaining?"

"Amy… I love you," the clone said again, exactly as she had before.

"For starters, what's up with her?" I asked carefully.

"She was trying to kill me, okay?" Panacea blurted out.

"She obviously isn't now," I said, looking at her curiously.

"Amy… I love you," the clone said one more time. I was starting to get really creeped out at this point, but I couldn't stop looking at her, inside and out. Though the nakedness was a bit distracting. I sent a bunch of bots over her body to form clothing. She didn't object, or react at all.

"I… tried to fix her brain," she said.

"I thought you couldn't do brains?" I asked her, trying to sound accusing.

"I was lying, okay?" Amy shouted angrily. "Because… because I was afraid of this!"

"I see. You know, on some tiny level, I'm kind of glad…" I said.

"What, are you going to turn me in? Carol already hated me and now I've replaced my sister… there's no way the rest of my family's going to take me back in. You might as well replace me," she spat bitterly. "I'm sure Eric will vouch for you."

"What? No, Amy! You're one of…" I quickly replied. After I thought about it, Victoria was dead and this lookalike was hovering between us... "You're my only best friend." And I wouldn't abandon her like Emma had done to me. "I was just… I know this is kind of dumb, but if you could do brains perfectly I'd be pretty useless, wouldn't I?"

Amy stared at me, scrutinizing my face. "You serious?"

"It's not like I have anyone else," I said. My father was all but lost. I don't know why Bonesaw chose to keep him alive, but I was certain he wouldn't be for long. They had already left my range, so I didn't know what she was doing to him. Or to Mark and Carol. I wasn't keeping my hopes up. "We have to stick together, don't we?"

Amy sighed. "You're right. Well, you already know my other secret. I guess I can do brains. I can fix brains by replacing broken bits with perfectly healthy bits. I can't make memories or personality or things like that. I tried… I tried, over and over to fix her. Replaced her hyperactive amygdala with a generic one. Replaced her caudate nucleus, and even upped its function a bit. I kept replacing and fixing bits of her, until she ended up like... this." She gestured dismissively at the clone.

"I'm guessing she has all the memories that Vicky had? My clone seemed to know me really well," I told her.

"Had. She's a walking vegetable at this point."

"Then let's see if I can do something about her."

"What do you mean, do something? I'm not going to kill her, not now. She's not evil any more. She's not anything, really."

My bots were working their way through the clone's brain, trying to get a deeper analysis. So far I hadn't found anything particularly wrong with it. "I don't mean kill her. I mean fix her. You know I had a backup of Vicky's brain, right? It's not perfect, but… I still have it. It's probably closer than, well, this."

"You can do that?" Amy blurted out.

"Yeah. It'll take me some time, though. Do you want to, I dunno, meet up with your family and heal them up?"

"Are any of them in critical danger?" she asked.

"Not really," I told her. "Some broken bones and stuff, but my bots are already handling most of it. Most of them are doing better than I am."

Amy put a hand on my shoulder, and her eyes bulged in surprise. "Geez, it's even worse than it looks! Taylor, how are you not on the ground screaming in pain right now?"

"Bots to numb my nerves," I said simply.

"Well, I can fix the broken bones, but there's no way I can regrow that leg until you eat. Like, a lot. It might take more than a few Challenger burgers."

"I'll be fine. I can focus on her," I said. "What do you want to do? Stay here and watch?"

"I... don't really want to see anyone right now. Not until she's fixed. Maybe not for a while after that, either," Amy said.

"Yeah, I get it," I said. "Then if you're staying here, you can help make sure I don't screw this up too badly."

While I could have just gone in and replaced the clone's brains wholesale if I put all my focus on it, I didn't want to screw things up. I went slowly to make sure everything went right, and that Amy could monitor the changes I was making. That meant I had quite a few spare brains to, at least, keep watch on our surroundings.

I didn't want to push Amy too hard on why she didn't want to see her family. I had my suspicions, but I guess it was similar to why I didn't talk to my dad much for years. People dealt with loss differently. But I did keep tabs on them, in case Amy eventually wanted to talk about them.

It seemed like most of them assumed she was dead. After all, when an evil Alexandria Package attacks a non-Brute, there was usually only one outcome. Most of them were trying to get by with some first-aid supplies that Dragon had brought.

Speaking of Dragon, her suit was different. The only reason I even recognized her was because of the dragon theme she used. If I didn't know better, it looked like she was going for a steampunk variant. It looked half-complete, lots more exposed piping and more mechanical actuators instead of electronic ones. Her voice wasn't as clear, and the whole thing moved with less precision. It was pretty clunky and a clear downgrade from the usual drones I normally saw, despite the impressive missile strike she had launched earlier. "You're sure Shatterbird is dead?" she asked Miss Militia.

"Yes. Saw the corpse myself," the hero confirmed.

Dragon let out an aggravated groan. "If only I knew this earlier, I could have sent a fleet of my regular drones into the area. I built this one specifically as an anti-Shatterbird version. I can have my regular disaster relief drones here within two hours."

"Don't blame yourself. All communications were knocked out," Miss Militia said. "We weren't even able to regroup properly until just recently."

"Which is exactly when the Slaughterhouse tried to escape. I swear, Jack Slash must have some kind of precognition or something. His timing is uncanny."

Legend floated down to join in on the conversation. "In regards to the Nine, do any of you know if they've got any new members, aside from the Trump?"

"Difficult to confirm," Miss Militia said.

"Take care of yourself. We'll be doing a debriefing in a few hours, after we've managed to gather everyone together again," Legend said. He then turned to director Tagg. "The Chief Director will want to talk to you. I don't think she's happy with your performance here. Something about the abuse of emergency powers."

"My performance? I'd like to see anyone else manage a crisis like I did. My job was to keep the parahuman threat under control."

"And I have behind me about twenty parahumans who swear they will never join the Protectorat ever. Congratulations, Tagg, you've probably created more villains Jack Slash today."

"Then we can lock them up. Like any villain deserves," Tagg countered.

"And charge them with what? We're already looking at potentially millions in wrongful arrest lawsuits. You keep treating this like the PRT is military. It isn't. Your Army experience is working against you. Some of the things you did might even qualify as war crimes…" Legend said, rubbing his head.

"Well, this isn't war. You get to smile for the cameras, Legend. What do you know? I'm the one who stood at ground level and gunned down Simurgh victims trying to breach containment. I'm the one who gets my hands dirty so your costume stays clean. You're in no position to complain."

Legend turned, refusing to even look at Tagg any longer. "Speak to the Chief Director before you do anything else. You're been relieved of command duties."

He then flew over to Lady Photon, who was grouped up with the other independents and rogues. "Sorry we couldn't get here sooner. I want to formally assure you that we will nullify whatever contract Tagg made you sign, and we'll be working to compensate you for your losses."

He was met with more than one snort of derision.

"Yeah, that's pretty convenient offer to make after half of us are dead, ain't it?"

"How are you planning on compensating for the ones that he killed?"

"From what I could see, he killed one of my old friends just because she didn't want to fight Crawler. I think we found some evidence of animal cruelty, too." I recognized that voice. Lisa. Or, if she was working in-costume for now, Princess. Unfortunately, she wasn't actually here, she was speaking through Dragon's drone. I had hoped that I could chat to her in private.

"I can understand that Tagg was a mistake. Hindsight always makes things seem obvious. But, as the leader of the Protectorate, I can assure you that I will be fighting on your side. The PRT made a mistake. I intend to hold them accountable."

"I've heard that one before," Manpower said. "As my sister-in-law used to say, I'm going to need more than words."

"Yeah! What I want to know is why nobody came to help earlier?" one of the capes shouted angrily.

"I came as soon as I could," Dragon said. "Every one of my drones was taken out by Shatterbird. But I find it curious that even I was able to build a replacement and fly it over from Toronto before Protectorate support got here." She looked at Legend questioningly.

Legend himself seemed to be surprised by Dragon's criticism. "I think I need to explain. After the Leviathan attack, we needed to return to our home branches. Even with the Truce in place, there are always some extremely bold – or stupid – capes who try to take advantage of the situation by committing their crimes while most of the heroes are away. There's always a lot of additional clean-up required in the cities the Endbringer didn't attack. Secondly, due to the presence of the Siberian and Crawler especially, even the Triumvirate needs to take additional precautions with Thinker support before engaging. Today, that Thinker support advised us to wait – most likely due to the presence of their new Trump. I'm sorry, but it was a strategic decision to gather more information before engaging," Legend explained.

It felt like an excuse. Even worse, if that was actually their reasoning and not an excuse, it meant they weren't going to go after the Nine. The cloning Trump was now travelling with them, and the Triumvirate would never help as long as Noelle existed, in fear of having them cloned. If they were really followed through with that idea, then they would even bar other strong capes from going after them as well.

Nobody else would fight them. The Triumvirate hadn't gone after the Nine since Hero died, I didn't expect them to start now.

Nobody else understood exactly how dangerous my clone could truly be if she was allowed to grow out of control.

Nobody else would risk chasing after the Slaughterhouse Nine.

I had to do it myself.

"Amy," I said. "When I'm done with… her… I'm going to have to do something a bit crazy."

"Define crazy," Amy replied. "As if this isn't crazy enough."

"I'm going to have to go after the Nine. Well, my clone specifically. I don't think anyone else really appreciates how powerful she can get," I said.

"So tell the Protectorate. Or the Guild."

"The Triumvirate aren't going after them. And I think they'll keep all the powerful capes away too, because the Case 53 can clone powers. They're just going to leave them be. I'm afraid… well, I haven't asked yet, but the Guild might agree with their assessment." Would Dragon help? Maybe Dragon was the best choice for this, since the Trump wouldn't be able to clone a robotic drone. Dragon might be able to do something about the Case 53, but my own nanobots had surpassed Dragon's, and she wouldn't be able to stop my clone.

"So you'll do it alone?"

"If I have to," I said with a quiet sigh.

Amy paused for a second, then focused on holding clone-Vicky's hand. The brain copy-transfer procedure was almost done, and she had ensured it went far more smoothly than even I anticipated. Amy turned back to me. "You don't have to," Amy said.

"I do. I really have to. It's a mess that I need to fix, even if nobody else will," I said, firming my own resolve.

"No, I mean… you don't have to do it alone. I'll go with you," she said.

"You will?" I asked, surprised. I had thought she would stay back to help heal people, but I wasn't going to turn down the help.

Amy concentrated on clone-Vicky's face – or brain. "Yes. I know revenge isn't the best reason, but it's something I need to do."

I thought about my father and how they had taken him. How he must be suffering under Bonesaw's sick machinations. Then there was my own clone, who had done nothing but steal my own work and turn it against me. Was I sure I wasn't just doing this for revenge? Maybe there were better capes to deal with this problem than me. But waiting around and getting complacent had been my downfall, and I wasn't going to do that again.

Who was I to turn down Amy for wanting some revenge? She had lost a sister and a mother, and I a friend and father. In the end, revenge was as good a reason as any. But there was one problem with that. It didn't sell as well.

"We're going to need a better reason to tell everyone else. If they knew we wanted to end the Slaughterhouse ourselves, they'd call us crazy and lock us as far away from the Nine as possible. They wouldn't allow us to do something like that."

"The Slaughterhouse Nine leaves behind a lot of victims," Amy said. "Tell them we're focusing on their victims. If we happen to catch up to them… so be it."

That would work. Follow the Slaughterhouse's path of destruction as healers and not revenge-seekers. We didn't need to let anyone else know what was going on.

We were nearly done with clone-Vicky, and I sped up the work at the end to make sure I could go ahead with my own plans. The search parties were still being defensive, assuming that evil-clone-Glory Girl was still out there. They didn't move out until they had anti-Brute backup, and they assumed Panacea was already dead. While there was no hurry to find us, I knew they were gearing up to find us. But if they found us, we'd probably be put under guard, for "protection" or "Master influence observation" for an indeterminate amount of time.

"Amy, I think they're going to come find us soon. Do you want them to find us, or do you want some alone time first?" I wanted to give her the choice at least, even if I was going to leave soon.

She looked at the clone again and shook her head. "Not ready to deal with other people just yet. How much longer until she's ready?"

"Almost done. A few more minutes," I told her. I was trying to put on the finishing touches. Obviously there were quite a few issues remaining. The body was different, so the nerves and senses didn't quite match up to my backup. The existing memories conflicted, especially the actual memories of her death as far as I recorded. There was the fact that I wasn't even completely sure I had even "recorded" Victoria properly. And lastly, the Corona Pollentia and Gemma didn't line up at all as those structures were clearly different from the original, but I couldn't just remake or replace them, because I still wasn't able to replicate powers, other than my own, using my bots.

But it was as close as we were going to get. I put in the finishing touches, and I felt Amy do some final repairs, and then we pulled the clone-Vicky out of her induced coma.

I reinforced our costumes with a thick layer of bots just in case the clone was still evil and homicidal in a way I missed. The Pollentia and Gemma were, structurally, the most obvious difference from the original, and they clearly had an influence on brain activity. I just hoped that change wasn't the entire reason the clones were evil, or else Amy would have to turn her into a vegetable again.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Amy…" she said. I was expecting her to repeat herself again. "Where am I?"

"Vicky?" Amy asked cautiously.

"Ames? What's going on?"

Amy just leaped into her arms and gave her a hug, crying and mumbling. The clone-Vicky was surprised, but returned the hug to her obviously-distressed sister. When she saw me, she gave me a questioning look.

I just gave her an awkward, unsure look in reply. I wasn't sure this was the right moment to let her know she died, got cloned, almost killed her own sister, and had a backup replace the clone… yeah, that was a little weird. I'd wait until Amy was ready, and we could do it together.

"So what do we do from here?" clone-Vicky asked after everyone was all caught up on the situation.

"First, I think we need to figure out what to call you," I said. "I can't just keep thinking you as clone-Vicky."

"Why not just call me Vicky or Victoria then?" she asked.

"Because I don't want to replace the original Victoria. She died protecting me. I can't sully that memory," Amy said.

"I know, but, well, I have most of my – her – memories. And without the nasty influence. Is it so bad if I want to live up to her and what she stood for? I'm not going to let the name go to waste."

I shrugged and looked at Amy. I think she had more riding on the decision than me. She bit her lip, deliberately looking away, and then closing her eyes in thought. After taking a deep breath, she said, "Alright. We'll just go with Vicky, then. I want to think that Victoria was always my sister," she said.

"I'm okay with that," said the newly-christened Vicky. "So, what now, then? What are we doing, where are we going? Am I going to attend my own funeral?"

"I think we've both decided that we'll be going after the Slaughterhouse Nine," I said.

Amy nodded in confirmation. "I'd rather get started on that before someone else comes along to convince us otherwise."

"Well, you're going to need a bodyguard and a plan for that," Vicky said. "I can help with one, but I hope you have the other ready. Punching them out didn't work out so well for me last time…"

I had a plan. Sort of. I didn't know about Amy, but the first thing I needed to do was to improve my own bots. I could theoretically beat my clone, as long as I was focused instead of distracted, and I overwhelmed her with sheer, massive numbers. But that was inefficient, when I could be smarter about it. After working with Dragon, I thought I had reached peak bot design. The fact that my most successful version had been countered by Bonesaw showed me how wrong I was.

Never had my bots actually had to deal with a predator before.

But prey can create defenses, maybe even turn into a predator itself. And I needed my bots to undergo some very rapid evolution. I didn't know the strength of my clone's Tinker-ness, but I realized I now had help. Amy still seemed unsure of what she should be doing, so maybe she would be open to some suggestions.

"Amy, there's something I want to ask. I know it isn't your typical work, but… Bonesaw had some specialized bacteria. She somehow got samples of my bots, and engineered a bacteria that could chew through them like candy," I explained to her.

"You want me to kill them?" Amy asked. "It might be hard if they're spread out all over the place."

"No, actually. I want you to make them better."

Amy looked at me like I was crazy. "You want me to make something… better at destroying your stuff?"

"Yeah. I want you to help, uh, speed up evolution a little bit. Mutate them a bit, create some variants, then I can design my bots to resist or defeat that, and repeat. Hopefully, we'll both end up with better bots and bot-killers by the time we actually face against the Nine. Because my clone can control my bots too, so I need someone else holding a trump card."

Amy's expression didn't change. "You seriously think killing the Nine will boil down to bot-on-bacteria warfare?" she asked.

"I'm sure it'll be a part of it," I said. "It's what my clone and Bonesaw would be doing if they had any sense. We just have to be better than them."

"There's no way in hell I'm going to be beaten by that psychotic runt," Amy huffed. "Give me a sample, I'll show you some real microbe design."

Author's Note:

- Happy Lunar New Year, Valentine's day, and whatever other holidays I'm too busy to celebrate, lol.